Carnivalizing Psychometry: an evening of critical-creative reconstruction

Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnival posits it as the locus where the assumptions and practices of dominant culture and of everyday life are subverted and liberated through laughter. The principles and techniques of the Bachtinian carnivalesque (much like those of PCP) can be applied to an infinite variety of situations and objects; this application invariably generates a new vision and new relationships, both radically critical and refreshingly creative.

 

Tonight we will experience together an opportunity for a carnivalizing reconstruction of one of the basic, but also of the most fraught, practices of psychology: psychometric assessment. We will have an opportunity to take part in carnivalized versions of several psychological tests (from the infamous Rorschach to our own Resistance to change grid); this experience should facilitate new ways of construing the tests, the experience of taking them, the relationship between the test subject and the person administering the test, as well as the tests’ outcomes and, consequently, the entity they are supposed to throw light on, the individual personality.