ABSTRACT
Performance: An Alphabet of Performative Writing explores performance in everyday life and aesthetic contexts through the use of performative writing. Using the alphabet as an organizational device, the book is composed of a series of short pieces that approach performance from multiple perspectives and rely upon various compositional strategies. It reaches toward the poetic, rhetorical, and relational in the desire to create dialogue. Some of the pieces are in keeping with a typical essay, others call upon literary forms and figures, others appear as personal narratives, and others come forward as quick speculations, experiments, or remarks. Together, they might best be read as rhizomatic thought trajectories where each piece “connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 21). The entries present complementary and oppositional logics, resisting a coherent theory of performance, although they are likely to point to the author’s tendencies and biases.
