Notes from: The transformative power of performance, Erica Fisher Lichte.(2008)

Chapter 2.Performativity and Performance.

“Performative”:

• term coined by J.L. Austin> language philosophy (1955): Linguistic utterances serve not only to make statements but they also perform actions.
• Distinction between constative utterances and performative utterances.
• Performative utterrances are self-referential and constitutivel they bring forth the social reality in which they referring to.
• Speech involve transformative power.
• Performative utterances are made under social conditions and they are addressed to a community.  They perform a social act..
• Austin made a division in 3 categories of acts: Locutionary- Illocutionary and Perlocutionary acts.
• Characteristic of “performative”: it can succeed or fail based on the particular institutional and social conditions. And it has the ability to destabilize or even collapse binary oppositions. Polarities like subject/object and signifier/signified lose their polarity.
• In performance: self-referential acts that constitute reality and they can transform artist and spectator.
• From Austin to Butler: from speech acts to bodily acts.
• Butler will introduce “performative” in cultural philosophy.( 1988: Performative Acts And gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”. She argues that identity is formed based on bodily acts and instituted through a stylized repetition of acts: performative acts. Performative is:

1. “dramatic”- referring to the process of generating identities, one “does” a body  and the materiality of the body emerges  out of repetition of gestures and movements: Acts that will define and mark teh body sexually, culturally, ethnically, individually.
2. “non-referential”- they don’t refer to pre-existed conditions; no fixed. “Bodily, performative acts do not express a pre-existed identity but engender identity through these acts (p.27).

• Society imposes these performative acts that constitute gender and identity.
• The conditions for embodiment are set up.
• Both Austin and Butler see the accomplishment of performative acts as ritualized, public performances.
• Performativity results in performance or it manifests itself in the performative nature of acts.

The bodily co-presence between actors and psectators (p.38)

According to  M. Herrmann’s demonstration that performance consists of the co-presence of actors and  spectators > performance: requires two groups of people: one acting and one observing; to gather at the same time and place  for a given shared lifetime.It’s the encounter of actor and observer that creates a performative event. In traditional terms: Actor> acts – Spectator>react/perceive/respond. In this sense performance is determined by self-referential and ever-changing feedback loop. (p.38). Middle of 19th century the visible and audible reactions of the spectators will be limited (dark auditorium, gas lighting etc.). The feedback loop gets controlled  and organized. From 1960s and on performance explore more the interaction between actor and spectator – staging strategies- role reversal of actor4s and spectators/ creation of community between them/creation of various modes of mutual contact, proximity, interaction. Spectators will make physically experience of of the performance: audience participation.

ROLE REVERSAL: urges the dynamic and multiple shifts in the relationship subject-object. Schechner: let the people “join the story”. – spectator becomes participant/joins to staged rituals. Schechner gives emphasis to the relationship between equal co-subjects: (democratic model)and sets up an opposition between “play” and “social event”. The complication of such a decision to share responsibility with the audience is that spectator can subjugate the performer/inflict violence/act offensively. Later Schechner apply another model: the pressure and manipulation upon audience. In any case, the role reversal, as Schechner states, increase the insecurity for performance’s outcome. Aesthetic, political and social aspects are interlinked in performance (p.44).

CREATION OF COMMUNITY: aesthetics and socio-political coincide. Communities were formed when groups of people performed ritual collectively. (exaple: Nitsch’s orgy mystery theatre: collective performance of adapted rituals.). Strategies: role reversal and avoiding traditional theatre building/stage but choosing socially integrated locations. For experiencing community there is a shift of role: from spectator to participant to co-player. Fusion of aesthetics and social. The community is based on aesthetic principles but its member experience social reality.(p.55)