Sentient Performativities of Embodiment

Lynette Hunter is professor of history of rhetoric and performance at the University of California, Davis.Elisabeth Krimmer is professor of German at the University of California, Davis.Peter Lichtenfels is professor of theater and dramatic arts at the University of California, Davis.

What does it mean to feel? Sentient Performativities of Embodiment considers both the social resonance and the political stakes of this question by concentrating the study of affect more closely upon the site of the inexorably mortal human body. By convening an impressive group of scholars whose research sites challenge simplistic distinctions between 'the aesthetic' and 'the real,' Hunter, Krimmer, and Lichtenfels have crafted an anthology that compels us to return our attention to the lived complexity of feeling as a material register of human experience. This beautifully curated book will expand critical conversations between affect studies and performance studies, restoring in our consideration of feeling the fleshy, corporeal timbre of the felt.

• Introduction: Ways of Knowing and Ways of Being Known by Lynette HunterPart I: The Body in Performance—Somatic ComplexityChapter 1. Weird Embodiment by Timothy MortonChapter 2. The Senses and Sciences of Fascia: a Practice as Research Investigation by Joseph Dumit and Kevin O’Connor Chapter 3. The Petrie Dish: Somatic Praxis, Embryology, Becoming in Marie Chouinard’s “The Rite of Spring” by Hilary Bryan Chapter 4. The Performativity of Performance: Doing Things with Bodies and What Words Might Do in Relation to That. A Lecture/Demonstration (Not for the Squeamish) by Jess CurtisPart II: The Body in Performance—Attentiveness Chapter 5. Enminded Performance: Dancing with a Horse by Nita Little Chapter 6. JUST LIKE THAT: William Forsythe || Between Movement and Language by Erin Manning and Brian MassumiChapter 7. Her Heart Can Lift Mountains by Beating: Form and Formlessness in Performance Process by Sean FeitPart III: The Body in Performance—Emergence Chapter 8. Transversal Affectivity and the Lobster: Intimate Advances of Deleuze and Guattari, Rodrigo Garcia and La Carnicería Teatro, and Jan Lauwers and Needcompany by Bryan Reynolds & Guy ZimmermanChapter 9. Kantor’s DIRECTOR: “I will be myself, but I will be with the actors” by Peter Lichtenfels Part IV: Bodies Walking, Bodies WritingChapter 10. Where Can Walking Be Taking Me? by Álvaro Iván Hernández RodríguezChapter 11. Walking with/Com-Pains: (Re-)(Em)bodying Missteps and Messmates by Ilya NoéChapter 12. Walking Home: A Feminist Tracing of Home and Belonging by Maureen BurdockPart V: Bodies—Critical Race, Politics and HistoryChapter 13. Jewish Ears and Aryan Dirndls: National Socialist Racial Ideology and Jewish Identity by Elisabeth Krimmer Chapter 14. “So That They Never Forget the Holocaust:” Memorial Tattoos and Embodied Holocaust Remembrance by Verena HutterChapter 15. Presidential Dancing: The Bodies of Heads of State by Maxine Leeds Craig Chapter 16. Socialization through the Arts: Katherine Dunham as Social Activist by Halifu Osumare