Marvin Carlson's "What is Performance?"

In trying to define my own version of performance, I knew that it was very difficult to decide what is and isn't performance. In my mind I feel like I have an idea of what would be considered performance, but putting it into the confines of a definition is harder than it may seem. In our class discussion, I would think I finally had it figured out until another student would bring up a different perspective that totally shifted my thinking. Therefore, I realized in class that there is no easy definition of performance. Learning the term an essentially contested concept in Carlson's intro was eye-opening for me. I was thrilled to learn that there is a term to describe the debate and confusion that was our class discussion when trying to define performance. 

Someone in our class brought up Mardi Gras Balls in our discussion. This really challenged my thinking about performance. Rituals can be considered performance, but their sole purpose is not usually to perform. Mardi Gras Balls once included real royalty and were rituals practiced by kings and queens. However, in today's times in southern Louisiana, Mardi Gras Balls that include kings and queens and rituals are more of a theatre performance because it does not include actual royalty. Would this be considered performance? I think it would because it mostly revolves around entertainment. But does all performance have to have the purpose of entertainment? I don't think it always does either. Through our discussions and this reading, I feel that I lean more towards the broader side for defining performance. I feel that more things in our world are performance, than not performance. As a Mass Communication major, I believe that a huge part of communicating is performing. Even on social media, I think people perform and portray the way they want to be viewed.

In Carlson's intro he says "Strine Long, and Hopkins argue that performance has become just such a concept developed in an atmosphere of "sophisticated disagreement" by participants who "do not expect to defeat or silence opposing positions, but rather through continuing dialogue to attain a sharper articulation of all positions and therefore a filler understanding of the conceptual richness of performance."" I really like this quote because I think that we should keep talking about what performance means to us to fully understand the richness of it. Performance is rich. It can include entertainment, theatre, music, human interaction, rituals, and much much more. My aspirations and career revolve around performance. Carlson's article comforts me in a sense because I can rest in knowing that performance is an essentially contested concept. It's not just me who can't decide exactly what it is, but even a scholar who studies this agrees that it is not easy to define. And that is the beauty of performance. For me, it evokes expression and creativity, even in trying to learn exactly "what it is".