Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Butler, Judith

Titel

When Gesture Becomes Event

Ist Teil von

• Inter Views in Performance Philosophy, p.171-191

Ort / Verlag

London: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Judith Butler begins this work with a consideration of gender performativity in order to think about the relationship between linguistic and performance studies, locating the body as the interface for both the speech act and embodied performance. Echoing her well-known arguments that “performance” must replace “essence” as a way to understand the development of gendered identities, Butler examines the role of “gesture” in relation to language and performance by focusing on Walter Benjamin’s reading of epic theater in Brecht. She suggests that Benjamin’s account of Brecht’s epic theater construed “gesture” as an unconventional, unsupported, and de-authorized form of action that cannot quite be accounted for. Performance therefore involves a form of alienation, and gesture—where language and performance intersect—can potentially become an allegory of the decomposition of the speech act.