THE PERFORMANCE AND POLITICS OF TRUTH: PERFORMANCE STUDIES MEETS THE “ART OF GOVERNMENT”
This half-day symposium puts Foucault into contact with performance and performance theory. As Tony Fisher and Kélina Gotman observe in Foucault’s Theatres (2020), although Foucault's work has been keenly influential for many scholars of performance, direct engagement of his work that starts with performance practice and theory has been surprisingly scant. Participants in this event will take up this challenge, asking: What would it mean to take seriously the art in Foucault’s famous analysis of the “art of government”? What does an analysis of and from performance and the performative bring to our understanding of contemporary politics of truth-telling? This symposium is part of the World Congress, Foucault: 40 Years After.
This event is made possible by the sponsorship of the Department of Performance Studies and the event co-sponsors the Center for Research & Study, Tisch School of the Arts; Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, and the World Congress, Foucault: 40 Years After.
Schedule:
2:00 pm EDT – Keynote lecture by Mark D. Jordan (R. R. Niebuhr Research Professor of Divinity, Harvard University)
Location: Dean's Conference Room, Room 1260
Mark Jordan is a scholar of Christian theology, European philosophy, and gender studies. He has written extensively on sexual ethics, but he also continues to explore old topics along the borders between philosophy and Christian theology.
Jordan’s many books include The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (University of Chicago Press, 1997) and Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault (Stanford University Press, 2015). His most recent is Queer Callings: Untimely Notes on Names and Desires (Fordham University Press, 2023).
Jordan led for some years a seminar on public debates about religion and sexuality for rising scholars from the United States and abroad. He continues to imagine anti-institutional communities that could make new languages for bodily life.
4:00 pm EDT – Panel featuring:
André Lepecki (Professor of Performance Studies, NYU; and Associate Dean, Center for Research and Study, Tisch School of the Arts) is an essayist, dramaturge, and independent curator based in New York City. Editor of several anthologies on performance and dance theory, and author of Exhausting Dance: performance and the politics of movement (2006, published in thirteen languages), and of Singularities: dance in the age of performance (2016). He was a visiting faculty at Brown University, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Stockholm University of the Arts. He has curated festivals and projects for HKW-Berlin, MoMA-Warsaw, MoMA PS1, the Hayward Gallery, Haus der Künst-Munich, Sydney Biennial 2016, among others. In 2008 he received the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (USA Section) award for “Best Performance" for co-curating and directing the authorized redoing of Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (a commission of Haus der Kunst 2006, performed at PERFORMA 07). Since 2008, he participates in several of Brazilian artist Eleonora Fabião’s actions. He is currently curating an online exhibit of Paul McCarthy’s early works for Xavier Hufkens gallery, Brussels.
Ann Pellegrini (Professor of Performance Studies & Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU; Chair, Department of Performance Studies) Ann writes and teaches on such topics as the queer possibilities of psychoanalysis; gender and performance; and religion, sexuality, and affect in U.S. public life. They are founding co-editor, with José Esteban Muñoz, of the Sexual Cultures series (NYU Press), which Ann now co-edits with Tav Nyong'o and Joshua Chambers-Letson. Ann is also a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. Their most recent book is Gender Without Identity (Unconscious in Translation Press, 2023), co-authored with Avgi Saketopoulou.
Karen Shimakawa (Associate Professor of Performance Studies, NYU; and Co-Associate Dean of Faculty, Tisch School of the Arts) Karen is the author of National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage (2003) and co-editor of Orientations: Mapping Studies in the Asian Diaspora (2001) with Kandice Chuh. Her research and teaching focus on critical race theory, law and performance, and Asian American performance. She is currently researching a project on the political and ethical performativity of discomfort.
Location: Dean's Conference Room, Room 1260
5:30 PM - Reception to follow in Richard Schechner Studio, Room 612