On Performance, Liminality, and Normativity

Abstract: Despite the status of "performance" as a potentially infinite set (even containing contradictory elements) rather than a conceptual category as such, in performance research selected attributes of performance, such as liminality and efficacy, are still frequently foregrounded in service of disciplinarity. This article seeks to expand upon Jon McKenzie's critique of the "liminal-norm" in performance studies by investigating two pivotal moments for the field: first, the elucidation of liminality by Victor Turner and Richard Schechner, followed by the intersection of queer theory and performance studies. In these conjunctures, liminality and normativity were mobilized oppositionally. Yet if we disengage performance from an understanding of liminality as anti-normative, we can open up definitions of norms through intersectional engagements with Black thought and Indigenous studies to move performance scholarship into an engagement with performance as, first and foremost, a set of methods or techniques that will allow for normativities and counter-normativities to emerge through repetition. The outcome may well be a less deterministic theory of performance's relationship to both disciplinarity and social change.