Dear Peter,

I think we have to contend with more than two senses of
'performance', not just the archaic 'completion' and the
modern dramatic 'showing' you describe. Contemporary uses of
'performance' bring both senses together in troubling ways -- who
or what exactly is 'performing' in the advertisement that 'shows' a
car that can 'do' 0-60mph in nano-seconds? What about those
'performance indicators' imported from industrial models of
production, that really require careful 'set-dressing' and
'beautifully produced' paperwork? Marvin Carlson calls 'performance'
an 'essentially-contested concept' in his book 'Performance: a
critical introduction' (Routledge, 1996) It's a useful discussion of
these permutations, along with anthropological/sociological models of
performance in everyday life... Certainly, there's a risk that the
concept is used to cover too many things, and becomes meaningless. I
don't know exactly what you're referring to when you write about the
dangerous influence of the idea of performance on writing, but isn't
the kind of thinking-on-the-keyboard that's done here, by writers
sending messages to this list, often a matter of meditating with an
audience in mind?

Yours,
Eleanor Margolies


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