PHILOSOPHY LEARNS FROM PERFORMANCE: Imaginative resistance

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Abstract

The typical direction of work within the philosophy of theater entails employing philosophy to understand performance. Particularities of acting, staging, or spectating are subjected to philosophical analysis. The illumination thereby gained pertains to theater, not to philosophy. This essay adopts the opposite direction: it argues that a long-standing problem within aesthetics is substantially better understood when accessed through the perspective of performers. What this essay calls the performer’s perspective is itself informed by a particular philosophical framing and orientation. The problem to be discussed is imaginative resistance (IR)-the unwillingness (or inability) to imagine some fictional happenings. I begin by providing a critical overview of existing responses in the literature, which I place into three groups: “meaning-oriented,” “communication-oriented,” and “performance-oriented.” I then argue that only performative approaches meaningfully address IR in art and literature. The essay’s substance for the purposes of this volume comes next: if imagining amounts to performing, an understanding regarding imaginative reservations may be deepened by exploring experiences of actual performers. I attempt to delineate the uniqueness of the actor’s imaginative involvement with a fictional life (‘uniqueness’ relative to other kinds of aesthetic engagement) along with episodes in which such embodied imaginative acts pose a problem for an actor. I draw on the ethics of care, suggesting how such an ethic’s capacity to explain the actor’s disinclination to enact some sequences succeeds in revealing the moral machinery underlying IR outside acting, returning full-circle to the philosophical problem of IR.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPhilosophy, Analytic Aesthetics, and Theater
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages12-21
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781040296370
ISBN (Print)9781032457055
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 selection and editorial matter, Michael Y. Bennett; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved.

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