Performance as Methodology

Embodied Archives and Fabulation

Bibliographic Data

ID18940932
AuthorsSiri Gurudev (0000-0003-3260-301X, The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume2
Issue2
Pages312-324
Publication date2021-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2643-7961 • E-ISSN: 2643-7961
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/fea2.12061
OpenAlexW3206137313
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited14

The discipline of anthropology is one of the foundational stones for performance studies, to the extent that it provided one of our most common methodologies for research: ethnography . However, in this essay, I am interested in what anthropology can learn from performance studies methodologically, namely, looking at performance as a valuable research method, especially for an intersectional feminist practice. Following Saidiya Hartman's scholarship, and Tavia Nyong'o's and Consuelo Pabón's readings of Gilles Deleuze, I use the concept of fabulation to explore and interpret the potency of performance as methodology. Through an analysis of a performance piece by the Ensemble Kashmir Theatre Akademi (EKTA), I argue that performance offers the possibility to enact a register of the past (based on an embodied archive) at the same time that it has the potential to produce ephemeral visions of a future of liberation. In the end, I argue that moving beyond looking and writing about embodied practices, which anthropologists have done extensively, toward the purposeful creation of performance in the context of anthropological research can serve as a fruitful tool to practice feminist positionality

Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Ethnography · Performance studies · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Vision · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Philosophy · Theatre and Performance Studies

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