Performance Cultures as Epistemic Cultures, Volume II: Interweaving Epistemologies

This volume investigates performance cultures as rich and dynamic environments of knowledge practice through which distinctive epistemologies are continuously (re)generated, cultivated and celebrated. Epistemologies are dynamic formations of rules, tools and procedures not only for understanding but also for doing knowledges. This volume deals in particular with epistemological challenges posed by practices and processes of interweaving performance cultures. These challenges arise in artistic and academic contexts because of hierarchies between epistemologies. European colonialism worked determinedly, violently and often with devastating effects on instituting and sustaining a hegemony of modern Euro-American rules of knowing in many parts of the world. Therefore, Interweaving Epistemologies critically interrogates the (im)possibilities of interweaving epistemologies in artistic and academic contexts today. Writing from diverse geographical locations and knowledge cultures, the book’s contributors—philosophers and political scientists as well as practitioners and scholars of theater, performance and dance—investigate prevailing forms of epistemic ignorance and violence. They introduce key concepts and theories that enable critique of unequal power relations between epistemologies. Moreover, contributions explore historical cases of interweaving epistemologies and examine innovative present-day methods of working across and through epistemological divides in nonhegemonic, sustainable, creative and critical ways. Ideal for practitioners, students and researchers of theater, performance and dance, Interweaving Epistemologies emphasizes the urgent need to acknowledge, study and promote epistemological plurality and diversity in practices of performance-making as well as in scholarship on theater and performance around the globe today.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments List of Figures Contributor Bios Introduction: Performance Cultures as Epistemic Cultures — Developing Inter-Epistemic Approaches and Methodologies Torsten Jost PART I – Concepts, theories and methods The Cognitive Empire: Epistemic Injustices and Resurgent Decolonization Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni Principles of Interweaving Epistemologies Sundar Sarukkai Reconstituting the Destituted: How Decolonial and De-Western Interweaving Works Walter D. Mignolo PART II – Analyzing inter-epistemic performances Confronting the Colonial Matrix of Power: Critical Intersections of Interculturality and Decoloniality in Performance Practice Rustom Bharucha Staging Border Epistemologies: The Cross-Cultural Cartographies of an Artwork (Berlin, Galway, Seoul) Andrej Mirčev Performance as Method: Critical Approaches to Western Episteme Małgorzata Sugiera PART III – Exploring inter-epistemic histories Complex Smoking: On Brecht, Tobacco and Bourgeois Philosophy Nicholas Ridout The Epistemic Politics of Indian Classical Dance Anurima Banerji Performance or "Comportamento"? Interweaving the Names and Epistemologies of Performance Art in 1970s Italy Tancredi Gusman Epilogue: Decolonial Aesthetics in Theater and Performance — Theatrical Strategies of Delinking Rustom Bharucha, Walter Mignolo, Torsten Jost and Christel Weiler Index