MODERN AUSTRIAN LITERATURE, VOL. 42, NO. 3.

2009 MODERN AUSTRIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE ASSOCIATION

Culture as Performance
Erika Fischer-Lichte
Freie Universitt Berlin
Swarms of birds. Cell phone dating services. Internet communities. Police
squads duped by demonstrators using the out of control strategy. Critical
customers organizing payment boycotts online. Hooligans. International terror
networks. What do these acutely heterogeneous groups have in common? They
all describe performative collectives. They have no central leadership, no master
plan, no fxed structures, and no selI-representation as a single entity. Their actions
as a group are the result of local contacts and temporary synchronizations. These
forms of collective performances are responsible for numerous ongoing cultural,
social, and political transIormations. They remain feeting, event-like structures
that elude defnition. While they have great productive potential, they can be
equally destructive and dangerous.
Over ten years ago I began a collaboration with other scholars from the
humanities and social sciences at the Freie Universitt Berlin to embark on a
long-term research project on the dynamics of cultural change. A so-called
Sonderforschungsbereich on Kulturen des Performativen was established,
generously funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Back then we could
not have imagined that one day we would examine phenomena such as the ones
I just listed. Our point of departure was to question the rather odd but still widely
held view in the humanities of the early 1990s that there remained a fundamental
diIIerence between European and non-European cultures. It was widely assumed
that European cultures asserted and represented themselves through texts and
artiIacts, while non-European cultures articulated their selI-image and selI-
understanding through various kinds oI cultural perIormances. European
cultures defned themselves through textuality, non-European cultures through
performance. This difference is captured by the dichotomous metaphorical pair
of culture as text as against culture as performance. With our research project
we set out to collapse this dichotomy. We aimed to explore the interplay between
performativity and textuality as the driving force behind the cultural dynamics
in Europe. Thus, by Iocusing our research on European cultures, we sought to
demonstrate that they were as performative as other cultures.
In order to explore the interplay between textuality and performativity in
European cultures, we Iocused on their relationship in constellations where medial
conditions had undergone fundamental changes, thus creating new parameters for
performativity and textuality. We found that such constellations were particularly
common during the Middle Ages, the early modern period, and modernity, that is
from the nineteenth century until today. Four pivotal shifts in the conditions for
2 ERIKA FISCHER-LICHTE
communication marked the medieval and early modern period: the transition oI
vernacular languages Irom oral to written Iorm which reached its frst apex during
the twelIth century; the invention oI the printing press in the fIteenth century;
increasing dialogical references to ancient authorities; and, lastly, the widespread
encounters with newly discovered cultures. The second juncture refers to the
development of the new media during the nineteenth century and extends into the
present.
According to our initial hypothesis, these periods each marked a paradigmatic
performative shift or turn. Yet we always rejected the nave notion of a linear
construction of history whereby the invention of the printing press transformed
the largely performative medieval culture into a predominantly textual one and the
new media have subsequently returned twentieth-century culture to a primarily
performative state. Such a linear construction seemed untenable from the
beginning given that in the aftermath of Gutenbergs invention new performative
formations were established such as a professional theater as a multidimensional
mass medium in the second half of the sixteenth century. The commedia dellarte,
the Elizabethean theater, and, fnally, the opera also serve as examples here. Yet in
the twentieth century, it was the new media that gave rise to alternative forms of
textual production. Here the terms performative shift and performative turn
seemed appropriate since such junctures in the conditions for communication
crucially changed the relationship between performativity and textuality, therefore
describing fundamental paradigmatic shifts.
Early on in our research we used the terms 'perIormative and 'perIormativity
in the classical sense, i.e., as John L. Austin defned them with respect to per-
formative utterances, highlighting their self-referentiality and their capacity to
establish new social realities. Here we did not encounter any terminological
diIfculties between the English and German words, since Austin introduced the
term 'perIormative as a specifc and well-defned terminus technicus that could
easily be transferred into German. Yet, in this context, I would like to emphasize
that the English word 'perIormance and its German equivalent 'AuIIhrung
are not entirely identical. The German word, for instance, does not encompass
that aspect of performance so brilliantly theorized by Jon McKenzie in his
book Perform, or else. From Discipline to Performance (see 15ff.), that is to say
'AuIIhrung does not convey that dimension oI achievement underlying such
statements as the New York Metropolitan Transit Authoritys best performance.
However, unlike its English counterpart, the German word can also be used
synonymously for behavior. Thus, my usage of the term performance in the
Iollowing is meant as the English translation oI 'AuIIhrung, lacking particular
dimensions oI the English term while comprising certain others.
This is how we began. I will refrain from recounting the entire history of our
research during the last ten years. Rather, I will focus on the exciting discoveries
we made that have led us to the problems, questions, and topics we are working
3 CULTURE AS PERFORMANCE
on today and which I mentioned in my opening remarks. The frst discovery
concerned our fundamental distinction between performativity and textuality. In
developing a weak, strong, and radical concept of performativity (see Krmer and
Stahlhut 5558), it turned out that with reference to the radical concept, it proved
counterproductive to defne perIormativity and textuality as binary opposites even
for heuristic purposes. As our research has shown, performative processes are
capable of generating a dynamic that destabilizes dichotomous terminological
schemes as a whole. Like Austin, who collapsed the binary opposition between
constative and performative utterances over the course of his lectures, we could
not sustain a dichotomous understanding of performativity and textuality.
Increasingly, textuality revealed itself as a sub-category of performativity. Thus
the metaphor culture as text increasingly blended into that of culture as
performance.
Exploring diIIerent genres oI perIormance, we made another exciting
discoverya performance comes into being as an autopoietic feedback loop (see
Fischer-Lichte 8081). It emerges out of the bodily co-presence of different groups
of participants and their confrontation and interaction. This basic condition applies
to all perIormative situations: in a theater perIormance in the late nineteenth century
where one group of participants, the spectators, sat more or less still in a darkened
auditorium and watched the plot unfold on stage, possibly with strong feelings
of emotional involvement, empathy, or suspense, but without ever interfering; it
equally applied to performances in which actors and spectators freely exchanged
their roles. Whatever the reactions of those who prefer to watch, they are perceived
by all other participantssensed, heard, or seen. Such responses in turn infuence
the further course of the performance. Whatever the performers do affects the
spectators; whatever the spectators do elicits a response from the performers and
other spectators. In this sense performances are generated and determined by the
actions and behavior of all participants, no matter whether they are performers or
spectators. All participants act as co-creators of the performance which, in many
respects, remains unpredictable and spontaneous to a certain degree.
Therefore, it is crucial to clearly distinguish between the concept of per-
formance and that of the mise en scene or staging. The term mise en scne refers
to an underlying outline and specifc plan, devised by one or more individuals and
evolving through the rehearsal process (as another, slightly different feedback
loop). Moreover, the concept of mise en scne includes the result of this
collaboration, i.e., the planned and intended performative process of bringing
forth the materiality of a performance. Yet even if this plan is minutely adhered
to in every single performance, each one will still differ from the next. Since
a performance comes into being out of the interaction of all participants, it is
inconceivable that its materiality appears exactly as planned given that it also
comprises all perceptible spectator reactions. Performance and mise en scene are
not identical. It might well be the case that the mise en scene employs certain
4 ERIKA FISCHER-LICHTE
strategies aiming at specifc eIIects among the spectators. However, the actual
reactions of the spectators are not predictable, let alone controllable. They vary
from performance to performance.
We can conclude that a performance comes into being as an autopoietic
feedback loopthat it occurs as a process of self-generation. That is to say that
all participants bring forth the performance together; however, no individual or
group of people can completely plan its course and control it. All participants act
as co-creators who, to different degrees and in different ways, are engaged in the
process of generating and shaping the performance without anyone being able to
determine its course by her- or himself. The performance comes into being by the
interaction of actors and spectators, thus transforming them all into participants
of the performance. In this sense, the performance happens to the participants.
It opens up the possibility for them to experience themselves as subjects able
to co-determine the actions and behavior of others and, at the same time, whose
actions and behavior are determined by others. They experience themselves
neither as fully autonomous nor as wholly dependent subjects, but have taken
upon themselves the responsibility for a situation that they did not plan but in
which they are participating.
For these reasons it proves diIfcult, iI not impossible, to deal with a perIor-
mance from a hermeneutic perspective. This is not to say that it would be impossible
to attribute meanings to single elements, sequences, devices, or strategies.
However, the performance can by no means be understood as an expression of a
given sense or overarching meaning. Anything meaningful that might emerge in
its course is due to unforeseeable turns which the performance takes because of
the interactions between actor and spectator. It does not necessarily result from
the intentions oI one or several individuals. The nature oI perIormance defes the
control of the individual, thus emphasizing the involvement of all participants. It
is impossible to plan a performance, per se contingent, because it is impossible to
control the actions and behavior of all participants. They are not predictable, even
though they often appear plausible and logical in retrospect.
With regard to perIormance, two related aspects have to be distinguished:
that of generating and creating the performance, and that of letting it happen and
being exposed to it. Performances cannot be conceived without this aspect of
contingency, chance, and unpredictability. Rather, these form their constitutive
components, which generally, however, only become evident retrospectively.
This has far-reaching consequences with respect to our metaphor of culture as
performance. Cultural processes, insofar as they are regarded as performative
processes, can only be experienced and understood in terms of their particular
quality if we consider the inextricable bond between performance and contingency.
Their marriage constitutes reality by bringing forth something that is never exclusively
due to the intention of one or more of the participating subjects; they constitute it
by allowing unforeseen and unplanned phenomena to emerge.
5 CULTURE AS PERFORMANCE
At this point in our research on performance and performativity, we
introduced the concept oI 'emergence. The term was coined in the frst decades
of the twentieth century in the context of evolutionary cosmologies. Today it is
used in the natural and social sciences as well as in philosophy. It has proven
to be a key concept in the philosophy of mind, in theories of self-organization,
in connectionism, synergetics, and chaos theory. However, the term has not yet
gained a strong foothold in cultural or aesthetic theory. Yet to us, the term is
indispensable when exploring cultural dynamics with respect to performative
processes. Each oI the felds listed above uses a slightly diIIerent defnition or
shade oI the term. We have not transIerred any particular defnition Irom one oI
these felds into our research. Rather, we use it to describe all those phenomena
that appear not as a consequence oI specifc plans and intentions but as unIoreseen
and, in this sense, contingent events. Even iI their appearance seems perIectly
plausible in retrospect, it cannot be controlled. Unpredictability constitutes a
defning Ieature oI emergence.
Performative processes cannot be conceived of without the notion of emergence.
This insight requires the re-conceptualization of terms, ideas, and contexts that
have proven to be equally fundamental for cultural and performative processes.
1. The frst re-conceptualization concerns subjectivity. As we have seen, the
autopoietic feedback loop which generates the performance negates the
idea oI an autonomous subject. It defnes the artists and other participants
as subjects who determine others and let themselves be determined
by others. This contradicts the idea of a subject who, by virtue of her
or his own free will, sovereignly decides what to do and what not to
do; a subject who, independently of others and external instructions,
determines who she or he wants to be. It also vehemently opposes the
idea of the subject being completely determined by others and, therefore,
not responsible for her or his actions.
2. It follows that the relationship between individual and group, community,
and society must be redefned with regard to all genres oI cultural
performance such as rituals, festivals, games, political rallies, and
sports competitions. For it has become clear that no individual or group
oI individuals/specialists will succeed in manipulating the 'innocent
participants of such events according to their intention via minutely
planned and calculated strategies of staging. Such an assumption ignores
the fact that a performance is not at the disposal of anyone and negates
the responsibility borne by each individual participating in the event
through that very participation. The manipulation thesis, propagated
by the social sciences for such a long time, thus fails. The question of
human agency must be addressed anew.
3. The discovery of the fundamental role played by emergence in perfor-
mative processes required the re-examination of such processes in
6 ERIKA FISCHER-LICHTE
terms of their structure and course. We found that these processes,
whether performed as a permanent repetition of common practices
or as intentional actions aimed at bringing about transformation, can
all be regarded as transformative processes. Whenever something
unforeseen happens, the process takes another turn. We noticed that such
unforeseen moments are quite frequently prepared by or linked to the
appearance of a hiatus that, depending on the particular performative
process in which it occurred, was described as interruption, liminal
phase or space, third space, indeterminacy, potentiality, latency, etc.
In all these cases, emergence occurred because of such a hiatus, which
can be described as the offspring of or evidence for the transformative
power conjured and set free by performative processes. This holds true
Ior all perIormative processes, including transgression, disfguration,
alienation, differentiation, experiment, translation, transfer, interweav-
ing, hybridization, participation, exchange, negotiation, dynamization
of symbolic systems and spaces, movement, spatialization, social
production of space, symbolic or atmospheric charging of spaces, syn-
chronization, temporalization, embodiment, incorporation, constitution,
and transformation of states and identityto name just the most
important processes we investigated.
4. Finally, the discovery of emergence has far-reaching consequences for
our own work as scholars. Insofar as we also regard our research as
performative processes, the question arises to what extent it is possible
to plan such processes. Is it reasonable to assume that the new and
unexpected changes that scholarly processes are supposed to engender
can be brought about intentionally? Does it not make more sense to
create situations in which the unplanned and unpredictable can suddenly
emerge out of the scholarly process that researchers are engaged in? For
a collaborative research project in the humanities such as ours, where
the focus lies on the ongoing discussion between a number of junior
and senior scholars who will ultimately write their own books in the
loneliness of their studies, this is, in fact, a crucial question demanding
the development of a new epistemology.
Defning perIormative processes as transIormative processes emphasizes and
Ioregrounds their special temporality. At frst glance, it seems that perIormative
processes are imbued with a particular presentness. Performative utterances such
as promises, threats, benedictions, or curses are realized here and now, i.e., in
the temporal and spatial present. The same holds true for performative acts or
processes such as rituals, festivals, or soccer games. They exist only at the place
and time of their realization and do not aim at producing a lasting artifact. The
process of performance produces no object other than the performance itself.
Process and product coincide here. They do not exist beyond the presence of their
feeting perIormance.
7 CULTURE AS PERFORMANCE
Yet, while perIormances coincide with their feeting presence, they reIer to
the past in multiple ways. The formulaic performative utterances of baptisms,
weddings, blessings, curses, etc. are spoken as quasi citations that recall the
past context in which they originated. Their performance brings to mind former
utterances, maybe even the very frst time this Iormula was used, recalling
the situation of origin. The present performative utterance thus turns into
a mnemonic act. A similar logic applies to performances. The performance of
a ritual, for instance, usually occurs as a re-performance. In the past, the ritual
has been performed several times. This fact alone secures its reference to the
past. Moreover, many rituals perIorm a special past, a frst act or myth oI origin,
so that the ritual itselI is perIormed as an act oI commemoration. Even iI not
as evident as in rituals, the reference to the past and to former performances
is characteristic of all genres of performance. A twofold resonance of the past
exists within perIormances: on the one hand, they comprise the repeating echo
of past performances; on the other, they refer to the future by resonating past
performances to allow something new to emerge. Therefore, performative
processes very determinedly point to the future. Performative utterances such as
promises, threats, curses, and blessings are certainly performed in the present.
However, they unmistakably point to a future that they are meant to bring about.
Insofar as performative acts and processes constitute reality, they aim at the future
and the coming into being of something that does not yet exist, something new.
The performative act of a baptism or wedding, for instance, constitutes a social
reality that determines the future.
This holds true not just for rituals involving performative utterances but for
all rituals, particularly rites of passage which are meant to secure a safe passage
from a present state, identity, or social situation to another, new one. In this sense,
rituals always aim at and bring forth a particular future. The same can be said
about other genres oI cultural perIormance. A Iestival aims at either aIfrming,
and thus renewing, an existing community or at bringing about a new one. A
sports competition aims at generating winners and losers; a political assembly is
supposed to legitimize claims to power or to establish a particular social bond.
Whatever the aim might be, performances always bring about a particular future.
To sum up: perIormative processes are realized in the present by reIerencing
the past and bringing forth the future. Austins concept of illocutionary and
perlocutionary acts also addresses such a future. Performative processes, including
repetitions, re-enactments, and re-performances, extend beyond the present. They
possess a dimension of effect that points to the future. It is this dimension that
has captured our interest in the ongoing, fnal stage oI our project. Here again, the
phenomenon of emergence comes into play. As already stated, the large variety
of performative processes we investigated predominantly realized themselves as
interplay of intended action and emergence, planning and contingency. Therefore,
their effect on the participants cannot be completely steered and controlled by a
8 ERIKA FISCHER-LICHTE
single individual. While a particular effect might coincide with the intentions of
the artists, leading to a particular future that was envisaged beforehand, effect and
Iuture ultimately remain elusive in the perIormative process. Emergent phenomena
take the performance in a different direction at least in part, though they might
lead to the failure of the performative act as a whole. The future brought about by
this performative act is predictable only to a limited degree.
As stated above, the appearance oI such emergent phenomena benefts Irom
the occurrence oI a hiatus, also defned as liminal phase or space, third space,
indeterminacy, potentiality, or latency. The different names unmistakably
point to the fact that we are dealing with related and comparable phenomena
based on their emergent nature and enabling quality. Yet they draw attention
to themselves in different ways. The moment the performative process opens
up for emergent phenomena, the possibility for it to take another unintended,
perhaps even unimaginable, turn is created. Today we are confronted with
the question of how the future comes into being through such performative
processes. The discovery of emergence in performative processes resulted in
our efforts to introduce a kind of a futurological perspective to the research on
performance and performativity.
Futurology, so far, has been the domain of the social sciences and economics,
even if their research brings together multiple disciplines. Their efforts are
focused on conducting studies and projects to determine how the future will
or should look. Futurology expressly demarcates itself from prophecy, science
fction, and trend research, even iI, or perhaps because, it works with creative, and
even fantastical, images and designs of the future that are inconceivable without
normative and prospective elements. In the last years, futurology has also begun to
consider developments and events that are characterized by disorder, multiplicity,
diIIerentiation, and interdependency with turbulent felds, indeterminacy, and
instabilities. Our research of the last years on performances as autopoietic
feedback loops, dynamic communities resembling swarms, and, generally, on the
relevance of emergence in performative processes undeniably shares some points
oI contact with the above-mentioned felds oI research in Iuturology; however,
they have followed different problems and methodologies.
Our ongoing investigation, in fact, contributes to futurology, albeit to a very
specifc kind oI it. In contrast to the diIIerent branches oI Iuturology, our research
on the coming into being of the future is based on perspectives and methodologies
deriving from studies in the arts and culture. This is why we can do away with
the normative, prospective, or even prognostic elements. Our interest does not
focus on what type of future comes or is intended to come into being out of any
given performative processeven if this question is considered as a matter of
course. Instead, we focus on how future emerges because we are interested in the
trace and promise of the future in the present, which manifests itself as a reverse
causality whereby the future seemingly generates its effects already in the present.
9 CULTURE AS PERFORMANCE
Our decision to focus on hiatuses followed from the assumption that the
decisive turn for the performative process happens at those moments; it is then
that future emerges. Yet we must consider that the performative processes we
investigate do not follow a linear course, either before or after this moment.
Rather, whatever turn the performative process might take after such an emergent
moment, it might, before too long, be interrupted by another such moment
and so on and so forth, ad libitum. What is retrospectively often construed and
interpreted as a consistent process, in fact dissolves into a structure made up of
shifts and breaks that encounters the shifts and breaks of other processes so that
in the end we have a network lacking any kind of overview. In order to grasp
such diachronic processes, we deemed it necessary to examine in a variety of
synchronic cross sections such moments that take the process in another direction
and let the future emerge. We are not interested in a confrontation of synchronic
and diachronic investigations, of instantaneous and long-term changes. Rather,
our interest Iocuses on the question oI how perIormative processes, defned by
the interplay of intention and emergence, planning and contingency, give rise to
new thingsthat is how the future emerges and becomes present through them.
This brings me back to the metaphor oI 'culture as perIormance. At frst
glance, it seems that it might describe a modern revival of the old metaphor of
theatrum mundi or theatrum vitae humanaethat of the world and human life
as theater. However, there remains an important difference between the two.
The ancient metaphor referred to the illusion and transience of life for which
the theater, for instance in the seventeenth century, acted as a perfect allegory.
Yet, its modern reformulation emphasizes the fact that the same forces are at
work in performance as in culture at large. Performance thus becomes a sort of
laboratory for studying these forces. In many ways, our insights gained from
studying performances correspond to those of the modern sciences, even though
many scientists still refuse to acknowledge this fact. The modern sciences and the
cultural, technological, and social developments they enable increasingly spread
the conviction that the world is indeed suffused by invisible forces which affect
us physically, even if we cannot hear, see, smell, or touch them. They allow for
emergent phenomena in nature and society that elude all intentionality, planning,
or Iorecasts. They seem to interlink everything, so that the fapping wings oI
a butterfy in one hemisphere could cause or prevent a hurricane in the other.
They imply that globalized societies have become so complex that the possible
consequences of planned changes can hardly be fathomed, although they must be
made. Paradoxically, the greater the progress of science and the more spectacular
its results, the quicker the Enlightenment illusion oI the infnite perIectibility oI
man and world is vanishing. Today, the sciences convey the impression that the
world ultimately eludes the grasp of science and technology. In much the same
manner, the autopoietic feedback loop that is at work in performances eludes
the control of any one participant. Performance in this respect marks the limits
10 ERIKA FISCHER-LICHTE
oI the Enlightenment by undermining the Enlightenment`s reliance on binary
oppositions to describe the world and its belief in the total controllability of natural
and cultural processes. In fact, our research on performance and performativity
can be regarded as a 'new Enlightenment. It does not call upon the people and,
in particular, scientists and scholars to govern natureneither their own nor that
surrounding thembut instead encourages them to enter into a new relationship
with themselves and the world. This relationship will embrace emergence as a
creative force and welcome the future, even if it takes place in ways unintended,
unexpected, and even unimaginedjust as it happens in performance.
WORKS CITED
Fischer-Lichte, Erika. sthetik des Performativen. FrankIurt a. M: Suhrkamp, 2004. Print.
Krmer, Sybille, and Marco Stahlhut. Das Performative als Thema der Sprach- und
Kulturwissenschaft. Theorien des Performativen. Ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte and
Christoph WulI. Berlin: Akademie, 2001. 3564. Print.
McKenzie, Jon. Perform, or else. From Discipline to Performance. London: Routledge,
2001. Print.