A broad and inclusive volume of the celebrations and critiques of
performance arts
Focusing on the living arts--dance, theatre, music, performance art,
ritual, and popular entertainment--performance studies expands our
understanding of performance as both a vital artistic practice and a
means by which to understand social and cultural processes. Bridging the
gap between cultural studies, performing arts, and anthropology,
performance studies explores myriad ways in which performance creates
meaning and shapes our everyday lives.
The broadest and most inclusive volume to date, The Ends of
Performance both celebrates and critiques the institutionalization of
the field. Only recently has the field given keen attention to the
interpretive force and consequences of performance events, and it is
these consequences that the The Ends of Performance articulates. Here
performance studies illuminates the complex social and cultural
formations of our time--the impact of virtual technology, the racialized
discourses of legal and cultural citizenship, the impact of new medical
discourses, and the medicalization of the body. Featuring work by
leading theorists such as Joseph Roach, Diana Taylor, and Richard
Schechner, excursions into performative writing by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
and Della Pollock, and texts by performance artists Orlan and Deb
Margolin, The Ends of Performance illuminates the provocative
intellectual ends which motivate these varied approaches to performing
writing, and to writing performance.
