Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

game” by exposing its contradictions, the Yippies turned to the unpredictable nature oflive performance, creating demonstrations like the Pentagon exorcism that playfullypoked fun at the Establishment.Even as Marcuse was investigating how the “elementary” forces of systemoutsiders and outcasts could be harnessed to reveal the inflexibility of the contemporarypolitical system’s “rigged game” in 1964’s One-Dimensional Man, literary theoristMikhail Bakhtin was exploring how the anarchic theatrical energy of medieval carnivaldid the same for the political and religious hierarchies of the early modern world inRabelais and His World (1965). Bakhtin’s theory of carnivalesque performance offersanother way to understand Yippie performances. In his analysis of the works of Rabelais,the Renaissance humanist and writer of hedonistic fantasy and ribald verse, Bakhtintheorizes how the carnival performances described by Rabelais attempted to underminethe bourgeois culture and religious hierarchy of medieval Europe. The costumes, music,and songs of carnival time were anti-Establishment. Choir boys mocked the clergy;peasants joked about the lord of the manor. Bakhtin writes of medieval carnival as a“temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order” that“marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions” (10).The performance of carnival by the citizens of a medieval town resulted in a momentaryoverthrow of traditional power hierarchies based on wealth or position in the medievalChurch. Instead of order, there was chaos brought about by performance.The frame of carnival time allowed for the overthrow of order. This frameencouraged performances of anarchy and chaos, and provided an outlet to ease any social90