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Palgrave Macmillan

Representation and Identity from Versailles to the Present

The Performing Subject

  • Book
  • © 2007

Overview

Authors:
  1. Alan Sikes
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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History (PSTPH)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. The Performing Subject: Identity and Representation in the Modern and the Postmodern Eras

    • Alan Sikes
    Pages 1-22

  3. Dancing with the Sun King: The Performance of Privilege in the Reign of Louis XIV

    • Alan Sikes
    Pages 23-56

  4. “Snip Snip Here, Snip Snip There, and a Couple of Tra-La-La’s”: The Rise and Fall of the Castrato Singer

    • Alan Sikes
    Pages 57-86

  5. Liberty, Equality, Festivity: Citizen Action and the Libratory Legacy of the French Revolution

    • Alan Sikes
    Pages 87-114

  6. Smoke and Mirrors: The Hysterical Woman from Zola to Freud

    • Alan Sikes
    Pages 115-143

  7. Communism: Coming to a Screen Near You! Benjamin, Adorno, and the Politics of Mediatization

    • Alan Sikes
    Pages 145-171

  8. Conclusion: Queer Horizons—Postmodern Performativity and Political Action

    • Alan Sikes
    Pages 173-181

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 183-214
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Keywords

About this book

Sikes traces the shifting role of performance in the fashioning of subjectivity from the Modern to the Postmodern eras. The book joins history and historiography and is grounded in a body of research about varied performance subjects from court dance, ballet, opera, festivals, celebrations, propaganda films, Hollywood movies to reality TV.

Reviews

"At the time when the prefix 'post ' begins to lose its singularity and radical sharpness, Sikes's study reminds us that we have much to gain by exploring the tension between past and present imaginations. His critical imaginary travels through an insightful analysis of the relationship between social status and performance (conduct manuals from the time of Louis XIV), instability within sexual hierarchies of the Baroque culture, post-revolutionary freedom and new modes of political participation (1789), the culture of visuality in the nineteenth century (Zola and Freud), mediated images (The Truman Show), and same-sex marriage (2007, USA). What is significant in the study of these historical fragments is Sikes's commitment to exploring performative articulations and re-articulations, which view the horizon of the intelligible not as limit of a historiographic project, but as a dynamic site where the radical performative possibilities can exist. By so doing, this study may effect how we write about theatre/performance history." - Michal Kobialka, Professor of Theatre, University of Minnesota

About the author

ALAN SIKES is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Hunter College at the City University of New York, USA.

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