After Performatics

Abstract

The article returns to the question of performatics (performatyka) – a Polish term proposed by Tomasz Kubikowski as the translation of ‘performance studies’. Eleven years after the birth of performatics and almost ten after the Performance Research issue devoted to it was published, the author retells and reinterprets the story of the term and concepts developed on its base. This is also the point to start the discussion on the terminology, translations and the domination of English in performance research and thinking. The aim is to oppose the inevitable politics of language domination (experienced clearly also in the process of working on the article) showing what is lost in translation by reflecting on the potential power of original Polish words and imaging different fields of studies creating an (impossible) alternative to the ones on performance. Leaving the dreams and utopias away, in the last part of the article the author presents the division between studies on performances and performativity that occurred in the Polish performatics during last few years. In his opinion this is the stage of the development of the discipline leading to its transformation into a methodology, an attitude – and thus vanishing as a noun and starting the ‘afterlife’ of an adjective.