My understanding of "liveness" is indebted to Philip Auslander, who in turn is indebted to Jean Baudrillard. "In a special case of Jean Baudrillard's well-known dictum that 'the very definition of the real has become that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction,' " says Auslander quoting Baudrillard, "the 'live' has always been defined as that which can be recorded" (Auslander 1996: 198). The recognition of liveness is thus for many scholars of oral art an artifact of the observer. Prior to the advent of technologies such as photography and phonography, "there was no such thing as the 'live,' for that category has meaning only in relation to an opposing possibility," continues Ausland. The scholar who struggles over how to capture the "live" quality of performances, as many of us working on oral traditions and verbal art in performance do, is thus inevitably struggling with the media by which he or she has recorded them.
A methodology of studying oral art, as opposed to methods of recording it, must take into account just this issue of performance artifactuality. Performances exist in a unique moment of time, never to be repeated. But scholars such as myself approach performances through its remainders: transcripts, photographs, notes jotted down on the spot or afterwards, newspaper reports, physical materials such as masks or props, memories, recordings of post-performance discussions, and so on. These physical and mental artifacts have distinct properties of their own, which have to be accounted for (perhaps taking inspiration from the field of material cultural studies) in order to say something meaningful about a performance. (2)
The second, related methodological consideration involves a performance's contingent details. "Details, details." "A pedantic attention to details." "Small or secondary parts of a work of art, especially when considered or represented in isolation." The associations with the word "detail" in both ordinary language use, and in the technical vocabulary of art criticism suggest that in a focus upon details, one misses the main point. But the idea which I would like to drive across is quite the contrary. In oral art, particularly in performances of works already familiar to audiences, the development of details is precisely the major point of performance, not at all small or secondary in significance. Oral art demands a paratactical analysis, in other words.
A starting point for this notion is practice theory, particularly Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life (1988). De Certeau suggests that a practice-oriented approach to the study of oral narratives must grasp the historicity of a tale's telling, what he characterizes as "the operations of speakers in particular situations of time, place, and competition" (p. 20). He expands upon this as follows. "The significance of a story that is well known, and therefore classifiable, can be reversed by a single 'circumstantial' detail. To 'recite' it is to play on this extra element hidden in the felicitous stereotypes of the commonplace. The 'insignificant detail' inserted into the framework that supports it makes the commonplace produce other effects." Finally, he states that "It would be interesting to examine more closely the turns that transform into occasions and opportunities the stories of the collective treasury of legends" (p. 89). De Certeau's comments are suggestive of an axiom: the more familiar the tale, the more sensitive a listener or audience member is to circumstantial details that are particular to a telling and the more powerfully meaningful such detailed variations are.
The importance of details in well-known plays has been noted by a number of anthropological students of folk theater. In the tol pava kuttu shadow puppet theater of Kerala, India, two puppeteers representing Brahmins converse with each other about matters related to the play at hand as a prologue to the action that follows.
"We can watch the great battle between Rama and Ravana, but exactly how it will end we can't say." "True. We know what to expect in general, but not the details." "So let's wait here and watch what happens on the battlefield" (Blackburn 1996: 96f).
These Brahmins represent an audience position: the Ramayana story enacted in tol pava kuttu is intimately familiar to all participants, but the lengthy philosophical dialogues that are the heart of the epic's theatrical realization can go in novel and unexpected directions.
The Russian ethnologist and Prague School member Petr Bogatyrev likewise suggests that it is precisely "the details" of performance that are of greatest interest to informed audience members of East European folk theater, who see certain plays over and over again.
A characteristic feature of the audience of folk theater is the fact that they do not hanker after plays of new content, but year after year watch the same Christmas and Easter plays, as for example the play about St. Dorothea, and so on... The spectator watches these plays with extraordinary interest although he knows them more or less by heart. And it is herein that lies the basic differences between the spectator at a folk theater and the average visitor to our theater... In view of the fact that the spectator is well acquainted with the contents of the play being performed, it is not possible to surprise him with the novelty of plot development, that novelty which plays such an essential role in our theatrical performances. For this reason the focal point of a folk theater performance lies in the treatment of detail (Bogatyrev, cited in Honzl 1976: 80; emphasis in the original).
A detail-sensitive or practical approach to oral art thus might be characterized as non-formalist. It does not look at the coherence of the narrative, or the strategies used to develop themes or characters over time. Rather, a practice-oriented scholar must account for the tactical operations producers use to bring historicity to a tale in its details, as well as observe how these details are apprehended by spectators. Details can be inscrutable. They are often surreptitious and can be easily overlooked. But for many spectators, they are of inestimable significance, signaled sometimes by a laugh, a pained look, a sigh, or impassioned memories. Details can be particularly significant for performers, whom, as de Certeau suggests, are involved in competition with other performers, and must distinguish themselves by way of nuance and various interpretive tactics in order to establish and maintain a place in a competitive performance market.