Žižek and Performance

Slavoj Žižek is a cultural phenomenon. His writings have influenced the way we think about politics, psychoanalysis, and a range of cultural issues in our increasingly volatile political and economic climate. This is the first collection to relate explicitly his thoughts on neoliberalism, globalisation, social change and subjectivity to the theory and practice of theatre and performance. Are there common grounds between Žižek's performative persona, his writing style, and performative and theatrical events? Can theatre and performance theories and practices shed some more light on the 'Elvis of cultural theory' and his often controversial work? This volume features 16 critical essays that examine a truly eclectic range of performance makers, events, and moments  - from Wagner's Parsifal to Daniel Radcliffe, from Forced Entertainment to Hollywood dance. It concludes with a new text from Žižek himself, as he turns, for the first time, his gaze to performance.

Broderick Chow is Lecturer in Theatre and Drama at Brunel University, London, UK. His research looks at the intersections of performance practices, politics, economy, and industrial change. He has previously published on professional wrestling, choreography, and parkour. He is also a physical theatre-maker and performer and a former stand-up comedian.

Alex Mangold lectures in European Languages at Aberystwyth University in Wales, UK. His research focuses on contemporary European theatre and performance, psychoanalysis and theatre, Sarah Kane, the new tragic, and theatre translation. He also works as a theatre director and translator.

Introduction: Performing Žižek: Hegel, Lacan, Marx and the Parallax View
1. Kantor's Symptom or Grotowski's Fantasy?: Defining a Political Theatre over a Theatre of Politics; Bryce Lease
2. The Lacanian Performative: Austin after Žižek; Geoff Boucher
3. Who's Watching? Me!: Theatrality, Spectatorship, and the Žižekian Subject; Peter M. Boenisch
4. Žižek's Death Drive, the Intervention of Grace and the Wagnerian Performative: Conceptualising the Director's Subjectivity; Eve Katsouraki
5. 'Even if we do not take things seriously… we are still doing them': Disidentification, Ideology, and Queer Performance; Stephen Greer
6. The Performative Constitution of Liberal Totalitarianism on Facebook; Natasha Lushetich
7. Enjoyment as a Theatrical Object: The Actor as Neighbour; Graham Wolfe
8. 'There are more of you than there are of us': Forced Entertainment and the Critique of the Neoliberal Subject; Linda Taylor
9. Ideology and the True/False Performance of Heritage; Paul Johnson
10. Getting Involved with the Neighbour's Thing: Žižek and the Participatory Performance of Reactor (UK); Daniel Oliver
11. Dancing with Žižek: Sublime Objets and the Hollywood Dance Film; Melissa Blanco Borelli
12. There are dreams that cannot be: 'Actual Idiocy' and the Sublime Object of Susan Boyle; Dave Calvert
13. Theatre's Immediacy: Notes on Performing 'With' Žižek; Patrick Duggan
14. Collaboration, Violence, and Difference; Simon Ellis and Colin Poole
15. The Tickling Object: On Žižek and Comedy; Broderick D.V. Chow
16. Notes on Performing, its Frame, and its Gaze; Slavoj Žižek
Bibliography
Index