Performance Theory

Performance as a mode of political power Not all about dances and dancers, rather about social fields generated by experimental movement/choreography Five singularities are activated by performances and they, “express the proper name of the event they precipitate: the event of thingness, …darkness,… animality,… persistence,… solidity,” (7) Neoliberalism acknowledges the power of performance. It requires that citizens perform but it issues and imposes its own model of performance. Neoliberalism deems performance as something to be ‘dealt with’ and does so through “surveillance of the citizenry, the privatization of cultural activities, the economization of artistic expression, and the movement of sociality as mainly the movement of Self(ie)-images disseminated through controlled and monetized cyber-platforms are the rule” (9). Dance, or the social field it creates, is about remedying the ailment of human’s lost nature but its own practice illuminates the futility of this purpose (85). ...

Cruising Utopia CU is an invitation to consider queerness, queer lives, and their socio-historic context differently/more critically Queerness is not yet here, as such everything we do must be future oriented; it is looming potential/possiblity. Present focus is normative, not queer. Aesthetic and political practices required to reach queer utopia Disidentifications Disidentification is a strategy of resistance and survival for some minority subjects. It is a way to relate to identity that is not assimilation with the dominant culture and not counter-identification that reverses the status quo and puts minorities on top of majorities. It works in some but not all situations and for some but not all marginalized identities. Performance of disidentification “offer[s] the minoritarian subject a space to situate itself in history and thus seize social agency,” (1). This seems like an answer to the questions Butler poses in her work on preacrity regarding how the precarious s...

I find the text challenging because of the way he writes. I follow his argument to the point where   text shows how the corporeal and the subjective performs both dissensual and consensual acts. Using dance and choreography as his sight of analysis, Lepecki argues that corporealities and subjectivities are produced in an ongoing tension between the "normative power of indivudualization and singularities." I find his choice of "singularities" as opposed to individualization useful because of the way the latter  takes into consideration similarities without homogenizing. His argument revisits how neo-liberal economy is conditioning and attempts to break out of that conditioning, reinforces it.  A crucial part of the book I am yet to grasp is the continuous use of the phrase "Monstrous Nature," his reference to the animalistic tendencies of human and the humanistic tendencies of animal. How does these concepts fits into his overall argument of using dance to ...

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I’d like to ask for some help, both in sorting out an essay, and in answering the question, “What is performance theory for?” I’ve been struggling with Joseph Roach’s essay in Performativity and Performance . At first reading, it seemed to be a clear tracing of three funeral performances as examples of social memory. Stepping back from it, though, I feel like it wanders over lots of territory, and I’m having difficulty finding the main point he is arguing. I believe one of his main theses is that literature and orature are interrelated, “that these modes of communication have produced one another interactively over time” (45). Another thesis is that performance allows culture to change. I don’t see how these arguments are supported with the analysis of different funeral performances, though. The literature he refers to is the libretto of an opera (an obvious aesthetic performance form) or a newspaper. How is performance related to what has traditionally been considered literatu...