History Put in Touch with Itself

Abstract

In the work of Deleuze and Guattari, the diagram is a concept that maps the power relations inscribed within the regulatory apparatuses of everyday life, such as schools, social norms, the law, etc. The diagram is the map of forces that make these apparatuses run, and cause them to tend to produce certain outcomes, to the exclusion of others. This paper explores performance as a diagrammatic medium, in that performance schematizes and models the world and the forces of power that make it. Building on Rebecca Schneider's work, the example of American Civil War re-enactment is used to think about the slippage between repetition and difference in the acting-out of quintessentially American themes, both in performance, and in contemporary politics. Can historical re-enactment be a form of psychodrama or political education? Or are Civil War re-enactments echoes of a quintessential, enduring American wish for ‘redemptive violence, for domination and a return to a mythic past’ (Robcis 2021: 146) that also resonates, for instance, in the 6 January Capitol attack? If the nation tends toward a (compulsive?) repetition of relations of enslavement, domination and violence (while fixating on rhetoric of freedom, liberty and justice) then it is important to ask how, and if, this diagram might be repeated differently within a performative space of play and fantasy.