The First Annual Whitehead Parade:
The Self-Enjoyment of Being One Among Many
report from the planning committee
"The organic philosophy interprets experience as meaning the ‘self-enjoyment of being one among many, and of being one arising out of the composition of many."
- Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 145
- Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 145
Report from the Planning Committee
We think the First Annual Whitehead Parade can be something like a Daffodil Festival: a joyful community event with no purpose beyond sharing in the pleasure of being alive. It should also be a little funny. That is why we have chosen as its theme Whitehead’s Eight Categories of Existence.
What makes this funny is that very few participants will understand what the categories mean—or particularly care to understand them. People will march in the parade or watch from the sidewalks without really knowing what the parade is about. They may carry a placard reading “Prehensions” or “Subjective Forms” simply because someone handed it to them. We regard this cheerful incomprehension as part of the celebration. There's a bit of apophaticism here. The joy of being alive needs no 'reason' besides itself.
We considered more directive and inspirational themes: “Open Hearts and Open Minds,” for example, or “Beauty and the Universe.” Someone even suggested "Ecological Civilization." But we decided it might be more fun—and perhaps funnier—to avoid any hint of moralism, at least for the first parade. No one will be instructed to become a better person, save the planet, awaken spiritually, or adopt a metaphysical worldview.
Implicitly, however, the parade will draw upon Whitehead’s idea that being alive in the moment—with self-enjoyment, self-creativity, and positive relations with others—is itself part of what makes life valuable. The parade need not announce this message. It can simply embody it.
One member of the committee noted that Whitehead’s Eight Categories of Existence can, in fact, be used by scholars and other metaphysically inclined observers to interpret a public event of this kind. We therefore include a brief account of that possibility at the end of this report. First, however, we offer some preliminary thoughts about who might participate, how many people constitute a critical mass, how long the parade should last, and—most importantly—the roles of children, music, and animals.
Who Will Participate?
Everyone is welcome. We hope the parade will include teachers, mechanics, nurses, farmers, shopkeepers, retirees, students, musicians, gardeners, clergy, skeptics, philosophers, people who have never heard of Whitehead, and people who have heard of him but wisely decided not to read Process and Reality.
No knowledge of metaphysics will be required. Participants will not be tested on the difference between a nexus and a multiplicity. Indeed, members of the planning committee will not be tested either.
Some participants will carry placards bearing the names of the categories:
- Actual Entities
- Prehensions
- Nexuses
- Subjective Forms
- Eternal Objects
- Propositions
- Multiplicities
- Contrasts
There will be no requirement that those carrying the signs understand them.
How Many People Are Needed?
We believe small numbers can be beautiful. The parade does not need hundreds of participants. Twenty-five people, three children, four dogs, a brass band of uncertain competence, and a few enthusiastic spectators may be enough.
A parade becomes a parade when people agree to treat it as one. Its reality does not depend entirely on its size. A small gathering can possess an intensity, intimacy, and comic dignity that a large parade sometimes lacks.
Our working definition of a critical mass is therefore: enough people that no single participant feels solely responsible for the event.
How Long Should It Be?
The parade should be long enough to become an experience but short enough to remain enjoyable. We propose a route of approximately six blocks, lasting thirty to forty-five minutes.
There should be no hurry. Whitehead himself believed that experience involves a rhythmic interplay of activity and rest. Accordingly, the parade may pause occasionally for music, conversation, water, confusion, or the untangling of dogs.
At the end of the route, participants and spectators will gather for lemonade, cookies, music, and completely optional metaphysical discussion.
The Role of Children
Children will be central to the parade because they already understand something many adults have forgotten: an activity does not need an external purpose in order to be worthwhile. Play can justify itself.
Children may carry some of the most imposing placards, including “God,” “Creativity,” and “Propositions.” (God and Creativity ate not among the eight categories, but they can be added.) The presence of children will remind the adults that metaphysical language may be carried lightly.
Children will also be encouraged to decorate wagons, wear costumes, blow bubbles, draw pictures, and ask questions that the Whitehead scholars cannot answer.
The Role of Music
Music will provide the connective tissue of the parade. We hope to include a small marching band, drummers, guitarists, fiddlers, accordion players, and anyone capable of keeping approximate time.
The music need not be about Whitehead. In fact, the committee strongly recommends that no one attempt to set the categoreal scheme to music unless the result is unusually danceable.
Music gathers different people into a shared rhythm without requiring them to think or feel exactly alike. It allows the many to become one without ceasing to be many. For this reason, music may be the most Whiteheadian element of the entire event.
The Role of Animals
Dogs are welcome, provided they are comfortable with crowds and music. Other animals may participate when doing so is safe and humane.
Animals are not decorative additions to a human celebration. They are participants with experiences, perspectives, preferences, and subjective forms of their own. A dog may prehend the parade primarily through smells, sounds, movements, and the possibility of dropped food. This is a perfectly legitimate interpretation of the event.
No animal will be required to carry a metaphysical placard, although a dog wearing a comfortable sign reading “Actual Entity” would not be discouraged.
The Parade as a Public Performance
The Whitehead Parade will be both carnivalesque and ritualesque.
It will be carnivalesque because it playfully suspends the assumption that public events must possess a clear purpose. It transgresses the idea that every parade—and perhaps every life—must justify itself by making a statement, correcting an injustice, promoting a cause, or producing a measurable result.
It will be ritualesque because the parade will not merely represent a community; it will help create one. By walking, watching, playing music, laughing, and sharing the street, participants will bring a temporary form of communal life into existence. The transformation may not be permanent, but it will be real.
A Whiteheadian Interpretation of the Parade
For those who want one, Whitehead’s categories offer a way of interpreting what happens:
- The moment-by-moment experiences of the participants are actual entities.
- Their ways of seeing one another, hearing the music, feeling the weather, remembering earlier events, and anticipating what comes next are prehensions.
- The emotions accompanying these perceptions—amusement, curiosity, embarrassment, excitement, boredom, and joy—are subjective forms.
- The many people, animals, sounds, colors, buildings, memories, and possibilities constitute multiplicities.
- The bodies, bands, crowds, families, groups of friends, and the parade itself are nexuses.
- The recurring patterns embodied in music, movement, color, shape, and rhythm are eternal objects as realized in the world.
- The inwardly felt possibilities inviting participants into the next moment are propositions—lures for feeling.
- The differences brought together without being erased—solemnity and silliness, individuality and community, understanding and incomprehension—are contrasts.
Each participant gathers the many elements of the parade into the unity of a momentary experience. Whitehead calls this process concrescence. The many become one and are increased by one. Each person then becomes part of the world experienced by others.
The parade itself is not a solid thing. It is a temporary social happening composed of interdependent experiences. It exists through participation and then passes into memory, where it becomes available for future feeling.
None of this needs to be explained during the parade.
The official theological and metaphysical position of the planning committee is therefore:
Come if you can. Bring a friend, a child, an instrument, or a dog. Understanding is optional. Enjoyment is enough.
Bonus: Public Performances
Publisher's Description
Public Performances offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and of the underlying political motivations they share. Illustrating the connections among three themes—the political, the carnivalesque, and the ritualesque—this volume provides rich and comprehensive insight into public performance as an assertion of political power.
Contributors consider how public genres of performance express not only celebration but also dissent, grief, and remembrance; examine the permeability of the boundaries between genres; and analyze the approval or regulation of such events by municipalities and other institutions. Where the particular use of public space is not sanctioned or where that use meets with hostility from institutions or represents a critique of them, performers are effectively reclaiming public space to make public statements on their own terms—an act of popular sovereignty.
Through these concepts, Public Performances distinguishes the sometimes overlapping dimensions of public symbolic display. Carnival, and thus the carnivalesque, is understood to possess tacit social permission for unconventional or even deviant performance, on the grounds that normal social order will resume when the performance concludes. Ritual, and the ritualesque, leverages a deeper symbolic sensibility, one believed—or at least intended—by the participants to effect transformative, longer-term change.
Contributors: Roger D. Abrahams, John Borgonovo, Laurent Sébastien Fournier, Lisa Gilman, Barbara Graham, David Harnish, Samuel Kinser, Scott Magelssen, Elena Martinez, Pamela Moro, Beverly J. Stoeltje, Daniel Wojcik, Dorothy L. Zinn
Public Performances offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and of the underlying political motivations they share. Illustrating the connections among three themes—the political, the carnivalesque, and the ritualesque—this volume provides rich and comprehensive insight into public performance as an assertion of political power.
Contributors consider how public genres of performance express not only celebration but also dissent, grief, and remembrance; examine the permeability of the boundaries between genres; and analyze the approval or regulation of such events by municipalities and other institutions. Where the particular use of public space is not sanctioned or where that use meets with hostility from institutions or represents a critique of them, performers are effectively reclaiming public space to make public statements on their own terms—an act of popular sovereignty.
Through these concepts, Public Performances distinguishes the sometimes overlapping dimensions of public symbolic display. Carnival, and thus the carnivalesque, is understood to possess tacit social permission for unconventional or even deviant performance, on the grounds that normal social order will resume when the performance concludes. Ritual, and the ritualesque, leverages a deeper symbolic sensibility, one believed—or at least intended—by the participants to effect transformative, longer-term change.
Contributors: Roger D. Abrahams, John Borgonovo, Laurent Sébastien Fournier, Lisa Gilman, Barbara Graham, David Harnish, Samuel Kinser, Scott Magelssen, Elena Martinez, Pamela Moro, Beverly J. Stoeltje, Daniel Wojcik, Dorothy L. Zinn
New Books Network Interview:
Public Performances: Studies in the Carnivalesque and Ritualesque (University Press of Colorado) offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and of the underlying political motivations they share. Illustrating the connections among three themes—the political, the carnivalesque, and the ritualesque—the volume provides rich and comprehensive insight into public performance as an assertion of political power.
Dr. Jack Santino is professor of folklore and popular culture and has served as director of the Bowling Green Center for Popular Culture Studies. He was the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Professor at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, 2010–2011. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Northern Ireland and has conducted research in Spain and France. His documentary film on Pullman Porters, Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle, received four Emmy awards. His research centers on rituals and celebrations, with a particular focus on carnival and political and public ritual as reflective of political, social, and cultural identity. He is the author of numerous books and articles.
Dr. Jack Santino is professor of folklore and popular culture and has served as director of the Bowling Green Center for Popular Culture Studies. He was the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Professor at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, 2010–2011. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Northern Ireland and has conducted research in Spain and France. His documentary film on Pullman Porters, Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle, received four Emmy awards. His research centers on rituals and celebrations, with a particular focus on carnival and political and public ritual as reflective of political, social, and cultural identity. He is the author of numerous books and articles.