Eric Mayer-García (Indiana University Bloomington)
My presentation examines influential theorists writing in the decades preceding the performative turn in folklore, theorists whose inquiries point to the intermeshed nature of folklore and performance studies. Fernando Ortiz, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Erving Goffman each present their own kind of anomaly to a historiography of performance studies as they write from the cusp, anticipating and setting up major theoretical turning points in their study of culture through performance. In revisiting their non-conforming, taxonomically transgressive writings as the root of performance studies and the performative turn in folklore, I argue that theoretical turning points hinge on transdisciplinarity.
Part of 02-02 Emerging Perspectives in the Study of Folklore and Performance, Thursday, October 13, 10:30 am–12:30 pm