"Performing/Rhetorical Studies: Differential Belonging across Intradisciplinary Borders," Text & Performance Quarterly 34 (January 2014): 104-107. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Performance and performativity have emerged as key concepts in social and cultural theory. The recent rise of the interdisciplinary field of performance studies has shifted our understanding of performance as mere entertainment to performance as ‘a way of creation and being’ (Madison and Hamera 2006: xii, original emphasis). As a result, the concept has expanded to encompass everyday action and interaction, as well as ritual and cultural events beyond the stage, influencing a wide range of academic fields. At the intersection of cultural studies, theatre studies, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, gender studies and psychology, studies of performance and performativity clearly grapple with questions about the complex interrelation between the individual, culture and society.
Introduction: Genealogies of Performance Philosophy
Inter Views in Performance Philosophy, 2017
Offering a diachronic approach to the ways in which the humanities have gradually been transformed by the advent of performance, this introductory chapter traces the emergence of notions and instances of the performative, first in Anglo-Saxon linguistics, then with the arrival of French Theory and the parallel development of Performance Studies, noting their unrecognized affinities. Advocating for the overcoming of these sterile oppositions across continents and traditional fields of knowledge, the introduction focuses on the fruitful encounters between performance and philosophy, and the current stakes of the ever-expanding field of Performance Philosophy. While French institutions have tended to distrust and distance themselves from Anglo-American practices and multidisciplinary explorations in spite of the influence of “French Theory,” this introduction presents the volume’s varied contributions as a way of reinstating a dialogue between Continental and Atlantic perspectives. Weaving together kaleidoscopic views (and interviews), the co-editors present Performance Philosophy as an inclusive approach to performing thinking within cultural specificities while moving beyond disciplinary boundaries.
2017
This year, About Performance celebrates thirty years of the teaching of performance studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney-the journal's home. To mark the occasion, we have produced a special issue, a double issue, with an oversized sixteen articles. There have been thirteen issues of About Performance to date. The first appeared in 1995, and each edition has collected its papers around a special theme. Successive editors have explored the lives of actors (no. 13), risk and performance (no. 12), movement (no. 11), audiences (no. 10), politics and performance (no. 9), photography as/of performance (no. 8), sitespecific theatre (no. 7), rehearsal studies (no. 6), Body Weather (no. 5), performance analysis (no. 4), theatre (no. 3), crosscultural performance (no. 2), and translation (no. 1). Upcoming issues of About Performance, currently in the works, are on fashion, phenomenology, medicine, and the history of emotions. Although this anniversary issue, Performance Studies: Here, There, Then, Now, has no specific organisational theme, there are two things that bring the edition together: the subjects explored in each paper follow in the theoretical and methodological veins of our catalogue to date, adding to an image of the discipline as About Performance has explored it; and each papers' author has had, and in many cases continues to have, an association with the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. There are papers from established and emerging scholars: former and current students, visiting fellows, current and former academic staff, as well as research and artistic associates. As editors of this edition, Justine Shih Pearson and I cast the net wide in our call for abstracts; a shortlist was chosen by the Executive Editors of the journal, all current and former staff with the department, and together they collated an eclectic, yet representative, mix of papers which were peer reviewed by theatre and performance studies colleagues and fellow travellers. There are articles on butoh in Australia, immersive and site-specific performance in the United Kingdom, union parades in 1889, contemporary theatre in Ireland, phenomenology and performance, actors as manual philosophers, Body Weather and butoh, student theatre, fashion parades, Capetown music and patois, performance art in Detroit, and discussions about the
As Marvin Carlson points out, the term performance has recently developed “as a central metaphor and critical tool for a bewildering variety of studies, covering almost every aspect of human activity.” While there is a tendency to stress their similarities and theoretical convergence, Performance Studies and Cultural Studies have different origins: the roots of Performance Studies are clearly located in theatre studies and practices. The essay outlines a short history of the rise of Performance Studies, focussing on Richard Schechner’s work. According to him, a Performance Studies paradigm came to the fore in the mid-1950s, with books by Bateson, Austin, Goffman, Caillois and others. In the Sixties Schechner started to teach and was founder/director for influential theatre groups on the American avant-garde scene. When his interest shifted from theatre to performance and from aesthetics to social sciences, he found anthropology extremely useful because in ethnographies anthropologists treat the actual lived behaviours of people performatively. Schechner developed these assumptions and cooperated intensely with social scientists, in particular the anthropologist Victor Turner. In 1980 Schechner co-founded the Department of Performance Studies at NYU. Since then many academic institutions have started similar programs; Schechner’s books have been translated into many languages; and worldwide a growing cohort of scholars have been attracted to this stimulating, inter-disciplinary, threshold-crossing approach.
Performance its archive and historicity notes on intercultural critique
Performance Making and the Archive, 2021
Performance, its archive and historicity: notes on intercultural critique 'Intercultural theatre', which came to be known as a form of performance during the postcolonial period, is one of those rare performance genres that dwells between binaries of partisanship and loathe within theatre scholarship even today. This form, which invariably includes the work of 'western' theatre practitioners, borrows from theatrical, ritualistic or performative traditions that are usually not from their own continent (performances that borrow from traditions within the same continent although different cultures are not usually called 'intercultural theatre'). 1 One of the main criticisms against this form has been its failure to comprehend or rather ignore the cultural and historical context to which the 'source' form belongs. 'Intercultural theatre' has been accused of appropriation or wrongfully taking away that which can also be called 'stealing' 2. Rustom Bharucha one of the critics of this form goes to the extent of saying that it emptied 'source culture'-s like India of its cultural tradition while filling the 'target culture', which in this case to him is the 'west'. This paper tries to understand the dynamics of such 'appropriation' or