Class and Performance in the Age of Global Capitalism

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL MURPHY
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
Economic Stratification ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Sociological Approaches

This article addresses the relative absence of class-based analysis in theatre and performance studies, and suggests the reconfiguration of class as performance rather than as it is traditionally conceived as an identity predicated solely on economic stratification. It engages with the occlusion of class by the ascendancy of identity politics based on race, gender and sexuality and its attendant theoretical counterparts in deconstruction and post-structuralism, which became axiomatic as they displaced earlier methodologies to become hegemonic in the arts and humanities. The article proceeds to an assessment of the development of sociological approaches to theatre, particularly the legacy of Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu. The argument concludes with the application of an approach which reconfigures class as performance to the production of Declan Hughes's play Shiver of 2003, which dramatizes the consequences of the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s for ambitious members of the Irish middle class.

Positionality and Performance: Staging Antony and Cleopatra for South African schools in the context of decolonisation imperatives

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Néka Da Costa
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Antony And Cleopatra ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
Short Supply ◽  
Children's Theatre ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Dialogic Approach ◽  
African Context ◽  
And Performance

Since the start of the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns in 2015–16, decolonisation has been a prominent topic in the South African academy. Yet practical guidance as to how one might start to apply decolonisation and transformation strategies tangibly, both in education and pedagogy – and, more precisely for the purposes of this article, in theatre and performance spaces – has been in short supply. By adopting a dialogic approach which prioritises the voices of her collaborators, the author contextualises and critiques some of the key creative, philosophical and pedagogical strategies employed while rehearsing and performing a school’s touring production of Antony and Cleopatra for the National Children’s Theatre in 2018. Shakespeare is a symbol of colonial and imperial legacies, and the relevance of his work in both English and Performance Studies curricula merits scrutiny, as does the way in which we discuss, teach, perform and value it. Through an unfolding acknowledgement of the author’s own positionality in relation to the text and its performance in a contemporary South African context, this article exemplifies some of the contradictions and productive discoveries of the Antony and Cleopatra process, in the hopes of contributing to a more action-based approach to decolonisation and social justice in practising the arts and in arts education.

Folklore’s Contemporariness: Dynamics of Value Orientation in Bihu

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-189
Author(s):  
Dev Nath Pathak ◽  
Moureen Kalita
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Value Orientation ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Other ◽  
Folklore Studies ◽  
Folk Performance ◽  
And Performance

The folklore studies scholar, such as Dorson (1976, Folklore and fakelore: Essays toward the discipline of folk studies, Harvard: Harvard University Press), was emphatic about the distinction between folklore and ‘fake lore’, one being authentic and the other as invented by the popular industry; however, he paradoxically maintained interest in the contemporariness of folklore. This was a paradox since the contemporariness of folklore is largely, and usually, due to intersections of folk with popular and political. Nevertheless, the emphasis on contemporariness was a harbinger of discussion on the potential dynamics of folklore, and everything buried therein, including value orientation. This essay is guided by the observations emerging from folklore studies, socio-cultural anthropology and performance studies in order to get into a specific case of Bihu, a folk performance inclusive of songs, dance, attires and instruments inter alia in Assam, in the northeast of India. The curious case of Bihu in flux divulges dynamics of value orientation and intersections of identity politics, in the wake of the contemporariness of folklore.

What if we think of the classroom as a work of art? Performance, collaboration, and social engagement considered as pedagogic practices

2020 ◽  
pp. 147402222096694
Author(s):  
Theron Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Pedagogic Practices

This article brings into relation critical perspectives and practical tactics from a range of different fields—performance studies, visual art practice, pedagogy and educational theory, and activism and community organising—in order to create some space for re-imagining what might be possible within the dynamics of the Higher Education classroom. It proceeds through a series of speculative modes: ‘what if we think of the classroom as a market?’, which for many is the currently dominant metaphor under neoliberalist economies; ‘what if we think of the work of art as a classroom?’, which traces the recent ‘pedagogical’ or ‘educational’ turn in visual art practice; and finally, ‘what if we think of the classroom as a work of art?’, in which the creative impulses and tactics drawn from performance practices, activism and community organising, and socially engaged art are speculatively applied to the arts and humanities classroom.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Schwadron
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
White Womanhood

This introductory chapter frames the book’s emphasis on the twenty-first-century Sexy Jewess, whose image proliferates in neoburlesque, comedy, mainstream film, and progressive pornography. A review of significant literature in Jewish studies, gender and sexuality studies, and dance and performance studies (1) introduces how performers complicate self-critical jokes of the excessive Jewish female body by playing up their differences, (2) historicizes the techniques that performers employ to mimic and master different ideas of sexiness, and (3) theorizes how performances of Jewish female identity use the body to participate in and parody notions of appropriate femininity as they relate to white womanhood.

Culture as display revisited

2020 ◽  
pp. 136787792093879
Author(s):  
Kristina Karvelyte
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Critical Inquiry ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
State Relations

In this article, I revisit Raymond Williams’ idea of culture as display, which he developed to describe a particular moment in culture–state relations: the use of culture and the arts in celebration, embellishment and strengthening of the economic and political power of the state. Jim McGuigan applied this concept to contemporary national cultural policy, emphasizing the significance of display under global capitalism. Besides this notable attempt, Williams’ idea of culture as ‘display’ has never received the attention it deserves. The main purpose of this article is to advance the understanding of ‘display’ by considering its place within the context of urban cultural policy. A critical inquiry into the roles of arts and film festivals helps to dissect different instrumental layers of urban display practices and to capture the ‘symbolic power’ of display. This, in turn, contributes to a more comprehensive conceptualization of globalized urban festivals.

scholarly journals Waves of Data

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 80-83
Author(s):  
Greg Niemeyer
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
City Planning ◽  
University Of California ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
The Arts ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The City ◽  
Positive Effect

With Brittney Silva’s tragic May 2014 death fresh in everyone’s memory, the city of San Leandro began collaboration efforts between them and University of California, Berkeley to do something to make the city safer for pedestrians. A course was developed at UC Berkeley called Sensing Cityscapes, offered Fall 2015, aiming to collect data about human activities too often ignored. As part of the interdisciplinary UC Berkeley Global Urban Humanities Initiative, the class aimed to harness methods not just from city planning, engineering, and architecture, but from the humanistic disciplines, cognitive science, art, public health, and performance studies, bringing students together from each field. We now are bringing the installation back to the streets of San Leandro with the support of a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Our Town grant for a project called San Leandro Lights. Transferring the project from the lab back to the street, we hope that the positive effect for individuals we observed in the lab will remain, and that responsive lighting will create a dynamic culture of attention.

Pop Culture/Visual Culture

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wanzo
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance

Feminist scholars in fields as varied as art history, film studies, cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, communications, and performance studies have made important contributions to discussions about representations of gender and sexuality in everyday life. This chapter examines themes and issues in the feminist study of popular culture and visual culture, including: the history of sexist representation; the gendered nature of the “gaze” and the instability of that concept; the question of whether or not representation has effects; the anxieties surrounding consumption of “women’s texts”; and the challenges in deciphering women’s agency and authorship given constraints produced by institutions and ideology.

4E Cognition and the Humanities

2018 ◽  
pp. 874-890
Author(s):  
Amy Cook
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
And Performance

The arts and humanities move us and change our minds—not just metaphorically but literally. This chapter provides a snapshot of some of the work that has occurred at the intersection of cognitive science and theater and literature. I provide a description and analysis of a theatrical experience that staged a challenge to traditional theories of cognition, demonstrating how artists are responding to and prodding work being done across the disciplines. If thinking is “world-making,” rather than processing stimuli into meaning, then the hermeneutic tradition of literary and art scholarship must adapt. If thinking means using objects in our environment in order to make changes to our own extended ecosystem, then an interaction with a work of art can be aesthetic, poetic, and autopoetic. Contemporary art, literature, and performance may suggest a new language—and a richer perspective on old language—for 4E cognition.

Precarity and Performance: An Introduction

2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Ridout ◽  
Rebecca Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Affective Labor ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Creative Capital ◽  
And Performance

Precarity has become a byword for life in late and later capitalism. How do we pay attention to precarity—economic precarity, neoliberal precarity—through a close reading of the performing body? Does the place of the arts in global capitalism, and the particular relations implied by “affective labor” and “creative capital,” mean that we are working and living in the affect factory? What can theatre and performance tell us about this condition?

A Performative Memoric Investigation of YoungGiftedandFat

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-62
Author(s):  
Sharrell D. Luckett ◽  
Audrey Edwards ◽  
Megan J. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
African American Females ◽  
Stage Manager ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Assistant Director ◽  
Power Negotiations ◽  
Research Collective

In 2013, Sharrell D. Luckett formed the Performance Studies & Arts Research Collective, which encourages members to explore their identities through the arts. Around this time, Audrey Edwards and Megan J. Stewart—both African American females and Collective members—became interested in autoethnography, and Luckett invited them to study closely with her. In this performative essay, Luckett, Edwards, and Stewart implicitly highlight various power negotiations enacted as professor/student, actress/stage manager, actress/assistant director, and mentor/mentee, while all working on their own autoethnographies, and while working collectively on Luckett's autoethnographic performance: YoungGiftedandFat.

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