Performance Studies and Negative Epistemology

By: Claire Maria Chambers

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Synopsis: This book argues that apophaticism continues to exert strong influence in Western cultural discourses, especially performance. While apophaticism in the academy may have had its heyday in the debates about negative theology and deconstruction in the 1990s, negative knowledges have continued to influence theatre and performance studies around issues of embodiment, the non- and post-human, objects, archives, the ethics of otherness, and the inaccessible in the work of minority artists. Part of the history of apophaticism lies in mystic literature; with the rise of the New Age movement, which claimed historical mysticism as its predecessor, apophaticism has often been sidelined as spirituality rather than serious study. By reassessing ancient forms of negative epistemology, this book suggests that artists, scholars, students and teachers alike can more deeply engage forms of unknowing through what cannot be spoken and cannot be represented, both on the stage and in every aspect of social life.