ABSTRACT
What exactly are we talking about when we say ‘the audience?’ The chapter challenges the ongoing acceptance of the notion of an audience monolith – a singular category of spectator that is often binarised based on a culturally coded hierarchy that places Western/white-normed audiences as central and non-Western/non-white-normed audiences as peripheral. Using Critical Race Theory as well as other frameworks that examine and interrogate identity and power, the chapter explores the origins of the mental operation of categorisation (derived from the bio-cognitive imperative to organise the world around us) before interrogating the habit of ‘monolithising’ in audience research, including segmentation modelling. The chapter goes on to encourage audience researchers to gain a more critical understanding of their own underlying assumptions and possible methodological short-sightedness as they: (1) reflect on how the practice of monolithising audiences – based on constructs originally established in the colonial tradition – has constricted some of the most basic notions of arts-going in the Global North; (2) effectively interrogate how white-normed research paradigms have impacted assumptions about what constitutes ‘rigour’ and objectivity; and (3) develop new strategies for how to authentically hear the audience voice towards the goal of collecting more meaningful and impactful findings for the field.
