Performance


 * Etymology **

According to the //OED//, performance stems from its verbal form “perform.” The verb’s etymological roots can be traced back to Anglo-Norman and Middle French morphemes, as well as different usages:
 * 1) (a) “to carry out, execute (an action, a promise) (c1170 or earlier in Anglo-Norman; frequently in legal use with object ‘will’, ‘judgment’, or similar (1291 or earlier)”
 * 2) (b) “to achieve, complete, finish (an action, also a concrete piece of work, e.g. a song, a building) (c1300 or earlier in Old French (Picardy))”
 * 3) (c) “to act (a play) (15th cent. or earlier)”
 * 4) (d) “to supply (what is wanting) (late 14th cent. or earlier)”

In contemporary communication studies, the concept performance references both (a) and (b) in acting according to social norms. Although, this does not exclude usages tied to definitions (d) and (c), such as acting on stage.


 * Performance, Performativity, and Speech **

In the early 1960’s, ordinary language philosopher J. L. Austin proposed that certain types of utterances actually performed something in their utterance (e.g., saying “I do” at a marriage ceremony); he termed these utterances performative, that is, “that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action–[performative utterances are] not normally thought of as just saying something” (Austin, 1962, pp. 6-7). Crucial to the establishment of the “performance” are felicitous conditions that facilitate a statement's success (1962, pp. 14-15). To determine the felicity of a performative, one must outline and survey the total speech act (1962, p. 52). In disciplines interested in language studies, the total speech act has had wide-ranging impact, as scholars have tried both to identify and critique what constitutes speech acts in toto (Derrida, 1988, p. 17; K. Hall, 2000, pp. 185-186). Similarly, Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs point out (as Derrida does) the incongruity and unfairness that Austin seems to give utterances that are part of performance contexts (e.g., theatric soliloquy). T he omission, the argue, unnecessarily excludes cultural practices in which the performance is crucial to an utterance’s performativity (Austin, 1962, p. 22; Briggs, 1990, pp. 65-66).

**Performance and “Identity”**

Feminist critic Judith Butler takes up Austin’s philosophy on speech acts as performance in her discussion on the performativity of gender as a “fictive construction” (Butler, 1990, p. 24). For Butler, gender is performed through a series of “words, acts, gestures, and desires” that are “performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means” (1990, p. 136). Similarly, Butler argues that even sex is not “irreducible,” that is, free from discursive construction or liberated from the citations of regulatory schemas (1993, pp. 12-16). Language is often a channel of legislation, but, as some critics have noted, performance is also manifested bodily. They argue that sex is not all illusion, reducible to performance; rather, it is concomitant with a gendered body that is material (Diseger, 1994, p. 662; Bordo, 1993, p. 290).

On an interpersonal level, communication scholars conceive of everyday performance in terms of role theory and face theory, developed by sociologist Erving Goffman (Metts & Cupach, 2008, p. 206). Goffman explores the concept of “self” in terms of performance or role play, which he defines as “all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers” (Goffman, 1959, p. 22). Identity, in this sense, is something that is fluid, being negotiated during, through, and within communicative exchanges, indexing associations with larger cultural “registers,” and emerging rather than prior to any given interaction ( Goffman, 1981, p. 128; Agha, 2005, p. 39; ; Bucholtz and Hall, 2005, p. 588)

**Performance and Rhetorical Studies**

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, rhetoricians proposed that their rhetorical-critical activity ought to be considered as performance (Mckerrow, 1989, p. 108; McGee, 1990, pp. 276-279 ). Audiences themselves participate in the process of “text-construction,” yet it is rhetoricians alone that are adept at making a “text” for critical practice (McGee, 1990, pp. 287-288). In a similar vein, visual rhetoric scholars view performance as a “symbolic activity” (in a Burkean sense) infused with the ritualized reproduction of “gender or sex roles, racial classifications and stereotypes, and economic class,” e.g., a public kiss or photograph (Olson, Finnegan, & Hope, 2008, p. 15). For example, Cara Finnegan examined letters to the editor written about a photograph of Lincoln taken in the 1840’s, yet published in 1895, to argue that the performance of the viewing audience was participatory, via enthymeme, in the co-constitution of symbolic meaning (Finnegan, 2005, p. 51).

**Performance as a Discipline**

Performance studies emerged as a division at NCA in 1990 when the Interpretation Division changed its name to “performance studies.” Despite concerns of “disciplinary fragmentation,” performance studies continues to exist at NCA as a division focusing on performance as an everyday practice as well as a creative stage process (Stucky & Wimmer, 2002, p. 13). Performance studies began officially as a field unto itself in 1980 when it debuted as a department at New York University under the leadership of Richard Schechner (Schechner, 1977/2003, p. xi). Since the 1960’s, Schechner has explored performance theory, drawing upon cultural anthropology, sociology, and art history. Undoubtedly, theater also plays a significant role in Schechner’s conception of performance, but he acknowledges theater as only one form of performance alongside “greetings, displays of emotion, family scenes, professional roles, and so on – through to play, sports, dance, ceremonies, rites, and performances of great magnitude” (p. xvii). Indeed, critics of performance studies as a discipline question what, if anything, lies outside of performance?

Folklorist and performance studies scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett limits her view to a threefold definition: “to perform is to do”, “to behave”, and “to show” with the awareness that performance studies may lose its value as a discipline if it is all inclusive (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1999, p. 1-2). Kirshenblatt-Gimblett states that “presence, liveness, agency, embodiment, and event are not so much the defining feature of our objects of study as issues at the heart of our disciplinary subject” (as cited in Schechner, 2002, p. 3). For Schechner there is no limit for what is considered performance (2002, p. 2). Schechner asserts that what sets performance studies apart is not necessarily the definition of performance but the framework surrounding the interaction of behavior and the public space in which the performance is enacted. Performance studies scholars’ inquiry into ritual emphasizes dynamic “ behavior ” rather than reading something visual as “text” (2002, p. 2). The resistance in performance studies to a singular method or theory of performance is configured by Schechner as various “nodes” of performance historically and experientially” linked in a web and, as they exist in everyday life, as a fan (see diagram, 2002, p. 11). Although performance studies continues to evolve, it exists as a separate department at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and at Northwestern’s School of Communication. Performance studies scholars’ varied approaches to observing and analyzing performance and the objection of other scholars to its inclusion in other departments means that scholars who do this work are often split between performing arts departments and communication departments.

Revised by José G. Izaguirre (2015)

**References**

Agha, Asif. (2005). Voice, Footing, Enregisterment. //Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15//(1), 38-59.

Austin, J. L. (1962). //How to Do Things with Words//. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Bordo, Ssusan. (1993). //Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.// Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Briggs, Richard Baumann and Charles. L. (1990). Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life. //Annual Review of Anthropology, 19//, 59-88.

Butler, J. (1990). //Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity//. New York, NY: Routledge.

—. (1993). //Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"//. New York: Routledge.

Cupach, Susan Metts and William. R. (2008). Face Theory. In L. A. Baxter & D. O. Braithwaite (Eds.), //Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives//, 203-214. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Derrida, Jacques. (1988). Signature Event Context //Limited Inc.// Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Diseger, Peter. (1994). Performativity Trouble: Postmodern Feminism and Essential Subjects. //Political Research Quarterly 47//(3): 655-673.

Finnegan, Cara. A. (2005). Recognizing Lincoln: Image Vernaculars in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture. //Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 8//(1), 31-58.

Goffman, Erving. (1959). //The Presentation of the Self//. New York: Anchor Books.

—. (1981). //Forms of Talk//. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Hall, Kira. (2000). Performativity. //Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 9//((1-2)), 184-187.

Hall, Mary Bucholtz and K. (2005). Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach. //Discourse Studies, 7//(4-5), 585-614.

Hope, Lester Olsen, Cara Finnegan, and Diane. S. (Eds.). (2008). //Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture//. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. (1999). Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium. //Performance Research, 4//(1), 1-30.

McGee, Michael Calvin. (1990). Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture. //Western Journal of Speech Communication, 54//(3), 274-289.

Mckerrow, Raymie. E. (1989). Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis. //Communication Monographs, 56//(2), 91-111.

Performance. (n.d.). In //Oxford English Dictionary online//. Retrieved from [|http://dictionary.oed.com].

Perform. (n.d.). In //Oxford English Dictionary// //online//. Retrieved from [|http://dictionary.oed.com].

Schechner, Richard. (2002). // Performance Studies: An Introduction. // London: Routledge.

—. (2003). //Performance Theory// (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. (Original work published in 1977).

Wimmer, Nathan Stucky and Cynthia. (Eds.). (2002). //Teaching Performance Studies: Theater in the Americas.// Southern Illinois University Press.