Enactivism and Performance Theory: Towards Interdisciplinarity Without Misunderstandings

peer-reviewed article

Abstract

Watching a performance is a particular kind of a participatory experience; moreover, it is one with constitutive embodied and interactive features, where a meaning is not simply received or passively observed but, rather, enacted or reconstituted in an interactive process between a performer and a spectator. This is a depiction of performance (theatrical or otherwise) that many scholars will agree with. It is also, and importantly, a description founded on a new and comprehensive approach to human cognition called enaction or enactivism. The similarities between performance theory, as used and applied in various branches of the humanities (including theatre studies), and the newest achievements of cognitive science are noticeable. Yet, there are also important differences that stem from the very genealogies of the respective theoretical fields. Performance studies rests on its beginnings in anthropology and philosophical pragmatics. Enactivism is the offspring of a fruitful union between biology, dynamic systems theory and phenomenology. The aim of this article is to look at what is common but also distinct in these two domains of thought and to clear up some misunderstandings, thus opening the door to potential connections in the future.



Keywords:

autopoiesis, enactivism, interaction asymmetry, participatory sense-making, performance theory

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Published
2025-06-16

Cited by

Popova, Y. (2025) “Enactivism and Performance Theory: Towards Interdisciplinarity Without Misunderstandings”, Pamiętnik Teatralny, 74(2), pp. 67–85. doi: 10.36744/pt.2571.

Authors

Yanna Popova 
y.popova@uw.edu.pl
Poland
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5218-5595

Yanna Popova - Doctor of Philosophy (Oxford). She has been educated in linguistics, literature studies and philosophy. She has taught at the Universities of Oxford, Birmingham and Case Western Reserve (USA), where she was a founding member of the Department of Cognitive Science. Between 2022 and 2024 she was the Director of the Centre for Research on Culture, Language and Mind at Warsaw University. She has published numerous articles in the fields of cognitive poetics, cognitive linguistics, metaphor theory, narratology, phenomenology of temporality, and creativity. She is currently completing a book on theatre performance and enactive cognition.



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