Diego Pellecchia, Part 3, paper in "Japanese Theatre Transcultural": INTRO

Before getting into the examination of the text of the chapter with which Pellecchia is credited in the book at issue, it is necessary to provide an introduction. That will include a couple of pages from his blog that bear quoting in relation to an academic conference in Germany at which he presented a paper on which the chapter was based, and an image of the first couple of pages of his paper as well. I will also introduce a paper by a scholar cited by Pellecchia, as it is reasonably easy to read and should be a useful reference to people not familiar with the subject matter.

Pellecchia provides an abstract of his paper in the first of the two entries quoted below, which I will refer back to in order to be as concise as possible in deconstructing the arguments he makes in the paper (i.e., chapter). The second entry entertains the notion of “theory for theory’s sake,” and mentions a few “postmodern” philosophers whose work I had the opportunity to engage with at UC Berkeley in my undergraduate pursuit of conceptual material related to “modernity and identity.” Advance warning is warranted here as Pellecchia makes a preemptive assault by claiming that such thinkers “theories are often inappropriately borrowed and abused,” before he proceeds to do exactly that, appropriating post-modernist terminology such as “alterity” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterity), for example.

Japanese Theatre Transcultural: German and Italian Perspectives
Diego / 20/11/2009 https://nohtheatre.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/japanese-theatre-transcultural-german-and-italian-perspectives/
Next week I will talk at the International Symposium Japanese Theatre Transcultural: German and Italian Perspectives 27 – 29 November 2009. Universität Trier, Germany. Here is the abstract of my paper, entitled ‘The International Noh Institute of Milan: Transmission of Ethics and Ethics of Transmission in the transnational Context’.
The paper explores the intersection of aesthetics and ethics in Noh practice. Noel Pinnington (2006) has discussed the primacy of the concept of michi as ‘path through life’ in the writings of Zeami and Konparu Zenchiku, where spiritual and ethical virtues are a necessary condition for aesthetic achievement. Today Noh is taught in various contexts outside Japan, reflecting different agendas of teachers and trainees. How are the ethical aspects of Noh considered in contemporary non-Japanese teaching environments? What are the implications of introducing the ethics embedded in Noh practice outside its original context? Taking on Levinas’s ‘ethics of responsibility’, the paper will use theories of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave & Wenger 1992) to explore the community of learners and the teaching methodology of the International Noh Institute.


Some reflections on the Symposium Japanese Theatre Transcultural
Diego / 01/12/2009 https://nohtheatre.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/some-reflections-on-the-symposium-japanese-theatre-transcultural/
I am back from the Symposium Japanese Theatre Transcultural: German and Italian Perspectives held in Trier University… Organisers Andreas Regelsberg and Stanca Scholz-Cionca did a great job, indeed.
Germany boasts a huge tradition both in Japanese studies and in theatre studies: it is very much interesting to attend conferences outside the anglo-saxon environment and notice so many differences in style and scholarly approach. Any international student working in the UK knows well how British research tends to be critical-theory oriented, sometimes to the extreme: PhD students are now sorted by ‘who they use’ (be it Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Bourdieu, etc.) rather then what they write about. It is almost impossible to write a paper without at least one or two references to post-modern philosophers, whose theories are often inappropriately borrowed and abused. Theory for theory’s sake. For people like me, coming from a different academic background, it is hard to cope with what over here sometimes seems as the only possible way of academic enquiry. I have heard similar comments from students from France, Hong Kong, Greece, Germany, Japan, etc.

In his paper Pellecchia repeatedly uses the term “alterity”, which is practically unheard of outside of so-called postmodernist discourse (e.g., http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/kylecupp/2012/01/what-is-alterity/). I don’t discount postmodern theory outright, of course, but am generally inclined to take modernity into consideration, as presumed by the term post-modernity, before approaching such theories. In fact, I have studied all of the thinkers referred to by Pellecchia in the above-posted text, and have generally found their texts relevant and intellectually stimulating. Pellecchia’s employment of the rhetorical diversionary tactic of denying, however, that about which he intended to proceed  thenceforth, is therefore questionable. It should also be noted that Pellecchia never declares his “academic background”, which he does however mention having.

At the same time, part of Pellecchia’s presentation involves displacing responsibility for his theoretical pronouncements onto others that have gone before him, paved his “way,” so to speak. Pellecchia cites the work of a Brit named Noel Pinnington who teaches at the University of Arizona: http://sainsbury-institute.org/ja/fellowships/robert-and-lisa-sainsbury-fellowship/noel-pinnington/. The subject matter is presented by Pellecchia as if esoteric, with him divining the meaning for his audience in post-modernist jargon. 

I have not read Mr. Pinnington’s book (https://www.amazon.co.jp/Traces-Way-Writings-Komparu-Zenchiku/dp/1933947322), but he has uploaded a paper that he published the same year as the book, and the paper is informative (readily apparent even though I haven't finished it yet). As an 'area specialist' in East Asia, I am familiar with the consistent usage in the texts related to Confucianism, Daoism and Zen (Chinese Chan) of the Chinese character for way (道), one reading of which in Japanese is “michi.” Not only have I read the basic works of Confucianism, Daoism and Zen, I have also read the treatise by Zeami referred to by Pinnington (though that was about 10 years ago and I recall little about the relatively short text).

At any rate, considering that the paper by Pinnington is well-researched, and as it is within my sphere of research, I’ve decided to purchase Pinnington’s book, but his paper will undoubtedly suffice for the purposes of this examination (in fact, even it is contains a fair amount of detail, so I will quote from it sparsely). The Chinese character for michi is often rendered as “Way” when translating Japanese to English, such as the “Way of Tea” (茶道, sado) and is the character for the Dao in Daosim. The Japanese term using that Chinese character which would be most familiar to a Western audience is judo (柔道), as in the Olympic sport and art of self-defense.

https://www.academia.edu/12380957/Models_of_the_Way_in_the_Theory_of_Noh

The first two pages of the 18-page paper by Pellecchia are posted below, in advance, as they include the passages framing his thesis, and offer a preliminary contrast to the Pinnington paper. Other passages will be excerpted, as necessary.