Part III - Theorising performance

Summary

The concept of performance developed by sociologists, ethnographers and theatre scholars amounted, in general terms, to a form, or, rather, set of forms, of communicative behaviour. Neither presented nor received as theatrical, it is designed to have effects on its respondents. Although an apparently habitual part of everyday living, such behaviour is nevertheless constructed. This conceptual modelling identified new objects of study, often by framing them as performance, but its work was largely continuous with, and bound by, the evolving interests of specific academic disciplines and the dialogues between them. In the world around it meanwhile there were performed practices that polemically sought to question boundaries and continuities. They often refused to be categorised and labelled, and they posed challenges to institutions. Among the challenged institutions were the universities. The political and cultural conflicts of the late sixties and early seventies turned the universities into all too literal battlegrounds. Students and lecturers joined and organised campaigns around peace, democracy and social equality and, as part of this, they asked questions not only about the world outside but also within the classroom. Traditional disciplines fractured under the pressure of new ideas, one of the most spectacular examples being English in the United Kingdom. From the fracturing, new disciplines emerged, such as cultural studies and film studies and, somewhat later, Performance Studies and as those disciplines emerged they brought with them, well, new discipline.