Epistemes of Performativity

Abstract

As method, practice and world-view, performance now is one of the central knowledge paradigms for the twentieth-first century. As disciplines as diverse as new media, management and organizational studies, human-computer interaction, architecture, science and technology studies (STS) and ethnography oriented participatory design increasingly embrace, the new performative turn has As method, practice and world-view, performance now is one of the central knowledge paradigms for the twentieth-first century. As disciplines as diverse as new media, management and organizational studies, human-computer interaction, architecture, science and technology studies (STS) and ethnography oriented participatory design increasingly embrace, the new performative turn has become largely pervasive. Performance and performativity, however, are still slippery concepts, operating across various epistemic and ontological registers and scales: from the to the operations of large-scale entities like organizations and techno-scientific infrastructures: the manipulation of atoms, genes, bacteria and instruments; the actions of human bodies, social colonies and political programs that increasingly crisscross sites and locales; the abstractions of mathematical models, the material apparatuses of laboratories and the social conglomeration of markets. Unlike performance studies' largely anthropocentric viewpoint, this new performative turn attempts to grapple with the complex human-machine-ecology relationships. While performance and performativity still productively remain contested concepts, this contribution proposes a map that sheds light on the most important areas of knowing and being ‘performative' in the 21st century. The map attempts to show larger macro thematics that operate within specific disciplines across the arts, social, natural and human sciences, linking disparate disciplines and people together who, because of disciplinary affiliation, might not even realize the connections to other disciplines.become largely pervasive. Performance and performativity, however, are still slippery concepts, operating across various epistemic and ontological registers and scales: from the to the operations of large-scale entities like organizations and techno-scientific infrastructures: the manipulation of atoms, genes, bacteria and instruments; the actions of human bodies, social colonies and political programs that increasingly crisscross sites and locales; the abstractions of mathematical models, the material apparatuses of laboratories and the social conglomeration of markets. Unlike performance studies’ largely anthropocentric viewpoint, this new performative turn attempts to grapple with the complex human-machine-ecology relationships. While performance and performativity still productively remain contested concepts, this contribution proposes a map that sheds light on the most important areas of knowing and being ‘performative’ in the 21st century. The map attempts to show larger macro thematics that operate within specific disciplines across the arts, social, natural and human sciences, linking disparate disciplines and people together who, because of disciplinary affiliation, might not even realize the connections to other disciplines.