ABSTRACT
Comprising two movements – Thinking from outside and Performing from within – this chapter attempts to address the complex issue of how Performance Philosophy might be embodied in Latin America, rearticulating questions concerning the performativity of (and on) the American continent. Among its questions, the essay asks: What features could Performance Philosophy display in places with strong colonial heritage and enormous political and economic problems, such as Latin America? Can Performance Philosophy also embody local questions, and affect, or be affected by, local problems? Can the field of performance philosophy open onto a less colonial perspective, and into a thinking beyond borders or territories, that also encompasses a thinking from the Global South? Shifting back and forth between “macro” and “micro” approaches, the essay draws from a range of philosophical figures from the Czech-Brazilian thinker Vilém Flusser to the Peruvian philosopher Augusto Salazar Bondy, to explore notions of America as Utopia and the idea of a uniquely Latin American philosophy. Finally, the essay considers the relationship between Performance Philosophy and de Andrade’s concept of Anthropophagy both as an epistemological tool and a manner of radical embodiment: a way for philosophical questions to be absorbed and become “flesh and blood”.
