Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-07T16:21:58.912Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Action and Event

The Social Theoretical Precursors of Performance Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2023

Pannill Camp
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Familiar accounts of the intellectual origins of performance theory downplay the ideas inherited from Durkheimian and Marxian social theory by way of British social anthropology. Structural functionalism as taught by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and the Marx-inflected social anthropology of Max Gluckman are key but underappreciated junctures between classical social theory and performance theory. This lineage helps explain the ongoing tension in performance theory regarding the role embodied communicative action plays in maintaining or altering social order. It also casts new light on the use of the language of “action” and “event” to describe performance phenomena.

Type
Article
Information
TDR , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , December 2023 , pp. 7 - 24
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press for Tisch School of the Arts/NYU

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 1982a. Theoretical Logic in Sociology. Volume One: Positivism, Presuppositions, and Current Controversies. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 1982b. Theoretical Logic in Sociology. Volume Two: The Antinomies of Classical Thought: Marx and Durkheim. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2004. “Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance Between Ritual and Strategy.” Sociological Theory 22, 4:527–73. doi.org/10.1111/j.0735-2751.2004.002 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2017. “Seizing the Stage: Social Performances from Mao Zedong to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Black Lives Matter Today.” TDR 61, 1 (T233):14–42. doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00620 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey C., and Smith, Philip, eds. 2005. The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banaji, Jairus. 1970. “The Crisis of British Anthropology.” New Left Review 64:71–85.Google Scholar
Bishop, Claire. 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. Verso.Google Scholar
Blackwell-Pal, Jaswinder, Michael Shane Boyle, Ash Dilks, Caoimhe Mader McGuinness, Olive Mckeon, Lisa Moravec, Alessandro Simari, Unger, Clio, and Young, Martin. 2021. “Marxist Keywords for Performance.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 36, 1:25–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. “The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods.” Trans. Nice, Richard. In The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Johnson, Randal, 74–111. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40, 4:519–31. doi.org/10.2307/3207893 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” Routledge.Google Scholar
Cabranes-Grant, Leo. 2016. From Scenarios to Networks: Performing the Intercultural in Colonial Mexico. Northwestern University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camp, Pannill. 2018. “The Poetics of Performance Nonevents.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 32, 2:141–50. doi.org/10.1353/dtc.2018.0011 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, Marvin. (1996) 2018. Performance: A Critical Introduction. 3rd ed. Routledge.Google Scholar
Davis, Tracy C., and Marx, Peter W., eds. 2021. The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance Historiography. Routledge.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Émile. (1912) 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Trans. Karen, E. Fields. The Free Press.Google Scholar
Felton-Dansky, Miriam. 2018. Viral Performance: Contagious Theaters from Modernism to the Digital Age. Northwestern University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foreman, Grahame Philip. 2013. “Horizons of Modernity: British Anthropology and the End of Empire.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1971. Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber. Cambridge University Press. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803109 Google Scholar
Glaeser, Andreas. 2005. “An Ontology for the Ethnographic Analysis of Social Processes: Extending the Extended-Case Method.” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology 49, 3:16–45. www.jstor.org/stable/23179073 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gluckman, Max. (1940) 1958. “Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand.” Rhodes-Livingstone Papers 28. Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max. (1955) 1967. The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max. (1965) 2017. Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society. Routledge.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max. (1967) 2017. “Introduction.” In The Craft of Social Anthropology, ed. Epstein, A.L., xiv–xxiv. Routledge.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert J. 2018. The Enigma of Max Gluckman: The Ethnographic Life of a “Luckyman” in Africa. University of Nebraska Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, Kieran. 2007. “Sociology.” In A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy. 2nd ed. Ed. Robert, E. Goodin, Pettit, Philip , and Pogge, Thomas, 88–117. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ho, Melissa. 2019. “One Thing: Viet-Nam: American Art and the Vietnam War.” In Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War: 1965-1975, ed. Ho, Melissa, 1–29. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. 1998. The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998. Verso.Google Scholar
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 2004. “Performance Studies.” In The Performance Studies Reader, ed. Bial, Henry, 25–36. Routledge.Google Scholar
Lenin, Vladimir. (1920) 1999. “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder. Resistance Books.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. (1852) 1963. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. International Publishers.Google Scholar
McKenzie, Jon. 2001. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. Routledge.Google ScholarPubMed
Muñoz, José Esteban. 1999. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Ortner, Sherry B. 1984. “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26, 1:126–66. www.jstor.org/stable/178524 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peña, Elaine A. 2017. “Paso Libre: Border Enactment, Infrastructure, and Crisis Resolution at the Port of Laredo 1954–1957.” TDR 61, 2 (T234):11–31. doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00645 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phelan, Peggy. 1993. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. Routledge.Google Scholar
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses. The Free Press.Google Scholar
Reinelt, Janelle. 2001. “Responses to ‘Choices Made and Unmade.’” Theater 31, 2:97–100. muse.jhu.edu/article/34167Google Scholar
Savran, David. 2001. “Choices Made and Unmade.” Theater 31, 2:89–95. muse.jhu.edu/article/34168CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, Richard. 1966. “Approaches to Theory/Criticism.” Tulane Drama Review 10, 4 (T32):20–53. doi.org/10.2307/1125208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, Richard. 1973. “Drama, Script, Theatre, and Performance.” The Drama Review 17, 3 (T59):5–36. doi.org/10.2307/1144841 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theater and Anthropology. University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, Richard. (1988) 2003. Performance Theory. 2nd ed. Routledge.Google Scholar
Schneider, Rebecca. 1997. The Explicit Body in Performance. Routledge.Google Scholar
Shepherd, Simon. 2016. The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Greg. 2006. Erving Goffman. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Philip. 2020. Durkheim and After: The Durkheimian Tradition, 1893–2020. Polity Press.Google Scholar
Strachey, John. 1942. The Theory and Practice of Socialism. Victor Gollancz Ltd.Google Scholar
Taylor, Diana. 2020. ¡Presente! The Politics of Presence. Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Tekiner, Deniz. 2002. “German Idealist Foundations of Durkheim’s Sociology and Teleology of Knowledge.” Theory and Science 3, 1. theoryandscience.icaap.org/content/vol003.001/tekiner.html Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. (1969) 2017. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Routledge.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. PAJ Publications.Google Scholar
Werbner, Richard. 2020. Anthropology After Gluckman: The Manchester School, Colonial and Postcolonial Transformations. Manchester University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

TDReadings

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2017. “Seizing the Stage: Social Performances from Mao Zedong to Martin Luther King Jr., and Black Lives Matter Today.” TDR 61, 1 (T233):14–42. doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00620 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conquergood, Dwight. 1995. “Of Caravans and Carnivals: Performance Studies in Motion.” TDR 39, 4 (T148):137–141. doi.org/10.2307/1146488 Google Scholar
Fei, Faye C., and Huizhu Sun, William. 2013. “Social Performance Studies: Discipline vs. Freedom.” TDR 57, 3 (T219):9–19. doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00277 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, Richard. 2006. “TDR and Me.” TDR 50, 1 (T189):6–12. doi.org/10.1162/dram.2006.50.1.6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sun, William Huizhu. 2016. “Social Performance Studies: An Evolving Process of Endless Dualities.” TDR 60, 4 (T232):14–21. doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00593 CrossRefGoogle Scholar