CFP: Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Performance

Call for submissions:

Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Performance

Schizoanalytic Applications Series, Bloomsbury Press.

Since the publication of Deleuze and Performance (2009), Deleuze’s philosophy has inspired a number of vital interventions in the fields of performance and theatre studies. Deleuze’s thought has also played an important role in the emergence of Performance Philosophy and continues to energise theory and practice across a range of disciplinary and vocational boundaries.

However, relatively little research has taken an explicitly schizoanalytic approach to performance. While many of the key conceptual tools of schizoanalysis recur across the literature (the assemblage; the BwO; the abstract machine etc.), the question of whether schizoanalysis might provide a framework for analysing and creating performance has only been infrequently asked. Given the difficulty of trying to extract a schizoanalytic method from Deleuze and Guattari’s writing – and the continuing need for schizoanalysis to be more carefully addressed in the field of Deleuze studies – this is not surprising. But it does point towards two possibilities: that schizoanalysis might provide resources for creating new ways of thinking, feeling, and doing performance; and that performance might contribute to the development of new schizoanalytic methods and practices.  

This volume aims to pursue these possibilities. Bringing together research in Deleuze and Guattari studies, performance and theatre studies, Performance Philosophy and beyond, scholars are invited to explore a range of questions. What does a schizoanalytic theatre or performance criticism look like? Could the materialist psychiatry of Anti-Oedipus – and particularly an understanding of desiring-production as a ‘universal primary process’ – reshape our understanding of performance as a social and historical practice? And how do problems that are central to performance – such as ‘liveness’, participation, presence, the performing body etc. – test the schizoanalytic categories that Deleuze and Guattari most frequently deploy with reference to literary examples? How might a schizoanalytic framework operate in an applied theatre setting and what can applied theatre practices contribute to our understanding of schizoanalysis, particularly given its involvement in questions of mental health and wellbeing? In what ways can performance make legible and resist the fascism of the present? How can contemporary work in new materialism, affect theory, theatre ecologies and Performance Philosophy contribute to the emergence of a performance schizoanalysis? And what concepts will invent themselves once schizoanalysis and performance are brought together?

Submissions:

Scholars and practitioners are invited to propose chapters that respond to these questions (but should not feel limited by them). Abstracts should be between 400-700 words, accompanied by a short bio and affiliation, and sent to [email protected] before 12/6/23. Final articles will be between 7000-10000 words, including footnotes and citations.