Culture and Performativity

Research Area 3: Culture and Performativity

The rituals, theatricality and interactive dynamics of cultures are the key issues investigated in the research area on culture and performativity. In cultural performances such as festivities, plays, media or technology, cultures can be studied ‘in action’, as they shape, explain and unfold meaning. Since the late 1980s, performativity has become a key concept for the interdisciplinary study of cultures: performativity describes the theatricalised (re-)actualisation of socio-symbolic systems which render cultures visible to themselves and to others. Different academic disciplines cooperate in an attempt to describe the interrelationship of performativity and culture.

Background

Originating in language philosophy (Austin’s speech act theory), the concept of performativity ‘travelled’ through cultural anthropology and history in the 1960s and theatre studies and social sciences in the 1980s and has been a part of gender studies since the 1990s. Cultural anthropology and history have studied rituals as performances providing an arena for cultural self-definition; sociology has analysed the performance of social interactions, stressing their importance for the maintenance and adaptivity of cultural patterns (de Certeau); theatre and literary studies have explored the interactive dynamics of plays and texts. Finally, gender studies (Butler) have examined the every-day role of gender in terms of a re-actualisation of socio-symbolic systems.

During the past two years, the area reflected intensely on a concept and terminology of performativity due to the current state of the theoretical debate. Therefore, the area focused on issues such as violence, the transformation of culture and media and the linkage between politics, resistance and art.

To the extent that this area focuses on the dynamic processes, which generate cultural meaning on the levels of body, narrative and image, it is linked to the research areas ‘Cultures of Knowledge, Research and Education’, ‘Culture and Narration’ and ‘Visual Cultures’.

Upcoming Events

13.1.2010 - Giessen: Workshop with Thomas Weber
17.-19.02.2010 - Giessen: Medien.Kultur.Wandel [CfP]
11.-14.11.2010 - Giessen: Widerständiges Denken/ Thinking Resistance [Abstract: deutsch/ english]