Performance Capital - Law as Performance: Theatricality, Spectatorship, and the Making of Law in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Europe. By Julie Stone Peters. Oxford University Press, 2022; 350 pp.; $115 cloth. - Awkward Rituals: Sensations of Governance in Protestant America. By Dana W. Logan. University of Chicago Press, 2022; 185 pp; $97.50 cloth, $27.50 paper. - Strolling Players of

Abstract

Assuming responsibility and developing the tools needed for self- and political construction are hallmarks of the liberal imagination. A newly emerging subfield of performance studies—call it “performance capital studies”—teaches us what those tools are and how they may be put to use. “Performance” now comes to be seen as an exchange of cultural, legal, and identity capital retailing different forms of knowledge and power in the constitution and regulation of governance.