ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to put into focus some of the multifarious ways in which the United States “participates” in this global flow by exploring the complex and ambivalent entanglements of the national and the transnational. It suggests that performance studies approaches are particularly suited to study the inherent dynamics of transnational processes and practices. The book highlights that despite its ephemeral and transitory character, performance always leaves something behind, a trace that transcends the momentariness of a particular performance event. Ephemeral and transient in some regards, performances are, in other important regards, concretely material and present in a particular time and place.
