Enactivism and Performance Theory: Towards Interdisciplinarity Without Misunderstandings

Summary

The article examines the relationship between performance theory, which describes performances as interactive experiences where meaning is co-created between performer and spectator, and enactivism, a cognitive science approach emphasizing embodied, dynamic cognition. Both fields share a focus on participation and embodiment, but differ in their origins: performance theory from anthropology and pragmatics, enactivism from biology, dynamic systems theory, and phenomenology. The author aims to clarify commonalities and differences, resolve misunderstandings, and suggest future connections between the two domains.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Watching a performance is a particular kind of a participatory experience; moreover, it is one with constitutive embodied and interactive features, where a meaning is not simply received or passively observed but, rather, enacted or reconstituted in an interactive process between a performer and a spectator. This is a depiction of performance (theatrical or otherwise) that many scholars will agree with. It is also, and importantly, a description founded on a new and comprehensive approach to human cognition called enaction or enactivism. The similarities between performance theory, as used and applied in various branches of the humanities (including theatre studies), and the newest achievements of cognitive science are noticeable. Yet, there are also important differences that stem from the very genealogies of the respective theoretical fields. Performance studies rests on its beginnings in anthropology and philosophical pragmatics. Enactivism is the offspring of a fruitful union between biology, dynamic systems theory and phenomenology. The aim of this article is to look at what is common but also distinct in these two domains of thought and to clear up some misunderstandings, thus opening the door to potential connections in the future.