There are two more things to say about the drama of recognition. First, that you can also see yourself being seen by others. That is, how will Sean see himself being seen when he tells people of his news? Will he see others seeing him with pity? With jealousy?
The other is that we can imagine how we might be seen. For instance, between hearing his news about university and telling others, how does he imagine he will be seen by them? Who's there?
Indeed, on-campus some people are more defined by their context--their there--rather than who they "are." (We all have this feeling sometimes, right? That we are preforming rather than being?) But people who do this in a a manipulative way. Yet from moment to moment, time, if not context does change, define us or even over-define us. You may feel comfortable and yourself, that is, on the stage of a classroom or football pitch. But on the stage of a dance or that of a fight you may have to "pretend," to"act," to "play."
(Shakespeare calls actors on stage "players.")
Time and context--our stage, the one we are, in one sense, always on--can divide us from who we are and wish to be. (This is our first foray into the drama of recognition, about which there is more to say.)
Let's imagine Sean much younger and try another stereotypical scenario to explain this again.
Sean takes a test at school and gets the top mark in class. Or he fails the test utterly. And now he goes home to tell his parents. His parents will "recognize" him in so far as they will see his body and face, know who he is and his name. But Sean still has to look into his parent's eyes and see there--in their eyes and facial expressions--how he is seen as Sean reknown, the young man with his top mark or his failure. As he walks home isn't Sean thinking something like this:
Will mom and dad see me, Sean might with the pride and joy I want them to see me with?
Or
Will mom and dad see me with disappointment and shame I fear?
My guess is you all know the drama I have given Sean know how rich and complicated it can be, know such thoughts can be as complicated and frightening and involving as anything Bernardo and Francisco go through as they demand recognition from one another.
For if we freeze this moment for Sean or you or any of us, you can quickly descend or explode into a whole lifetime of possibilities. Because the moment you tell your parents about your success or failure and look to see how they see you impacts and is impacted by (or can be) the whole life around it.
For instance, with that top mark do you dance home to tell them of your triumph only to have them say "Good job, now what about tomorrow's test?" in a way that stings because it does not honor you enough?
Or having failed the test do you slink home fearful of their admonition only to have more and day say, "It's O.K." such that you feel relieved and love them even more?
And--and again, this is where things get complicated and imagination a fascinating problem maker--is what you see on their face or hear in their voice what's actually there or just what you imagine what's there? And is not your imagination shaped by all the times this scene has played out before?
For instance, you presume your parents will show a lack of sufficient pride because they have done that in the past so now you look for it too hard? Want it too much? Indeed, imagine you come home with your top mark and with a friend who also hears your dad say, "good job," and sees your mom smile too. You complain to your friend that your parents never get excited about your successes and your friend--and audience to the scene--say, "wow, I wish my parents were ever as positive about what I do as yours are about your good tests score."
Or maybe you don't tell your friend how you feel because you fear they will see you as a complainer or, dare I say it, "a player' who just wants their sympathy?
Because we can see how others see us, imagine and over imagine what our being seen by them means, and because we can do this before we are seen, as we are seen, and after we are seen too, the drama of recognition goes on all the time and endlessly and at the speed of light and thought we might take pleasure in a moment when the drama gets frozen for us:
The drama of recognition is more than just someone knowing your name and can be understood better if you think of yourself seeing how someone sees you. For instance, if you see that your parents look at you with pride rather than with shame, this will influence how you feel and what you do next and earning one kind of recognition rather than another may determine a whole series of events and understanding, lead us into the many measures of "if."
What makes Hamlet compelling and difficult and, at times, irritating comes from how it plays with philosophical and psychological and aesthetic underpinnings of recognition, like when Hamlet offers his 'buzz-buzz' dissing to that older man (Polonius is his name) who, you can say Hamlet sees seeing him not as his dad might or even as his uncle does, but more as a placeholder for those men, as if Hamlet can see Polonius not as a mirror but as a placeholder for a mirror. How Hamlet--the play and the character--does this turns it into a map of extraordinary power and value.
Black, white, young, old, female, male, born African or born American, this is just a short list of the placeholders we use as we appear on each other's stage, as we reflect on each other and ourselves. The difference between seeing each other as people, or even as mirrors and, instead, seeing each other as placeholders for mirrors and so as markers of the path back from tragedy will deserve more thought.
With these first remarks now concluded, let's take up that difference next time,
In Hamlet, the person asking "Who's there? is a guard named Bernardo and he asks it of another person, Marcellus, also a guard. All measures of if--the incomparable magic of art--are now available to us.
If who's there is an enemy or a friend then that's one kind of situation or another kind of situation just as would be if who's there is not an enemy but your parent, not a friend but your lover And, also, if who's there is--as is the case in some forms of art you may know--a dragon or superhero or a robot, then that too is one thing and not something else if only the kind of art in which dragons and superheros and robots do not--or do--appear.
Try it this way: Imagine yourself the person who must write a play from line two onward and the first line says: Who's there? 'Hmmmm,' you might say to yourself, 'it could be friend or enemy or parent or lover or dragon or superhero or robot or, wait, what if . . .'
. . . If . . . and what if your goal is to make your play most potent and alive on grounds as relative as this: you are not me, maybe.
Of course you may be disappointed that instead of a dragon or lover or robot this other person, the guard Marcellus says only, "Nay, answer me; stand and unfold yourself." since that means, at least thus far, we are not in the world of Game of Thrones or Marvel or a Korean soap opera or the plays of Athol Fugard, are not, if you will, 'there' which may be places you would rather be than where one lame guard says one thing, another another and all that happens is there is a lot to say about it, so let's go back back to the play and forget all this buzz-buzz and and just see Bernardo as a guy doing his job, finding out if the guy he approaches is who he is supposed to be, which what is what guards do, how they be.
Well, then, the fact that these two do not know each other--do not yet recognize each other despite doing the same kind of work, wearing the same uniform, and serving the same king--sets the scene of uncertainty and trepidation and foreboding that informs the whole play. "Trouble lurks" or something's amiss" or "huh" says the big sign in the corner of your brain
if, your brain reads as do most peoples when it is night and That is, if you were not the author of this play asked to write it from line two onward but were, instead, the director asked to stage these first two lines, knowing that they come on a platfom before a castle late at night, you would not be likley to tell the actors playing the guards to sing and dance as they preform these lines. And for later posts in this series it is worth saying now that you would not be likely to direct them to sing and dance whether you were born in Boston or in Bamako.
reminds us that however much life distortion it may cause to chase recognition as an engineer in our father's eyes when, in our own, we wish to be a painter, recognition even just for our uniform can be a source of assurance and comfort.
But Bernardo is also a character being played by an actor, someone who speaks not only to Marcellus but to those of us sitting in the seats. We hear his question too and that means "there' just got iffy.
Because, in a sense, these are guards guarding their own stage as a place where each can play as actors (acting, in this case not as lovers or friends, robots or super-heroes, but as guards) without interruption from the authority that any of us may have over their action. While they have enough authority over each other to demand recognition as lliegemen to this ground (that's the next line, baisically) they have not enough authority to get us to do what they demand, which it to answer for them who's there, to stand, get out of our seats, and unfold ourselves.
And thank god. In the first place the only way to answer's Bernardo's who's there questionthis way: the audience. And yet the only way to actually give that answer is to say nothing, to stay at rest, be in silence.
We have been asked--commanded might be a better word--to say who's there and have not. We have been commanded--urged at the very least--to unfold and answer and we do not.
Are we there? Who are we now?
Since if any one of us were to do that the world we are in--the world of art--would be made not immortal.
Now we inhabit a world in which we cannot act. This is to say we are ghosts and that is not the same as saying we lack influence.
And while that all sounds interesting and clever and full of the philosophical, if we are all ghosts together, that means maybe you are me, and I am you, or at least the conditions have been set in which the one solid defense we had against the problematics of 'if' seems already to have been lost.
Being recognized can and often does mean seeing how you are seen, means taking in the moment the person seeing you answers for themselves, about you, the question "who's there? If dad's eyes read with disappointment," you may never get over it.
hough it may be to say that we are in a play not just about a couple of guards in front of a castle but also being, and so being there.
Like all art, this is the world of art; unlike all art, this art wants to call attention to its status as art and call attention to that status in ways profound and, yes, iffy.
But let's take that up in the future and return, next time, to division and solidarity and say a little more about what it all this might mean in the historical context of people who are and are not from Africa, who are black and who are not who are you as who are me.
Until then,
Mr. Ted