Enactivism and Performance Theory: Towards Interdisciplinarity Without Misunderstandings

Watching a performance is an active, embodied, and interactive experience in which meaning is co-created between performer and spectator, not passively received. This view aligns with enaction, a comprehensive approach to cognition rooted in biology, dynamic systems theory, and phenomenology. Performance studies, originating in anthropology and philosophical pragmatics, shares similarities with enactivism but also differs due to their distinct intellectual genealogies. This article examines both common ground and differences between the two fields, clarifies misunderstandings, and aims to open pathways for future connections.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Watching a performance is a particular kind of a participatory experience; moreover, it is one with constitutive embodied and interactive features, where a meaning is not simply received or passively observed but, rather, enacted or reconstituted in an interactive process between a performer and a spectator. This is a depiction of performance (theatrical or otherwise) that many scholars will agree with. It is also, and importantly, a description founded on a new and comprehensive approach to human cognition called enaction or enactivism. The similarities between performance theory, as used and applied in various branches of the humanities (including theatre studies), and the newest achievements of cognitive science are noticeable. Yet, there are also important differences that stem from the very genealogies of the respective theoretical fields. Performance studies rests on its beginnings in anthropology and philosophical pragmatics. Enactivism is the offspring of a fruitful union between biology, dynamic systems theory and phenomenology. The aim of this article is to look at what is common but also distinct in these two domains of thought and to clear up some misunderstandings, thus opening the door to potential connections in the future.