Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory, and: Decomposition: Post-Disciplinary Performance (review)

Decomposition: Post-Disciplinary Performance. Edited by Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000; 225 pp. $39.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Two recently released books on contemporary performance each make a case for a particular approach to theorizing: Susan Broadhurst's Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory, and Decomposition: Post-Disciplinary Performance, edited by Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster. The first aims to develop a new overarching theoretical approach to "liminal performance" by drawing on well-known poststructuralist thinkers. The latter, with its more modest goal of "the tactical," presents interpretive interventions of a more localized, materially and institutionally anchored, and ultimately more specific and powerful nature.

Liminal Acts is an ambitious book that unfortunately delivers far less than it promises. The back cover characterizes the book as "highly original and topical [...] since no other work has attempted to combine European philosophy with the intersemiotic practices so central to performance." Of course, many writers have drawn on the work of poststructural European philosophers like Baudrillard, Foucault, and Derrida in their analyses of performances. But this book sets out to make an explicit, extended engagement with such writers in order to formulate a theory of "liminal performance" as an emerging genre. Broadhurst suggests that a useful theoretical apparatus capable of addressing both corporeality and linguistics can be assembled by selectively adopting aspects of poststructuralism in combination with the "intersemiotic," which she defines as "a theorization that can deal with the linguistic but also non-linguistic signification" (10).

Instead of suggesting new theoretical tools, Broadhurst mainly recaps aspects of the work of German and French philosophers, applying them to analyses of German, Australian, and American performance works from the 1970s to the 1990s. The encounter between theoretical writing and performance is usually limited to showing how a certain aspect of a performance work can be seen as demonstrating aspects of a particular theorist's characterization of contemporary life or aesthetics.

The book is divided into two main sections. The first section, chapters 2 and 3, addresses "The Problem of Aestheticization: Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger," and "Contemporary Aesthetics: Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard." To the author's credit, these chapters are clearly written, succinct summaries of each writer's main propositions. Broadhurst foregrounds Foucault's concept of discursive formations, Baudrillard's of the simulacrum, Nietzsche's of the Dionysian, Derrida's idea of the supplement, marking, and trace.

The types of performance Broadhurst terms liminal include: works that evidence "hybridization, indeterminacy, a lack of 'aura' and the collapse of the hierarchical distinction between high and popular culture [and] utilize the latest developments in media technology," as well as "stylistic promiscuity" and an emphasis on the body (1). The second half of the book provides analyses of prototypical liminal performance works in theatre, film, and music. Pina Bausch's Tanztheater, Robert Wilson's Einstein on the Beach, Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine, Viennese Actionism; films like Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books and Derek Jarman's Edward II; and liminal music like the techno, rave, and neo-gothic scenes, and bands like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are all discussed in varying detail.

Yet the discussions are more descriptive than analytic, sometimes merely pointing to the theoretical apparatuses of the opening chapters. For example, Baudrillardian "seduction," Derridean "framing," Foucaultian "institutional sites," and Nietzschean Dionysian traits are all referred to in one paragraph describing the work of German industrial/new folk/New Age band Einstürzende Neubauten (159). Unfortunately, these theoreticians are rarely put into conversation with each other in fruitful ways. Derrida's notion of the frame as a component of the aesthetic could have been related to Foucault's notions of a discursive formation.

Reading this book raises questions about the significance of regional and national philosophical traditions. The shift from a Germanic world of Kant and Hegel to a French intellectual...