Race Performance

Performance Studies

In the academic field of performance studies, performance is both a subject of study and method of inquiry. Performance studies focuses on the critical analysis of performance and performativity, incorporating theories from the visual and performing arts, anthropology, cultural studies, folklore, philosophy, and sociology. The origin of performance studies has no single narrative; rather, it is constructed of multiple narratives that examine performance as ritual and social drama, performance as a speech act, performance as the presentation of self, and performance as the ongoing process of identity construction.

Whereas performance has traditionally been associated with the theatrical or with entertainment value, performance has been reconceived in more contemporary thought as a means for critical social action and for the study of how people create meaning and reinvent their own experiences in the world. Social gestures such as eating, dressing, dating, greeting, and other everyday social practices have been analyzed, as have cultural activities such as plays, operas, weddings, funerals, joke telling, and other staged or ritualized acts of performance in everyday life. Victor Turner examined these categories as well as that of social drama, which occurs when there is a break or disturbance in an otherwise expected social order. Dwight Conquergood challenged the notion of performance as theater and posited that performance studies involves imagination, inquiry, and intervention, the latter category involving activism and civic struggle for social justice.

Performance conceived as an act of intervention or activism can be seen in the work of many scholars who study elocution, speech, and literature. In his speech-act theory, J. L. Austin argued that action is performed with any utterance. Language does not only describe, it actively does something that makes a difference in the world. Whereas Austin referred to particular moments of speech, his student John R. Searle argued that whenever words are spoken, they become performative. In his critique of speech-act theory, Jacques Derrida suggested that speech acts have a history and that their repetition or reiteration (their repeated use over time) determines the effects of speech because certain meanings and intentions are recognizable through repeated use.

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