Performatism and the secret “Life of Pi”

By now “Life of Pi” is familiar to most readers, as is the story of how its author Yann Martel had little success with his first two novels but continued to write his third novel, and despite being rejected by some significant number of publishers, eventually got the book published, and how it went on to win the very literary Man Booker Prize… Except for me-I didn’t know that about its literary status, and when my freshman roommate suggested it to me I kind of assumed it was just another best-selling analgesic. Awhile ago though, I ran into Raoul Eshelman’s essay “After Postmodernism: Performatism in Literature,” which heavily references “Life of Pi.” With a label as elegant as performatism and a claim as bold as being wholly separate from postmodernism, I figured there had to be something worth looking into.

The basic definition of a performatist work of art (Eshelman also writes about architecture and movies as being performatist) is one that “elicits a specific, aesthetically mediated performance from readers by forcing them to believe in a character or event within the frame of the fictional text.” This is done in “Life of Pi” when the main character, Pi (short for Piscine), offers two different stories about how he survives a ship wreck; the first being much more developed, interesting, and beautiful, the second being short, cruel, and ugly. Inconsistencies and improbabilities can be found in both stories, but that seems to be beside the point as Pi makes clear early on that only a person deficient in imagination refuses to believe in “the better story.” And specifically, Pi thinks it is agnostics who miss out on the better story of religion. Pi is the type of person who devoutly practices Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Quite a triad.

Whatever postmodernist means, it most likely doesn’t mean blind faith in the narrator and the type of unity that we see in Pi’s religious beliefs, which I think makes performatism interesting to talk about because it seems different and new. But something about the “forcing them to believe” part rubs me the wrong way. If Martel is trying to make an argument for religious belief (there is a claim made that this story will make a person believe in God) by manipulating the reader into having faith in the narrator as the only interesting way to read the book, then I am not convinced, because there are many other books where it is specifically a lack of faith in the narrator that makes things interesting; where faith in the narrator will lead you astray. Also, why be forced to believe in order to make “Life of Pi” interesting when there are so many other interesting books out there?

However, I do find the religious unity in “Life of Pi” appealing. After all I’ve read and talked to people about which religion is “right” or if they all are, I’ve never actually thought that maybe each religion was created by people who just interpreted the same thing (God or whatever) differently. At least it’s nice to see that from Pi’s point of view all of the essentials of religion are kept (worship, be nice to others, etc.) but all of the specifics of the big three (Hindus, Christians, and Muslims compose 66% of the world’s population) are appreciated.

Let me also give another person’s interpretation of performatism that simplifies it a bit. Julie of the blog Julie Unplugged says, “a performatist subject is aware of limitations yet acts anyway. A postmodernist may also be aware of limitations, but the approach to life is much more likely to be suspicious and ironic.” On the one hand, this performatism seems very practical, since we are all aware of limitations to some extent yet still must act in some ways. But on the other, it seems to be in direct conflict with the David Foster Wallace quote I wrote about a few weeks back, where the acting is focused on seeking out and confronting the limitations rather than acting in spite of them.