- Performance Cultures as Epistemic Cultures, Volume I: (Re)Generating Knowledges in Performance and: Performance Cultures as Epistemic Cultures, Volume II: Interweaving Epistemologies by Erika Fischer-Lichte et al
The two-volume publication Performance Cultures as Epistemic Cultures (hereafter Performance Cultures) is the latest addition to the multivolume series edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte and her colleagues at the International Research Center and their project “Interweaving Performance Cultures.” Over an impressive 14 years of activity (2008–2022), the Center has hosted nearly 150 international fellows to develop “interweaving performance cultures” as a heuristic metaphor, a critical methodology, and a field of study. For readers unfamiliar with the terminology, interweaving performance is proposed by Fischer-Lichte since 2008 as an alternative to intercultural theatre, which is essentially rejected as a category overdetermined by Western hegemonic discourses. Building on the previous titles in the series (e.g., Fischer-Lichte et al. 2014, 2021), Performance Cultures makes the overarching argument that interweaving performance practices challenge “existing boundaries and hierarchies set up by established epistemological frameworks” (Vol. 1, p. 3), and aims to open up new and [End Page 450] ambitious avenues of inquiry; in Jost’s words “the development of a new research field in theater and performance studies: the field of inter-epistemic research” (Vol. 1, p. 7). In keeping with the readership of Asian Theatre Journal, I will focus on aspects that are most closely related to Asian theatre and performance, although the publication would certainly be of interest to scholars in other disciplines, including cultural studies, epistemology, and postcolonial/decolonial studies.
The structure of Performance Cultures is specular: each volume begins with a two-part introduction, which first outlines the over-arching structure of the publication, and second highlights the specific focus of each volume. This is followed by three parts, each consisting of three chapters, and one concluding essay, for a total of eleven chapters per volume. Performance traditions of the Global South, and particularly from Asia, occupy a central position in the publication, in more ways than one. Of the 22 chapters, 6 are penned by experts on Indian performance (Barucha, Banerji, de Bruin, Kulkarni, Zarrilli) and a further 3 (Fischer-Lichte, Hunter, Jost) ground their core arguments in Asian paradigms and traditions (the Natyasastra, Daoist philosophy, and jingju, respectively). Such a composition already sets Performance Cultures apart from the practice, still common in many English-language edited volumes, of including one or two contributions on/from Asia merely to sport a transnational scope. This said, the volume’s engagement with Asia goes much further than its list of contributors or table of contents: Performance Cultures stands out for its nuanced and original theoretical scaffolding, which is grounded in scholarship on/from Asia as much as, or arguably more than, Euro-American theory. This counters a long-standing asymmetry in Euro-American academia, whereby “Western” scholars produce general theories through which area studies scholars interpret non-Western contexts and subjects (but, crucially, not the other way around). Conversely, as Jost’s introduction makes clear, in Performance Cultures it is often paradigms by Asian studies’ theorists (such as Kuan-hsing Chen’s “Asia as method” or Rossella Ferrari’s “transnational Chinese theatres”) that lay the foundation for original theorizing. As Homi Bhabha previously commented, “the [Interweaving Performance Culture] Center does not merely aspire to represent the pluralism of performance practices and theories. To interweave is, in fact, to intervene, and to invent anew” (Bhabha 2018: 5). Read from this perspective, it could be argued that the boldest intervention of Performance Cultures lies precisely in this realignment between theory and case studies on the one hand, and between “the West” and “the rest” on the other. [End Page 451]
Volume I: (Re)Generating Knowledges in Performance delves deep into the epistemology of...