From the age of Aristotle to the age of AIDS, writers, thinkers, performers and activists have wresteled with what "performance" is all about. At the same moment, "performativity"--a new concept in language theory--has become a ubiquitous term in literary studies. This volume grapples with the nature of these two key terms whose traces can be found everywhere: in the theatre, in the streets, in philosophy, in questions of race and gender, and in the sentences we speak.
Subjects: Speech acts (Linguistics); Performance Notes: Papers presented at the English Institute, 1993. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
The unhappy performative / Timothy Gould
Culture and performance in the circum-Atlantic world / Joseph Roach
Writing the absent potential : drama, performance, and the canon of African-American literature / Sandra L. Richards
Katharsis : the ancient problem / Andrew Ford
The play of conscience / Stephen Orgel
The shudder of catharsis in twentieth-century performance / Elin Diamond
Performativity and spatial distinction : the end of AIDS epidemiology / Cindy Patton