Abstract
This curated collection approaches literature as a performative practice that actively builds and sustains temporal communities across time. It understands literature as something that happens in action (through transmission, performance and use) within dynamic networks of human and non-human actors. Focusing on performativity as both a methodological lens and a field of inquiry, the contributions to this curated collection explore how literature is continually rewritten, remediated and renegotiated in artistic, digital and interdisciplinary contexts.
The two concepts that are central to the research programme of the EXC 2020 Temporal Communities’ and the focus on ‘doing’ literature, both demand and presuppose a processual and performative notion of literature. It entails that these communities are built and maintained with the support of narratives, stories and books, within and across time. Here, literature is perceived as a material and transformative practice, existing in action and defined by the way it is treated and transmitted, performed and practised. Literature takes place in complex and ever-changing networks involving human as well as non-human actors—not only authors, readers, speakers, artists, performers, printers, mass media, writing materials and ritual performances, but also critics, editors, institutions, booksellers, fanzines, blogs/websites, theatres, projection rooms, exhibition spaces, concert halls etc. Consequently, the question is how they ‘perform’ these social actions in time and across times. ‘Performativity’, therefore, serves as a central idea when investigating how temporal communities develop through transtemporal interaction, how these communities are constituted by that interaction, and which forms of public(s)/publicity they evoke.
The concept of ‘performativity’ provides a theoretical and methodological approach to understanding how, within temporal communities, literature itself is incessantly rewritten and remediated, even as the very concept of literature is subject to continuous—albeit frequently implicit—negotiation. Artistic methods that uncover, reinterpret or rethink history through a performative understanding of knowledge and forms of knowledge—often practised using a broad concept of literature that challenges canonical and traditional materials and their modes of interpretation. Consequently, the question arises as to what role performativity plays in the (performing) arts, or at what point the act of ‘performing’ becomes ‘performative’. Whereas the former refers primarily to the key practices of the disciplines of performance art and theatre (show, staging, (re)enactment), the latter is associated with linguistics (speech act), albeit both terms rely on one another. A performance is always also a ‘doing’ of world, and a performative speech act entails a performance (German: Aufführung). Especially in our current times, when literature—in the broadest sense—is practised on a global and digitalised scale and thus exposed to constant transmission, iteration and (re-)contextualisation, reinterpretation and reinvention, performativity must increasingly be considered as a ground rule of artistic action and its community building. New forms of art explore and rehearse these performative possibilities within immersive, virtual and digital approaches, while challenging norms, standards and traditions of thinking, representing and staging. By analysing these new performative forms, it is therefore also possible to consider the extent to which travelling (historical, canonical) materials and objects (still) convey instructions for action (affordances), and what these findings can reveal about past, present and (speculative) futures.
In view of the extensive interdisciplinary debates surrounding the term ‘performativity’, we refrain from rehearsing its genealogy here, including its origins in John L. Austin’s speech act theory of the 1950s. Instead, the contributions to this curated collection build on the long history of research in this field, as exemplified by the wide-ranging and influential studies generated within the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB 447) ‘Kulturen des Performativen’ (‘Performing Cultures’) at the Freie Universität Berlin, to examine in what ways this well-established concept can still prove fruitful for addressing innovative research questions. Accordingly, they focus on its negotiation at the intersection of the participating fields of research, all of which engage with overlapping yet differing notions of performance and performativity. Rather than analysing the performativity debate within different arts, the contributions focus on the difficulties and challenges for methodologies and theories of art and literature that arise from, or are posed by, their respective notions of performativity. Within the framework of this curated collection, the contributions demonstrate what performativity does in relation to temporal communities, as well as how the concept itself intervenes in and, of course, performs topics and methods within the humanities.
The contributions comprise Insights and Case Studies, as well as an Artistic Reflection on the role of performativity in community-building and at the intersection of performance and literary studies. Conceived as an open and evolving forum, the collection explicitly invites further interventions, responses and new ideas. Additional contributions will therefore be published on a rolling basis, with an Insight by Torsten Jost to follow subsequently.
Insights and Sparks
When viewed through the lens of performance theory, communities have always appeared temporal. Such a processual view is reflected in concepts such as the ‘theatrical community’ or the ‘aesthetic community’, which have been negotiated in the arts and humanities since the 1990s. However, according to the argument of this Insight, such communities have a strong…
Literature created in digital media is often fluid and ephemeral, shaped by the shifting timelines of social platforms or by experimental forms in which texts move, fade, or disappear. Conventional literary studies, however, rely on the stability of the printed text, enabling rereading, quotation, and archival analysis. As digital texts become constitutively ephemeral, these methodologies…