Manchester University Press Foucault’S Theatres (Theatre: Theory – Practice – Performance)

Michel Foucault’s work is immensely influential in theatre and performance studies. This volume is the first to offer a critical appraisal of this groundbreaking thinker from the perspective of contemporary theatre and performance scholarship. It will be of vital interest to scholars and students concerned with the way Foucault’s work enables us to examine the multiple intersections of theory, philosophy, politics, power, history and aesthetics in relation to theatre. It also offers dynamic new readings of Foucault’s work of interest to Foucault scholars in other fields. With cutting edge studies by established and emerging writers in areas such as dramaturgy, film, music, cultural history and journalism, the volume aims to be accessible for advanced students encountering Foucault’s work for the first time. The introduction sets out a thorough and informative assessment of Foucault’s relevance to theatre and performance studies and to our present cultural moment. Indeed, while Foucault’s work has long been celebrated for incisively critiquing structures of power and discipline, gender and discourse, a new body of work published over the last decade has shed considerable new light on the complexities and, importantly for this volume, the theatricality inherent to his thought. Unique to this volume, is the discovery of this ‘theatrical’ Foucault - the profound affinity his thinking has methodologically with questions of performativity. This discovery makes accessible the ‘performance turn’ to readers of Foucault and, in doing so, opens up ways of reading Foucault’s philosophy ‘theatrically’.