ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on twenty-five years of Latin American studies and the multiple meanings of a performance turn. The performance turn expanded ideas of "texts" to open up often entirely ignored performance repertoires as objects of study. One of the most prolific expansions of the debate on evidence and ephemerality in performance studies has come out of the major theoretical move known as performativity. One of the underlying and central discussions of the performance turn has to do with questions of aesthetics and power. Theorists such as Jesus Martin-Barbero and Rossana Reguillo no doubt push the performance turn of Latin American studies toward deeper questions of mediations and mediality. Since 1998, the Taylor-directed Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics has brought hundreds of scholars, practitioners and artists together with visibility and a platform in their biennial Encuentro to forge new spaces for performance studies.
