Of Closure and Convention: surpassing representation through performance and the referential

Abstract

In striving towards a limited freedom from the impossible demands of 'objectively' representing the past, historical narratives have lost some of the authority they held on epistemic grounds and thus part of their ability to persuade. Having attempted to reclaim the effectiveness of historical narratives through acknowledging their literariness while also allowing for their political motives, theorists such as Hayden White have, however, been accused by many historians of further undermining the referential nature of historical research. This article argues that by focusing on the practical limitation that referentiality places on historical writing and by comparing it to the equally uneasy place of 'reality' in performance (the term here referring to a particular art form), this referentiality could be made use of in the search for alternative means of representation. Similar to developments in the narrative theory of history, debates in performance theory, in recent decades, have been concerned with the oppressive effects of representation. Through concentrating on conveying emotions rather than communicating points of view, much recent performance has attempted to provide an arena where traditional sociopolitical boundaries and the 'representations' that maintain them could be questioned. The aim of the article is to initiate a discussion on the ways in which developments in these two parallel theoretical discourses could enrich each other and, more specifically, to examine the ways in which historical narratives might make use of insights from performance art and theory in finding forms of representing that would not effect moral closure.