ABSTRACT
The performance of identity, often with the use of autobiographical material, became one of the most common forms of performance art from the early 1970s onward. Its frequent concern with providing a voice to previously silenced individuals or groups often involved such work in social and cultural issues as well. Other sorts of politically engaged performance, however, were also developing at the same time, even though, at least at the beginning, they were less associated with the specific term "performance." Such activities were less concerned with the exploration and expression of the identity of the individual and more with the social and cultural context within which that individual must operate. As cross-cultural concerns gained increasing importance near the century's end, with growing interest in the tensions and the dynamics of multiculturalism and postcoloniality, this cultural context became more and more a central concern of performance. Indeed, performance came to be recognized as a central operation in the ongoing construction of a culture and of its relationship with other cultures. As Phillip Zarilli observed: "performance as a mode of cultural action is not a simple reflection of some essentialized, fixed attributes of a static, monolithic culture but an arena for the constant process of renegotiating experiences and meanings that constitute culture."l
As the previous chapter was dedicated to the performance oriented toward personal experience, this chapter, without entirely excluding the personal, will consider performance and theory more oriented toward general cultural practices and tensions. It is important, however, to stress that this distinction is in large measure a matter of emphasis. Like most distinctions one might make in speaking of performance, it is very porous, since individual identity is of course developed within and operates within specific cultural contexts. Indeed, one of the questions taken up in this chapter (and an important part of contemporary performance theory) is whether it is even proper to speak of individual identity as distinct from cultural givens.
