ABSTRACT
The political potential of performance rests on dichotomies deriving from the branch of Western philosophy attributed to Descartes (15961650) in the early seventeenth century, although its fundamental tenets hark back to Ancient Greece. Arguments about knowledge, freedom, and immortality rely on a distinction between mind and body, where the physical body is seen as an encumbrance to spirituality and life after death. Thus a complex web of concepts emerges in which one idea is placed against its opposite, typically as ‘mind’ is therefore valued more highly than ‘body’, and intellectual activity more highly than physical activity; high arts more than popular arts, and, crucially, the right over the left. The term ‘right’ has more than one connotation of course – not simply reflecting one side of a symmetrical body, but carrying value, associations of the ‘correct’ or ‘proper’ side, associations with right and wrong.
