Performance Theory

3 units

This course introduces students to contemporary theories of performance, with performance understood as both metaphor and event. From a multi-disciplinary perspective, students will consider how cultures produce meanings-and, indeed, perform those meanings-to create and/or disrupt their own social coherence. Theories likely to be studied include: J. L. Austin's speech-act theory and its engagement by John Searle and Jacques Derrida; Victor Turner's analysis of ritual as social process and Richard Schechner's use of it to transform theater studies into performance studies; Erving Goffman's sociology of the self and its relation to a post-structuralist model of subjectivity; Michael Fried's screed against minimalist art and its relation to Happenings, Body Art, Fluxus, and other mid- to late-20th century examples of performance art; and Judith Butler's influential revision of Austin's performative in her theory of queer performativity.