Ciało jako archiwum – współczesne teorie teatru i performansu

Abstract

The text discusses contemporary theories that derive primarily from the field of performance studies and address the relationship between the body and the archive, action and history, performance and memory. Starting with Peggy Phelan’s well known theory, which defines performance as something that cannot be recorded and is subject to permanent loss, the author considers the possibility of another relationship between performance and memory. The theories of such scholars as Rebecca Schneider, Diana Taylor and José Muñoz allow us to look at the body as a medium of history and to see in the performance one of the most stable archives of social memory. However, by setting the body in constant tension with the archive, such a perspective excludes the possibility of another understanding of the archive itself. Following the discourse of materialism, it is argued that the archive has a performative dimension as well, and that the object (historical remain) becomes alive only in contact with the body. As a result, a theoretical approach to study memory and history in their bodily and performative dimension is formulated.