Abolition Symposium
11-12 April 2025
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Doing Freedom? A conversation about Performance Studies and Abolition, in collaboration with Performance Studies international (PSi) Constellate 2025
Moderator:
Michael Peterson
Interlocutors:
Anna Kimmel
Ben Spatz
Dominika Laster
James McMaster
Jazmin Llana
Jisha Menon
SAJ
Abstract:
For some time Performance Studies has been wary of our tendency to romanticize performance, to assume that it is naturally liberatory and/or radical. We have ample evidence of the performance and performativity of state power and of carceral logics.
And yet, if performance is understood as an exercise of agency, as a doing that is predicated on the freedom to act, then freedom is at the least a central concern for performance studies. In Leticia Ridley’s words, “Like that of theatre and performance, the promise of abolition lies in its doing.” Starting from the question “what is the obligation of our field to freedom”, these discussions pursue the possibilities of performance studies in the context of abolition politics…