Performativity and Performance DOC

Title	Performativity and Performance
Author	Hans Rudolf Velten
Pages	18
File Size	127.5 KB
File Type	DOC
Total Downloads	82
Total Views	677

Summary

Performativity and Performance HANS RUDOLF VELTEN 1. Introduction In the past two decades, performance and performativity have come to be acknowledged as major categories through which a wide range of social and cultural activity can be described, analysed and theorised. Together they have emerged a...

Description

Performativity and Performance HANS RUDOLF VELTEN 1. Introduction In the past two decades, performance and performativ- ity have come to be acknowledged as major categories through which a wide range of social and cultural activ- ity can be described, analysed and theorised. Together they have emerged as leading concepts in such diverse areas of academic inquiry as linguistics, ritual and theatre studies, literary, media, gender and social stud- ies, aside from their use in contemporary art, theatre, and dance. As theoretical concepts they are engaged in a peculiar relationship with each other: they are not the same, they have diferent disciplinary roots, but they frequently overlap or are seen as neighbouring concepts —depending on the theoretical framework being used and on the object to which reference is being made. In consequence, they are often understood as synonyms (which they are not), leading to both a certain methodo- logical haziness and a conceptual overextension. Both notions have developed simultaneously from diferent disciplinary sources since the mid-twentieth century, becoming attractive to postmodern theory and theatre studies in the 1960s, before being disseminated in a myriad of variants and combinations in several dis- ciplines and—most importantly—interdisciplinary felds. Accordingly, from the end of the 1990s many scholars have identifed a 'performative turn.' The attractiveness and the spreading of the performative as a clue to the intrinsic processuality of cultural phenomena show that it touched a nerve in cultural theory. Yet this dissemina- tion has a dark side: today there is no integrative, con-...