Theatre: spectator, spectacle of the feminine and the Bull Ring

The-O Ring and The Bull Ring as Spectacular Archetypes (Part #7)

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As noted above, despite the manner in which the variants of "theo" appear to be unrelated to "thea", the relationship is an intimate one with various facets. This is evident from the etymology, the status of "thea" as the feminine form of "theo" in the original Greek context, together with the implications of "thea" in the etymology of theatre -- at least.

The manner in which the feminine is designed out of the four conventional cognitive modalities of "theo" may well be rated as extraordinary by the future. This is especially the case when so much global scandal surrounds revelations of inappropriate sexual interactions involving the highest (male) leadership -- the exemplars of theo.

This is remarkably exemplified in the case of a managing director of the International Monetary Fund, framed as a future president of France (Pre-Judging an Institution's Implicit Strategy by the Director's Private Behaviour: remarkable parallels in the case of the IMF and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 2011). Strangely this followed years of critical reference to the IMF as "raping" countries through its structural adjustment process (Institutional "rape" as systemic equivalent to individual rape? 2011).

Rather than the feminine alone, it is the dynamic of the interaction between male and female which is so profoundly fundamental as an attractor -- whether for a spectator or for the unconstrained reproduction of the species (at whatever cost to the environment and global civilization). The point can be variously argued (Scientific Gerrymandering of Boundaries of Overpopulation Debate Review of The Royal Society report -- People and the Planet, 2012; Formally ignoring a fundamental systemic process: the economy vs. the fucking? 2012).

With respect to the metaphysics of representation, in discussing the relation between philosophy and aesthetics Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, 1998) recalls Heidegger's mistrust of the theoretical, citing him as follows:

The word 'theory' stems from the Greek verb theorein. The noun belonging to it is theoria. Peculiar to these words is a lofty and mysterious meaning. The verb theorein grew out of the coalescing of two root words, thea and horao. Thea ( cf. 'theater') is the outward look, the aspect, in which something sbows itself, the outward appearance in which it offer itself. Plato names this aspect in which what presences shows what it is, eidos. To have seen this aspect, eidenai, is to know [wissen]. The second root word in theorein, horao, means: to look at something attentively, to look it over, to view it closely. Thus it follows that theorein is thean horan, to look attentively on the outward appearance wherein what presences becomes visible and, through such seeing, to linger with it ... [But] the Greeks, who in a unique way thought out of their language. i.e., received from it their human existence, were also able to hear something else in the word theoria, and this in accordance with the supreme rank that theoria occupies within the Greek bios. When differently stressed, the two root words thea and orao can read thea and ora. Thea is goddess. It is as a goddess that Aletheia, the unconcealmcnt from out of which and in which that which presences presences, appears to the early thinker Parmenides. (page 93, footnote 80)

These points suggest that the variants of "theo" are variously associated with engaging as spectators in some form of play or game. These may have cognitive implications in addition to the descriptive. It suggests a degree of faith in a "story" and fascination with it.

For David Loy(Indra's Postmodern Net, Philosophy East and West, 43, 1993, 3):

Johan Huizinga's classic study Home Ludens shows how many aspects of human culture originate in play and how they have lost that quality over time. A good example is mythopoesis, where Huizinga applies the allegorical nature of personification to religion. "it is impossible, in my view, to make any sharp distinction between poetic personification in allegory and the conception of celestial -- or infernal -- beings in theology." This suggests that our conceptions of deity, ritual, and dogma were originally more spontaneous experiences and expressions which were later taken dogmatically as they became understood as the means to attain salvation from this vale of tears. That would be consistent with the general tendency whereby playful, unselfconscious elements tend over time to become formalized and then petrified, until their crust is broken through by the irruption of something new. For Derrida as well, "the divine has been ruined by God," and "the death of God will ensure our salvation because the death of God alone can reawaken the divine." (p. 499)

With their systematic practice of dissociation from the experiential dynamics of sexual reality, two extremes can then be usefully considered. With respect to Heidegger's reference to aletheia, both may be understood in terms of "unclosedness", "unconcealedness", "disclosure" or "truth" -- by which it may be variously translated. Its literal meaning is "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident", also implying sincerity and the factuality or reality. As is recognized in the case of both theatre and humour, they offer the ability to express and experience the unsaid -- what cannot otherwise be rendered explicit (Global Strategic Implications of the "Unsaid": from myth-making towards a "wisdom society", 2003). The extremes can then be explored (as follows) in terms of the spectacle of the feminine and that of the bull.

Spectacle of the feminine: It could be said that the challenge posed by the feminine, amongst the masculine implications of the variants of "theo", plays out in the spectacle that they engender -- framed by the feminine in various ways as an inspiration to both speculation and contemplation, however controversial. The reinforcement of censorship in that regard is strikingly illustrated by the notorious erotic novel with a title potentially relevant to this argument (Anne Desclos, Story of O, 1954).

The challenge of the feminine is more obvious through the form of any arena or ring in which the spectacle is presented, or the proscenium arch under which it is staged. This could even be understood as positioning the "theo" modalities as "voyeurs".

Irrespective of anatomical technicalities and terminology, it is in this sense that the feminine can even be said to transcend in some way the plane of reality in which the variants of "theo" engage -- an argument made otherwise by Elise Boulding (The Underside of History: a view of women through time, 1976). There is a strange ambiguity to the omniabsence of the vagina from the formal discourse within the "theo" modalities -- complemented by its omnipresence in the living reality for many -- indeed an underside to match the overside (Epistemological Challenge of Cognitive Body Odour: exploring the underside of dialogue, 2006). As suggested by the polyhedral mappings (above), the circular form with which the feminine is associated is relatively invisible from the surfaces to which those modalities are attributed.

The interplay offered by theatrical presentation, its sexual connotations, and the cognitive implications of the spectator/voyeur of reality can be usefully highlighted by the strong sensitivities to harassment (Beyond Harassment of Reality and Grasping Future Possibilities: learnings from sexual harassment as a metaphor, 1996).

The theme has been evoked in worldwide presentations of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues. The matter has been considered otherwise by Emma Rees (The Vagina: a literary and cultural history, 2013), as described in the following terms:

From South Park to Kathy Acker, and from Lars Von Trier to Sex and the City, women s sexual organs are demonized. Rees traces the fascinating evolution of this demonization, considering how calling the c-word obscene both legitimates and perpetuates the fractured identities of women globally. Rees demonstrates how writers, artists, and filmmakers contend with the dilemma of the vagina's puzzlingly covert visibility .

In our postmodern, porn-obsessed culture, vaginas appear to be everywhere, literally or symbolically but, crucially, they are as silenced as they are objectified. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History examines the paradox of female genitalia through five fields of artistic expression: literature, film, TV, visual, and performance art.

There is a peculiar paradox unlike any other regarding female genitalia. Rees focuses on this paradox of what is termed the covert visibility of the vagina and on its monstrous manifestations. That is, what happens when the female body refuses to be pathologized, eroticized, or rendered subordinate to the will or intention of another? Common, and often offensive, slang terms for the vagina can be seen as an attempt to divert attention away from the reality of women's lived sexual experiences such that we don't look at the vagina itself. Slang offers a convenient distraction to something so taboo.

There is no lack of recognition of the vagina as an architectural metaphor (Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, A Brief History of Buildings That Look Like Vaginas, Gizmodo, 21 November 2013). This currently extends to controversies regarding the design of a football stadium of global relevance (Tomas Jivanda, The Accidental Vagina Stadium: design for Qatar's first 2022 World Cup purpose-built stadium released, The Independent, 18 November 2013; Holly Baxter, Qatar's accidental vagina stadium is most gratifying, The Guardian, 18 November 2013).

Curiously one of the most basic options of stage design is improbably termed the thrust stage -- with the stage surrounded on three sides by the audience. A number of authors and playwrights have explored the metaphorical relation between the design of the theatre proscenium and the vagina -- with deliberately challenging enactions of the vagina and direct exposure to it.

In recognizing the attention of postmodern theory to the role of theatre, Mark Pizzato (Edges of Loss: from modern drama to postmodern theory, 1998) sees it as revealing an obsession with the destruction of social institutions and the "universal truths" of modernism. Theater is understood as a marginal form revealing the unstable edges of community and the ways such community is imagined and staged, notably in terms of a nostalgia for a lost ritual "womb" (in Nietzsche's proto-postmodern views of ancient tragedy).

In Pizzato's discussion of Antonin Artaud's Womb in Derridean Re-presentation:

Artaud (as Derrida performs him) must inhabit the structure of the Oedipus myth in his attempt to reverse and demolish Western theological theater. Yet he also strives to go outside the logos-law of tragic stage space.... Thus, while Derrida, like Artaud (and Nietsche), "refuses to subsume Life to Being"... he also risks repeating Leibniz's failure to see the theological, logocentric, universalizing tendencies of the East as well as the West... Artaud's search for the Other within (through pantheological rebellion) against the Western phallogocentric stage appears in his plan for a play, The Philosopher's Stone, published in 1929. The set Artaud describes, out of conventional theatrical materials, presents a cavelike opening or vulva within the proscenium frame... This is not just a theater within a theater, but a choral, uterine edge -- a vulval signifier shaped out of the inner proscenium curtain. This (ideo)graphic set as a womb comes ritually alive through a perverse Oedipal triangle... (pp. 85-86)

A metaphorical proscenium/vagina figures in a famed play by Federico García Lorca, Asi que Pasen Cinco Años, as noted by Farris Anderson (The Theatrical Design of Lorca's Asi que Pasen Cinco Años, Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century, 7, 1979, 3, pp. 249-278). For Nicola Pitchford (Tactical Readings: feminist postmodernism in the novels of Kathy Acker and Angela Carter, 2002):

This vastly hyperbolic description of a sexual region that can "not admit the possibility" of connection to a body associates the pornographic image with society's most elevated institutions: the viewer (who is the imagined lover) enters the woman as a conquering hero entering a "triumphal arch"; he passes under the "coat of arms" that legitimates his nobility, through "red and purple crenellations," the colors and the fortress of royalty, to survey his kingdom within. The vaginal "proscenium" is the site of the elaborate staging of male power. (p. 173)

Are such descriptors aesthetically reminiscent of the orgasmic celebration of male beatification enabled by theology, as so recently disseminated globally -- to honour individuals who were significant in avoiding the pattern of systematic sexual abuse by the clergy for which they were responsible over decades? (UN Committee Against Torture criticises Vatican handling of sex abuse, The Guardian, 23 May 2014; UN denounces Vatican over child abuse and demands immediate action, The Guardian, 5 February 2014).

Are the implications of the vagina to be explored as a fundamental challenge to globalization, as separately discussed (Engendering Invagination and Gastrulation of Globalization: reconstructive insights from the sciences and the humanities, 2010)?

Spectacle of the bull; A fruitful contrast to preoccupations with the vagina is the significance associated with the role of the bull in various forms of spectacle, dating back to a tradition of bull worship as a primary symbol of fertility -- including that of bull-leaping. The bull was central in many ways to the period with which the Olympic deities were associated -- even to the Olympic Games in their original form. For Michael Rice (The Power of the Bull, 2014):

Everyone has heard of the Minotaur in the labyrinth on Crete and many know that the Greek gods would adopt the guise of a bull to seduce mortal women. But what lies behind these legends? The Power of the Bull discusses mankind's enduring obsession with bulls. The bull is an almost universal symbol throughout Indo-European cultures. Bull cults proliferated in the Middle East and in many parts of North Africa, and one cult, Mithraism, was the greatest rival to Christianity in the Roman Empire. The Cults are divergent yet have certain core elements in common. Michael Rice argues that the ancient bulls were the supreme sacrificial animal. An examination of evidence from earliest prehistory onwards reveals the bull to be a symbol of political authority, sexual potency, economic wealth and vast subterranean powers. In some areas representations of the bull have varied little from earliest times, in others it has changed vastly over centuries. This volume provides a well-illustrated and accessible analysis of the exceptionally rich artistic inheritance associated with the bull.

This engagement with the bull continues to this day in some Mediterranean cultures through bull-fighting and forms of bull-leaping. Most curiously "bull" continues to figure uniquely and plentifully in English jargon regarding the inadequacy of arguments presented through all modalities of "theo" and within them (Dilemma intrinsic to modern usage of "bull", 2009). This is a reaction to recognition of "spin". It is in this sense that "bull-fighting" can be fruitfully explored as a relevant metaphor (Viable Global Governance through Bullfighting: challenge of transcendence, 2009; Transformation of Global Governance through Bullfighting: visual symbols and geometric metaphors, 2009).

As a bull/cow the significance can be traced back further into the earliest Indo-Aryan creation myths of the Rg Veda regarding Vishvarupa, as clarified by Maria M . Colavito (The Heresy of Oedipus and the Mind /Mind Split: a study of the biocultural origins of civilization, 1995). Vishvarupa is considered the supreme form of Vishnu, the whole universe being understood as contained within him and originating from him. In discussing bulls as masculine prototypes, Colavito indicates that:

We have seen from the... myth of creation that there appears to be several references to bulls, not all necessarily representing the same act; a similar situation in the way bulls were portrayed in the Oedipus cycle, namely in varying ways. What we can begin to notice by looking further at the Indo-European myth is that the images of bulls are consistently dissimilar in the same way that the bulls in the Oedipus myth cycle are. In other words the acts of bulls are varied, but these varied acts are consistent among the myth systems. The only time that a problem arises with interpretation of these prototypes is when one views them by ideographic "seeing" and not by mythopoeic "seeing"... the way the seers see (mythopoetically, as One) and the way other mortals see (ideographically, as disparate entities)... when the story was transported via the Phoenicians, the ideographic story became THE story; the mythopoeic fell by the wayside into the realm of the unknown... (pp. 124-125).

These indications point to the difficulties with the argumentation process of the "theo" modalities. The underlying integrity is readily lost through ideographic description. Hence the value of the truth implied by participative spectacle whether with respect to the vagina or the bull. Ironically efforts have been made to complement the Vagina Monologues with Penis Monologues.

This argument can be taken further through the associations of the arena ring with that of a bull. It is in this sense that the form of the vagina as a ring, the bull ring, and the form of bull horns, all carry significance at a level underlying conventional modes of seeing -- a different order of truth (to which reference is made with respect to the experience of any spectacle).

Potentially more significant is the manner in such which forms embody the dynamics of a cycle, eluding simple seeing and requiring experiential proprioception through multiple modalities (Strategic Challenge of Polysensorial Knowledge bringing the "elephant" into "focus", 2008). This extends to that of any globality cycles may then frame -- and the generative response to the potential of an egg or the globe.

With respect to common reference to the lack of ability to see beyond the end of one's nose, there is a significant irony with regard to any ring in the nose of a bull. Can the bull see the ring, irrespective of whether it can feel it -- especially when pulled by it? Does this apply in some respect to "The-O ring" discussed above? Can those modalities "see the ring" at the end of their noses?

More provocatively, can the bull only see the ring when it drinks from a pool in which it is mirrored? Such recognition would require ability to pass the mirror test, namely for the bull to be able to recognize itself in the reflection. Seemingly it continues to be debatable whether recognition of one's mirror image implies self-awareness (Jens B. Asendorpf, et al., Self-Awareness and Other-Awareness II: mirror self-recognition, social contingency awareness, and synchronic imitation, Developmental Psychology, 1996). As discussed above, are the "theo" modalities to be understood as appropriately self-reflexive and self-aware -- in the light of how they may be perceived by the future?

Conference arena as combination of O-ring and Bull ring?: A conference arena, as with the European Parliament, can be readily depicted in physical terms as a form of ring, as with the image on the left (below). Implied in that arrangement is the composition, typically of political parties or other factions, as with the central image. Both these images are essentially static and give little sense of the dynamics. Although impressive in principle, this impression is severely undermined by the level of absenteeism -- indicative of lack of interestingness reinforcing the democratic deficit (currently highlighted by European elections). Missing is any means of representing the dynamics, as might suggested by use of the animation on the right.

Ways of seeing a plenary conference arena
Physical layout	Pie chart of composition	Sexually dynamic process?

A conference arena is readily appreciated as a place of drama, even deprecated as "theatre". The "horse trading" dynamics may well be comparable with those of a stock exchange -- readily described as a bull pit (Martin Schwartz, Pit Bull: lessons from Wall Street's champion day trader, 1999). In the light of the vaginal architectural traces evident at some conference arenas, there is a case for exploring the extent to which participation at a conference is an unconscious collective effort to return to the womb.

Use of "congress" as an alternative term, with its sexual connotations, also suggests careful consideration of other features of the process. Does prominent placement of a singular podium for a keynote speaker offer associations to clitoral stimulation -- potentially to engender a form of "collective orgasm"? Can varieties of orgasm then be usefully distinguished as leading to dissemination of the conference outcome? Given the constraints on creativity at such events, is there a case for exploring the implications of contraceptive devices and chastity belts in relation to such arenas? Given enthusiasm for "roundtable", what of the silence imposed on such arenas when its knights go questing elsewhere (Implication of the 12 Knights in any Strategic Round Table, 2014)?

Aside from implicit presence of the feminine in design options, typically missing from conventional descriptions of these processes has been the explicit involvement of women (Women and the Underside of Meetings: symptoms of denial in considering strategic options, 2009). This is primarily evident to a degree in formal "receptions" on the occasion of the event. However providing "entertainment" has long been a recognized feature of business meetings -- as a means of facilitating the conclusion of a deal. Far less evident is the degree to which such interaction may be inherent in the attraction of any international conference. A major restraint on better understanding of the wider system (within which the formal conference is set) is that it is in no one's interest to report on the matter -- most notably journalists at risk of losing their access rights to future events. This extends to an appreciation of the extent of use of sexual metaphor by participants in describing the interaction between the parties (Backside to the Future: coherence and conflation of dominant strategic metaphors, 2003)

Interweaving the functions of O-ring and Bull ring, are conferences to be fruitfully understood as the institutionalization of dalliance -- whatever its connotation? The lack of information (and the collective investment in denial) is relevant to current debate regarding the full cost of the monthly movement of MEPs from Brussels to Strasbourg -- costing taxpayers some 180 million euros per year, whilst debating public austerity (The farce of the EU travelling circus, The Daily Telegraph, 14 January 2014; Euro Shuffle: MEPs s Rebel Against Monthly Move to Strasbourg, Spiegel Online, 19 November 2013).

Missing from any analysis, as a factor in resistance to any change, is the effect on "extracurricular activity" at each location -- and on the various "service industries". Potentially more fruitful is the emergence of insight into how conferences really "work" in their more inclusive sense.

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