The performance studies pendulum

This essay argues that performance studies in communication (PSC) is approaching a point of “nowhereness.” It examines the implications of the 1990s framing of performance studies as an “antidiscipline,” particularly insofar as antidisciplinarity disrupts the concept of disciplinary methodologies such as aesthetic performance. It offers an exemplar case that demonstrates how one familiar, established, perhaps keystone performance studies theory/method/practice–dialogic performance has all but disappeared in PSC research. Finally, it offers a corrective but ultimately invitational call to bolster the communities of practice in PSC, especially in terms of performance-methodological and aesthetic research.