After “The Spectacle of Performance”

Abstract

The publication of "The Spectacle of Performance" three decades after it was written offers the opportunity to reflect upon the intellectual circumstances of its production; on what was and was not distinctive about it then; on where sociological and interdisciplinary studies of performance have come to in the years since; and about what the framing of Spectacle might still contribute so long after it was written. I suggest that performance, when understood not only in interactional terms but more broadly, in relation to temporally structured social formations, offers a basis for reorienting sociohistorical inquiry in a synthetic way.

Keywords

• dramaturgy
• medieval society
• performance
• postmodernism
• social temporality
• theater
• theory