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18. Doing Performance Philosophy: Thinking alongside Performance

  • Laura Cull Ó Maeillorca(author)
Chapter of: Performance Research Methods: Interdisciplinary Methods for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies(pp. 387–412)
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Title18. Doing Performance Philosophy
SubtitleThinking alongside Performance
ContributorLaura Cull Ó Maeillorca(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0469.18
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0469/chapters/10.11647/obp.0469.18
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightLaura Cull Ó Maoilearca
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2025-10-24
Long abstract

Performance philosophy is an interdisciplinary field of thought, creative practice, and scholarship concerned with the relationship between performance and philosophy. Emerging since around 2012, performance philosophy can be broadly defined as a performative paradigm of knowledge-making attentive to how thinking performs and performance thinks. This chapter introduces performance philosophy as an experimental practice of ‘thinking alongside performance’, starting from the premise that performance is itself a mode of thinking with the capacity to expand and transform normative paradigms of what counts as thought. The author highlights how performance philosophy often takes up a non-anthropocentric, relational approach—moving away from the notion of the individual subject of thought towards the sense of thought as constituted by unique assemblages of human and nonhuman materialities in specific evental contexts. The method is also contextualised as emerging from a nondualist, nonreductive understanding of mind and body, in which the physical world is understood as movement or change and matter is construed as a process of emergence. Three ways of doing performance philosophy are offered: attention-training, letter-writing, and an experimental approach to format. The method is demonstrated with An [Interrupted] Bestiary,a performance philosophy project by the author produced through a process of thinking alongside the Chicago-based company Every house has a door.

Page rangepp. 387–412
Print length26 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Locations
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PDFhttps://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0469.18.pdfLanding pagehttps://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0469.18.pdfFull text URLPublisher Website
HTMLhttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0469/chapters/10.11647/obp.0469.18Landing pagehttps://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0469/ch18.xhtmlFull text URLPublisher Website
Contributors

Laura Cull Ó Maeillorca

(author)
Professor of Performance Philosophy at University of Amsterdam
Lector at Amsterdam University of the Arts
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6276-0131

Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca is Professor of Performance Philosophy by special appointment at the University of Amsterdam and Lector for the Academy of Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts where she leads the research programme. Her latest publications are the book Interspecies Performance (2024), co-edited with Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp for Performance Research Books and the journal issue With the dead: performance philosophy, dying and grief (2024) co-edited with Rajni Shah and Will Daddario. One current line of research is Climate Imaginaries at Sea: a long-term programme of artistic and participatory research into rising sea levels, including The Power of Water project which investigates how young people in the Netherlands, Suriname and Curaçao can explore the relationship between climate change and colonialism using photography and spoken word. Laura is a founding core convener of the Performance Philosophy network and a co-editor of its journal and book series.

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