Colors Like Knives: Embodied Research and Phenomenotechnique in 'Rite of the Butcher'

This essay extends the epistemology of practice put forward in *What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research* (Routledge 2015) through a detailed application of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s social and historical epistemology to a 2011 solo performance by the author at Movement Research in New York City. Whereas *What a Body Can Do* surveys a range of historical and contemporary practices, this article attempts for the first time to enact a close technical and epistemic reading of the author’s own embodied research. Eleven minutes of practice are analyzed in what the author, following Rheinberger, calls the phenomenotechnical mode. The article works to distinguish this mode of analysis from more prevalent approaches such as those associated with phenomenology, semiotics, and cognitive studies. In addition to suggesting how a rigorous phenomenotechnical analysis might be applied to one’s own embodied practice, the article offers insight into a specific line of embodied inquiry in post-Grotowskian song-action, with supporting photo and video documentation.