Is knowledge performative?

Abstract

In the summer term 2015, five academics at an interdisciplinary institution in Germany carried out the experiment of holding lectures in dialogue between a literature/theatre scholar and a scientist, on a stage, with performers and dancers. The series of four lectures explored a range of individual approaches to the subject of the experimental from the perspective of the sciences and of the theatre and outlined several conceptual overlaps between scientific content and theatre methodology. This article traces how, in addition to discussing the theoretical approaches to the subject, the lecture series also put these theories to the test and into practice by allowing performers and dancers to interfere with and even alter the lecture script. We inquired whether interdisciplinary performance lectures are feasible, whether the formation of knowledge is performative, and how this practice could be used in future conceptions of knowledge formation.