Of Caravans and Carnivals: Performance Studies in Motion

Peggy Phelan has presented us with a challenging exercise: to identify a key issue, a pressing point of intersection between our local institution and the more expansive future of the field-and, she has enjoined us to be brief. I offer the following principle more as a catalyst for opening conversation than a proposition for closing down controversy. The starting point for discussion that I affirm is this: Performance is an essentially contested concept. I borrow this idea from Strine, Long, and Hopkins' fine metadisciplinary essay, "Research in Interpretation and Performance Studies: Trends, Issues, Priorities" (I99o).' Thinking about performance as an "essentially contested concept" locates disagreement and difference as generative points of departure and coalition for its unfolding meanings and affiliations. Any attempt to define and stabilize performance will be bound up in disagreement, and this disagreement is itself part of its meaning: