Brecht+on+Method

Hi everyone,

What's going on on campus made me reach for Bertolt Brecht -- whose work was especially important for me in my Bhopal years. There's some nice lines for thinking methods:

the call to work  > “When the houses of the great collapse > Many little people are slain. > Those who have no share in the fortunes of the mighty > Often have a share in their misfortunes. The plunging > wain > Drags the sweating beasts with it into the abyss.” > ( The Caucasian Chalk Circle )

  on why we pursue //experimental// methods > “For time flows on, and if it did not, it would be a bad prospect for those who do not sit at golden tables. Methods become exhausted; stimuli no longer work. New problems appear and demand new methods. Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new.”

 on why we do fieldwork -- > “All the world says: yes we know what’s written in the books but now let’s see what our eyes tell us.” (A Life of Galileo)

on why we write ethnography  > “People who understand everything get no stories.”

 on the need for intellectual history, good citational practices and microattribution > “Every time you name yourself, you name someone else.” 

 on the goals of pedagogy > Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him.

on performative pedagogy (having students play roles in debates, for example), see Brecht on " distancing effects "  (though The Drama Teacher says this is a mistranslation  ), noting also the political purpose in the way PECE moves the " fourth wall " that separates audience from actors.

on the tenor of it all > “In the dark times will there be singing? <span style="color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather,Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">Yes. There will be singing about the dark times.”

<span style="color: #181818; display: block; font-family: Lato,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: Merriweather,Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">David Bowie in Brecht's //Baal:// // <span style="font-family: Merriweather,Georgia,serif;">  @http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/11/david-bowie-baal-bertolt-brecht-1982    //

The FBI files on Brecht may be read online at: @http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/brecht.htm in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.