Beyond Repair: A Critical Performance Manifesto

Abstract

This chapter argues that Deficit Culture is a form of epistemicide, readable through lenses crafted in anti-colonial struggle in the Global South. It considers evidence that Deficit Culture has come under pressure from new, mediated forms of public protest, which may enable performance to grasp a central role in imagining and rehearsing an ethics of collective living in the twenty-first century. It argues the importance both of critical thought and of action for human flourishing, and disinterested university support for critical performance. A ‘Critical Performance Manifesto’ focuses on Drama’s potential as critical performance of lives-in-common. Specifically, it is designed to show how Drama’s ‘ethical encounters’ may speak explicitly to new forms of public consciousness, new democratic practices, and institutions in an emergent post-polity.