Feminist Performance as Feminist Historiography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 November 2004
Extract
Given performance history's disciplinary complexity, not to mention the complications of a “we” comprised by so many different scholars, Theatre Survey's question is, in one sense, unanswerable. In another sense, if I translate the question to what I can do (staying fully aware that others will propose answers different from mine), however, I can offer an answer from my position as a feminist performance historian and historiographer. My response to it is twofold. The argument I make here is for performance that foregrounds historiographical operations, making physical, gestural, emotional, and agonistic the processes that construct history out of the past. Concomitantly, I am arguing for history that overtly acknowledges the ways in which it is a performance of the past, but not the past itself. This dual approach is especially important in feminist accounts of the past because performance has historically been a crucial constituent of feminist theories and practices.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © 2004 The American Society for Theatre Research, Inc.
Footnotes
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