Wittgenstein and Performance

Embodying Wittgenstein’s own aphorism of “you’d be surprised,” this collection of original essays by both artists and academics explores the significance of Wittgenstein’s writings across a diverse field of performance practices, including poetics and choreography, theatre, and psychotherapy, as well as reflections on political thought and ChatGPT. Fundamentally, the collection shifts the discussion of philosophy and performance away from the well-established distinction between Analytic and Continental traditions to offer examples of Wittgenstein’s inspiration in and for the different practices that are explored in each essay. Between Wittgenstein’s proposals in the Tractatus that “the world is all that is the case” and in the Philosophical Investigations that “words are also deeds,” how might the thought of philosophical questions already inform those of and for performance? How do conceptions of the limits of the one articulate those of the other? And how might such questions be not simply a matter of philosophy or performance alone, but indeed of and for performance philosophy?