Studies in Philosophy and Education 18: 327–337, 1999.

327
© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Experience and Performance: Contrasting ‘Identity’

in Feminist Theorizings

LYNDA STONE
School of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, U.S.A.

Abstract. Connecting identity, broadly defined to recent ‘advances’ in educational research, this
paper takes up two different feminist treatments based in pragmatism and poststructuralism. The first
is from Charlene Haddock Seigfried on ‘experience,’ and the second is from Peggy Phelan on ‘perfor-
mance.’ The first is in keeping with a dominant tradition to secure identity through visibility and the
second suggests critique through a turn to invisibility. The first arises out of Dewey’s naturalism and
the second through Lacan, performance art, and anti-representation. At bottom is suggestion that an
entire narrative tradition in educational research is potentially self-defeating.

Introduction
American professor of performance studies, Peggy Phelan writes about an art
event: In New York City, at The Experimental Intermedia Foundation in late May
1987, Angelika Festa hangs herself over twenty-four hours in a performance piece
“in which she appears in order to disappear” (Phelan, 1993, p. 152). Enshrouded,
Festa is suspended between two poles accompanied by three video images, one
a continuous loop of fish embryology, two a bodily-size blowup of her own feet
near but off the ground, and three a replaying and juxtaposing of the entire perfor-
mance itself. Ironically, Phelan’s own description is a written form of that which
is ‘beyond description.’1 Festa’s performance, as will be seen, not only raises
questions for the contemporary issue of identity and identity politics but also
for qualitative educational research and its relatively recent turns to narrative and
performance.
Across the past decade or so, a narrative tradition has emerged in educational
research that has several strands: one is to highlight the descriptive experiences
of students, teachers, classrooms and schools in ways that a more traditional
academic discourse (largely quantitative) has not demonstrated; another is to fore-
ground experiences of those often marginalized within ‘mainstream’ culture and
to claim that different forms of ‘reporting’ their lives – as in narrative – can tell
something new.2 Still another that intersects both of these is a multifaceted tradi-
tion in ‘pedagogy studies,’ those feminist, critical, post-colonial and so forth. The
pedagogic is precisely to protest a society based in hierarchy, unequal power, and in
spite of its ‘democratic rhetoric,’ one in which there is for many people continued
328 LYNDA STONE

silence and invisibility. Coming out of narrative connections in all of this work
has been attention to and use of ‘performance.’ Telling stories and enacting them
in new performance forms is supposed to give voice to the formerly silenced, to
undermine unjust representation and domination. This is through, one might posit,
a broad critical attention to the issue of identity and identity politics.3

IDENTITY

One way to describe the purpose of this narrative tradition is that everyone is
searching for ‘identity.’ Such a search is not surprising as part of the epoch of late
modernity, as a key political issue of the nineties. Modern persons who discovered
themselves consciously also are those inhabiting a century of psychology, exhib-
iting a heightened sensitivity to the self in which realization and control are central.
As indicated, this ‘self-conscious’ search for identity has been politically salient,
and it has been theoretically significant as well. In politics, this has been the
humanist century in which politics is defined through self-centered ‘isms,’ indi-
vidualism and at the same time group identifications. Recent decades have been
witness to a general debate over multiculturalism as well as specific group-based
movements led by women and people of color: ‘Isms’ and other unifiers abound in
multiple feminisms, in Afrocentrism, in ‘rights’ efforts by Latino/Latinas, Native
Americans, gays and lesbians, the ‘gray panthers’ and so on. One recent trend
following from the conservative era of the eighties is a strong emphasis on indi-
vidual persons’ ‘identity.’ Who one is matters and in educational research this
matter plays out in who is researched, by whom, and in what ways. Overall, sought
by everyone it seems, is identity – and through it voice and visibility – through it
power.

FEMINISMS

As just indicated furthermore, one movement within which identity and identity
politics has been most significant is ‘feminisms,’ itself named in the plural to
indicate diversity of persons and viewpoints. In this paper, two theoretical tradi-
tions are presented, pragmatism and poststructuralism, respectively from Charlene
Haddock Seigfried and Peggy Phelan. Neither author writes specifically of ‘iden-
tity,’ but the issue pertains nonetheless. Herein, a general seeking of autonomy,
control and the like is tied to “experience” in a particular pragmatism and to
“performance” in a particular poststructuralism. Basic to the first is a naturalism in
which the narrative tradition in educational research ‘feels right at home.’ The ‘real’
is sought through authenticity; voice is given to submerged experience that results
in a politics of visibility. Critical of the first, basic to the second is a questioning
of visibility itself in performance art that too enacts a politics. Here the happening
is both real and irreal, visible and invisible, in which ‘representation’ (and even
the anti-representation of neo-pragmatism) is made problematic. This is because
EXPERIENCE AND PERFORMANCE 329

to bring forth visiblity, that is identity, exposes it to danger, to domination by the

other: thus, a project seeking power is potentially ‘self-defeating.’

Two Projects
The two feminist projects are each elegantly described by Seigfried and Phelan.
Seigfried is professor of philosophy at Purdue University and author of Prag-
matism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric (1996). This work, she claims,
recognizes and positively responds to present day multiple feminisms. However,
it also “belongs with the earlier, tentative phases of feminism” since central to
the method is a return to classical pragmatist sources (Seigfried, 1996, p. 3). The
general aim is to make connections for contemporary philosophy between prag-
matism and feminism and to ‘portend’ a feminist pragmatism. The intersection has
important adherents today, for example, the writings of Nancy Fraser along with the
protestations of Richard Rorty, and surely even more broadly the strong presence
of neopragmatist writings worldwide. Lastly, Seigfried claims that the intersection
between pragmatism and feminism is itself ‘natural,’ in that both are practical, that
is “set by various communities of interest, the members of which are best situated
to name, resist, and overcome oppressions of class, sex, race, and gender” (Ibid.,
p. 37).
Juxtaposed to Seigfried, Phelan is professor of performance studies at the Tisch
School of the Arts at New York University and author of Unmarked: The Politics
of Performance (1993). Introducing her project, Phelan writes,
Unmarked attempts to find a theory of value for that which is not ‘really’ there
. . . By locating a subject in what cannot be reproduced within the ideology of
the visible, I am attempting to revalue a belief in subjectivity and identity which
is not visibly representable. This is not the same thing as calling for greater
visibility of the hitherto unseen (1993, p. 1, emphasis added).
Again there are fellow travelers that include feminist theorists such as Judith Butler,
contributions from the likes of Derrida and Foucault, and most particularly a re-
working of Freudian psychoanalysis from Jacques Lacan. Also like Seigfried,
although of more recent vintage, Phelan returns for insight to earlier male theory.
From these two projects something should also be said about distinctive writing
styles – indications (I think) of what the theorizings entail. First again, Seigfried
writes in a style reminiscent of traditional philosophy that combines analysis and
critique with much incorporation of substantive support through commentary and
illustration. The major rhetorical contribution, in a kind of ‘soft’ argumentation, is
to selectively insert particular reading of the ‘masters.’ While always respectful and
inclusive, one has no doubt about her intention to call earlier pragmatism to task for
its gender bias: The aim is to reclaim from classical views what is useful for today
but clearly to extend as well. The text is sophisticated, still ‘formal’ yet invitingly
accessible. In her own words, “[the] method . . . is a pragmatist hermeneutics of
330 LYNDA STONE

cooperation as called for by Jane Addams and William James and developed into
community-based theories of inquiry by George Herbert Mead and John Dewey”
(Seigfried, 1996, p. 4). In the effort, both feminism and pragmatism are located
historically and conceptually, their favorings and flaws acknowledged. Unlike some
other feminist work on ‘experience,’ this writing is no easy valorization.
Phelan writes in a style of cultural studies and broadly-defined criticism with
much taking of conceptual support from various poststructuralists and primarily
from Lacan. Right at the outset, writing itself is featured in work that has a different
rhetorical structure and feel from that of Seigfried: there is little that reminds of
tradition (or perhaps this contributes to a new one). For Phelan – but with intent like
Seigfried’s reconstructions – theory introduces extensive, specific ‘case studies,’
that are themselves taken from multiple forms of performance art. As she puts this,
“[each] representation relies and reproduces a specific logic of the real; this logical
real promotes its own representation. The real partakes of and generates different
imagistic and discursive paradigms” (Phelan, 1993, p. 2). Contrasting still further,
while the studies express philosophical thought that is driven by illustration –
between the two there is difference in ‘logical structure’ and emphasis that amounts
theoretically to much more. Feminism also ‘appears’ differently; for Phelan it is
embedded and endemic and not a matter of ‘connection’ as it is for Seigfried.
Phelan’s book, finally, reads as a set of differentiated essays with introduction and
epilogue rather than as a unified work.

Experience
As just introduced, Seigfried seeks an overlapping of feminism with a twentieth
century, quintessentially American philosophy. As a starting point, she writes,
Pragmatism, as a philosophy that stresses the relation of theory to praxis, takes
the continuity of experience and nature as revealed through the outcome of
directed action as the starting point for reflection. Experience is the ongoing
transaction of organism and environment; in other words both subject and
object are constituted in the process. When intelligently ordered, initial condi-
tions are deliberately transformed . . . into a subsequent state of affairs thought
to be more desirable (Seigfried, 1996, pp. 6–7).
Seigfried appeals to experience as defined principally by Dewey, in which concrete
interactions of living over time not only answer individual needs but also those
of community. As a neopragmatist position, deliberations of such a community are
consensual to the degree that concerted action is understood as “revisable, strategic,
and directed toward specific ends-in-view” (Ibid., p. 275). Avowedly feminist,
two tensions are recognized and indeed valued: the first is of “lived experiences
and theoretical appropriations,” and the second is of “feminism as experienced by
different persons, members of varied ethnic groups, classes, sexual identities, and
so forth” (p. 8).
EXPERIENCE AND PERFORMANCE 331

Like educators of several generations, philosopher Seigfried is captivated by

Dewey’s conception of experience but not simplistically. Positive is the authority
of one’s experiential existence and perspective as an appeal to action to redress
wrongs (p. 142). With Seigfried and Dewey there is basic agreement that exper-
ience is primary but that it is also fully-funded and contextualized. Seigfried
highlights that fully-funded experience is a unity of conditions and consequences –
means and ends – that are cognitive, ‘esthetic,’ moral, and above all, practical and
communicative.
Furthermore, for Seigfried, four aspects of Dewey’s experience have particular
relevance for feminist considerations of women’s lives. These are the following:
(1) Overcoming Cartesian hierarchical dualisms of experience, (2) Incorporating
the perspectival nature of experience, (3) Developing standards of judgment based
on concrete experience, and (4) Recognizing the role of feeling. In each there is
something of value in Dewey’s pragmatism but something more that is needed to
get rid of the gender ‘problem.’ The first category, rejecting dualisms, is the most
important contribution since from it more broad critique ensues. For Dewey, several
dualisms are singled out for attention: fixed vs. changing reality, immaterial minds
vs. material bodies, thinking and reflection vs. doing and making, and theory vs.
practice. These are exemplified in a telling example that demonstrates Dewey’s
pragmatist gender bias beyond the language practices of his generation: Dewey
applauds change in human needs for protection from forces out of women’s control
and specifically notes that in his day they are better able to care of themselves. But
Seigfried remarks,
The idea that it is women who originally sought protection and not men
who enforced subordination and developed social attitudes hostile to women
is surely a masculinist view. . . . [Moreover, there continue] differing relations
of women and men to the structures of power that Dewey sometimes seems
to recognize, but not to the extent of developing a sustained explanation for
. . . [them nor for their being overcome] (p. 150).
To continue, Seigfried locates responsibility for Dewey’s position in ‘shortsighted-
ness’ in the discipline of philosophy itself. She relates that
Dewey was able to recognize and denounce classism and racism in philosoph-
ical analyses . . . [but] philosophy itself continued to be a traditional part of
men’s lived world. . . . [Even as Dewey knew this was changing, his vision of
philosophy] helped obscure the sexism of its unquestioned masculinist point of
view (Ibid.).

NATURALISM

Experience, philosophy, all of life for Dewey is part of a natural order and
it is this naturalism that is the basis for his pragmatism. Seigfried offers the
following: “Believing that human beings were ‘as natural as stones, trees and stars,
332 LYNDA STONE

[Dewey revealed] the characteristically human as natural, and thus included mind,
consciousness, values, and ends in nature’ ” (p. 98). There is no nature-culture
dualism. For her as for Dewey, naturalism importantly is not taken for granted.
Indeed, women’s lot for both was and is understood as relative to specific histor-
ical moments and while part of, still not isomorphic to nature itself. Remember
Dewey was at the least interactionist and wrote in many places about subjective and
objective influences on experience. In today’s parlance, while a materialist world is
‘out there,’ “reality is always as much a function of one’s angle of vision and lived
experience as it is of what is available to be experienced” (p. 153). Importantly,
here Seigfried elaborates in neo-pragmatist terms on the partiality of all vision and
on the potentiality of recognizing that any experience and experiential position
is “finite, incomplete, and in principle capable of revision when new experiences
and reflective interpretations . . . [for oneself and in concert with others become]
available” (Ibid.).
Now something more needs to be said about pragmatic naturalism given the
poststructuralist response to follow; here recall of the other three contributions from
Dewey is useful. The first, as Seigfried describes, is this: Experience is reality, that
is what and how “men act and are acted upon, the ways in which they do and suffer,
desire and enjoy, see, believe, imagine” (p. 151). Moreover reality is perspectival as
just described; clearly this is no naïve empiricism. Moreover, there is recognition
originally from Mead that ‘identity’ arises out of a generalized other before it is
individualized. Seigfried sums, “[It] makes sense both to say that as women we
already see the world from a woman’s perspective and that we learn to see from
the point of view of women” (p. 155).
Overall, naturalism is present ‘all the way down,’ first as a kind of ‘meta-
physics.’ Seigfried explains from Dewey: “The unstable equilibrium of the
hazardous and the stable both set problems for us and make possible a movement
toward resolution. Because we desire change and satisfaction, its instantiation can
be recognized as an accomplishment, judged good and asserted as a . . . [valuable
whole]” (p. 159). Second in addition to the reality of experience, there is organic
unity: A recognition and valuation of the emotional phase of experience pervades
and unifies the intellectual and practical aspects of experience. There are two forms
of emotion, the felt quality of the forming experience and the typical feelings
throughout. From Seigfried again, “The ideal . . . is to engage in experiences that
reach their full consummation through converting mere impulsion into more rich
and gracious human intercourse” (p. 169). Significantly here the feminist critique is
that Dewey’s experience is necessarily partial but a partiality of “privilege” (Ibid.).
Finally for Seigfried, Dewey expressed some insight about privilege but because
of who he was could not understand experiences “from the fringe.”
To conclude, Seigfried’s feminist pragmatism, like Dewey’s earlier version, is
based in naturalistic experience; moreover it does concern identity – although not
directly. Identity clearly is implicit in recognition of perspective and privilege.
Moreover ‘someone’ acts in the pragmatist idiom; that someone of course is
EXPERIENCE AND PERFORMANCE 333

formed out of experience just as who one is helps construct experience itself. One
more comparative point: Seigfried’s neo-pragmatism incorporates language, not as
primary but in its mediative function.

Performance
In an obviously different tradition and writing style, Phelan is interested also in
‘identities and the fringe.’ However, her point is precisely to put the previous
(although contemporaneous) view itself into question: a philosophical juxtaposi-
tion, indeed a textual contrast ensues. Overall, Phelan’s studies of the “unmarked”
utilize combinations of various poststructuralisms, modes of performance, and
exemplars from a broad theoretical stance. Here is her general summary:
Employing psychoanalysis and feminist theories of representation, I am
concerned with marking the limit of the image in the political field of the
sexual and racial other. I take as axiomatic the link between the image and
the word, that what one can see is in every way related to what one can
say. . . . [But in images] representation follows two laws: it always conveys
more than it intends; and it is never totalizing. The ‘excess’ meaning conveyed
by representation . . . [as well as ruptures and gaps in attempts at totalization]
makes multiple and resistant readings possible . . . [and] can produce psychic
resistance, and possibly, political change (Phelan, 1993, p. 2).
The general point is this: efforts at making the invisible visible through representa-
tions create situations in which what is “real” can be dominated. Various discursive
‘reals’ – standard and western science, law, theater, autobiography, and psychoana-
lysis (among others) – contain within them what Phelan identifies as “meta-texts
of exclusionary power” (1993, p. 3). The more visibility of individuals and groups
in effect means the more opportunity for reinscription of domination. Thus groups
utilizing standard narrative and performance – in what is an analogue to experience
– actually undermine their own efforts at power. What this means becomes clear
subsequently; meanwhile more on Phelan’s theory of performance as it is inspired
by Lacan.
Lacanian identity theory begins in recognition of the historical/cultural domin-
ance of man over woman with the former “marked” with value and the latter
“unmarked.” As Phelan explains, “within this psycho-philosophical frame, cultural
reproduction takes she who is unmarked and re-marks her, rhetorically and imagist-
ically, while he who is marked . . . is left unremarked in discursive and visual
fields. He is the norm and therefore remarkable; as the Other, it is she whom he
marks” (Ibid., p. 5). Representationally, this means that in the realm of the visible,
both in language and in art, woman as Other remains “unseen.” Now this seems
problematic in ‘traditionally’ feminist interpretations of Lacan (in all traditions
in which Woman is Other) since the effort has been to make women visibile
(though Lacan argues that this is impossible). As indicated above, in contrast to
334 LYNDA STONE

theorizings for visibility, Phelan’s important contribution is to see that visibility

itself is a trap! As she puts it, “it summons surveillance and the law; it provokes
voyeurism, fetishism, the colonialist/imperialist appetite for possession” (Ibid.,
p. 6). There is, she asserts, power is invisibility, in “remaining unremarked.” This
power, significantly, is ‘represented’ in certain acts of performance art.

PERFORMANCE ART

From the introduction, Angelika Festa’s startling performance is one among many
by her and others in a contemporary genre of “performance art.” The genre, one
might say, is both an extension and transformation of an ancient and enduring
tradition of dramatic presentation.4 Herein the representation, or better said the
reproduction (as art), belies any notion of ‘real experience.’ It is anti-representation,
a theme returned to subsequently. To begin, Phelan’s definition of performance art
is useful:
Performance art usually occurs in the suspension between the ‘real’ physical
matter of the ‘performing body’ and the psychic experience of what it is to be
em-bodied. Like a rackety bridge swaying under too much weight, performance
keeps one anchor on the side of the corporeal (the body Real) and one on
the side of the psychic Real. Performance boldly and precariously declares
that Being is performed (and made temporarily visible) in that suspended
in-between (Ibid., p. 167).
Central to transformed performance, feminist poststructuralist terms such as
presence, reproduction, and ‘the invisible’ ironically replace more ‘standard’ (read
pragmatist) and natural notions of experience, representation, and visibility. The
point of Festa’s ‘dance’ is to value loss, of that which “appears in order to disap-
pear.” Not only is the actor’s identity complicated by the enshrouding and ‘failed’
attempts at reproduction, but also the interaction of actor and spectator itself denies
reproduction, that is ‘representation.’ Who or what is seen/sees/is visible/invisible
and to whom? Within this question is another: what is art and its meaning – what
meaning can be pinned down?
In this performance, standard “performance” is itself undercut. The Lacanian
explanation from Phelan is worth quoting as length:
In moving from the grammar of words to the grammar of the body, one
moves from the realm of metaphor to the realm of metonymy. . . . Metaphor
works to secure a vertical hierarchy of value and is reproductive; it works by
erasing dissimilarity and negating difference; it turns two into one. Metonymy
is additive and associative; it works to secure a horizontal axis of contiguity and
displacement. . . . In performance, the body is metonymic of self, of character,
of voice, of ‘presence.’ But in the plenitude of its apparent visibility and avail-
ability, the performer actually disappears and represents something else (Ibid.,
p. 150).
EXPERIENCE AND PERFORMANCE 335

Performance (real and representational) and presence, visibility, identity, and repro-
duction are displaced through loss that is not loss: what is valued is that which
is not. Moreover displacement means that the spectator’s desire to master the
performance itself fails and one who ‘sees’ becomes both ‘non-masterful’ but also
‘masterless’ (p. 158).
In her description of Festa, Phelan writes that the performer’s “eyes were
covered with silver tape and thus looked, in all senses, beyond the spectator”
(p. 153). Given Lacan’s remonstrance above and its ironic implications, the covered
eyes serve as metaphor for traditional performance: representation and identity
are undermined. In this event so are ‘images’ of birth, death, and resurrection in
their performative overlaying and indeed with them so goes western metaphysics.
Moreover, in the dualistic structure of the poles upon which the body is hung,
the impression is that ‘woman’ can only be represented “within the space between
oppositions” (Ibid); thus ‘she’ is something more as a different and poststructuralist
‘Other.’ Added to this is an ‘other’ to the naturalism of pragmatist philosophy,
experience and language are undone through the ambiguity of a performance that
is not one.

Conclusion
Connected to a recent research interest in education to narrative and to its perfor-
mance is a basic interest in identity. In this article, two significant contemporary
views, those within feminist pragmatism and feminist poststtructuralism, have been
the focus, respectively from Charlene Haddock Seigfried and Peggy Phelan. There
is contrast and juxtaposition, now concluded: Pragmatism rests in a naturalism in
which experience is primary. Sought is an identity politics in which experience
equals identity equals visibility. This is, one emphasizes, a sophisticated view
in which there is no essence, no static “real,” and no homogeneity: the theory
is anti-representational and anti-foundational. Denied is simple, positivist, corre-
spondence between identity and reality in any ‘true’ sense; denied is any one or
objective framework by which to construct sense. In contrast, poststructuralism
‘resides’ in a ‘textualism’ in which image/word are ‘all there is.’ What is evoked is
only ambiguity and multiplicity of identity, and a concurrent politics. This too is a
sophisticated view in which there is always excess and loss, the real and irreal, the
visible and invisible. Any search for anything more is denied.
With identity as the ‘aim,’ experience is explicated in an updated pragmatist
writing of Seigfried and performance ‘art’ is explicated in a post-structuralist
account of Phelan. For one Dewey is the source of reconstruction; for the other
the source is Lacan. Key to the contrasting views from pragmatism and poststruc-
turalism are three pairs of terms: nature to language, visibility to invisibility, and
metaphor to metonymy. In selecting these, as has been implied I think previously,
there is critique of the second terms over the first (with an ironic nod to dualisms)
concerning a continued danger of domination. First, nature to language: Even as
336 LYNDA STONE

Dewey wanted to change experience to culture – and with it he was giving some
attention to language – his failure to take the linguistic turn means that he cannot
sufficiently move away from correspondence truth (from representation) even as
he was a consequentialist instead. For Seigfried, even in a reconstruction, exper-
ience retains an ‘essentialism’, even as it is pluralistic. From Phelan’s critique,
a first concluding point is this: no matter individual assertions, there is no basic
experience for identity; this is illusion. Second, visibility to invisibility: The fore-
grounding of experience by those ‘invisibilized’ is precisely to cast identity as
visibility – and for power from both. But, from Phelan again, this is dangerous
since to be visible is to be vulnerable, to become a target as other. Third, metaphor
to metonymy: this requires more explication.
Narrative and standard performance are based in metaphor, that is, in the idea
that words and actions stand for experience (just as experience stands for iden-
tity). Central to the tradition, “metaphor” itself is ambiguous – its value in the
capacity for ‘movement,’ ‘fluidity,’ and the like. However, as Lacan posits, there is
something more to metaphor that is both insidious and invidious. This is that it is
conflating, assimilating and reproductive, making the two terms of its comparison
into one, into a unity. It is a unity that denies diversity, difference and the other,
that ironically denies identity. Now the last point of conclusion: just as experience
is potentially ‘self-defeating’ of identity – and power – so too is metaphoric use of
language. The result of this inquiry – the poststructuralist implication – is then an
ethics of warning. This is of potential domination through experience and standard
performance, a danger not only of act but of discourse of which all should be wary.4

Notes
1 In these postmodern times in which irony, paradox, parody and other textual plays prevail, in this
piece, my own terms and twists on traditions and concepts are indicated by single quote marks.
2 Performance is part of dramatic traditions that include Chamber and Readers Theater as well as
imprtant theorizing in anthropology led by Victor Turner (1986). A discussion of these for qualitative
research is found in Norman Denzin’s recent book on new practices; see Denzin (1997). A thanks
here to George Noblit’s “sofo” students for inspiration and to Jennie Gordon and Enrique Murillo for
specific references.
3 More typical attention to identity than in this piece is found within the broad tradition of “critical
theory.” With Marxist roots, a contemporary feminism is “Socialist,” with important inclusions of
gender, race and ethnicity, and sexual preference ‘added’ to class. See a recent overview collection
of feminist theories from Rosemary Tong (1988).
4 An earlier version of this paper was delivered as part of a symposium, “Transgressing Bound-
aries: Calling Performance/Performativity into Question,” Division B, SIGs Philosophical Studies
in Education, Arts-Based Educational Research, American Educational Research Association, San
Diego, 1998. Thanks to Mimi Orner and Jim Garrison, to James Marshall, Alven Neiman, Wendy
Kohli, and especially Zelia Gregoriou, and to Tomas Englund and colleagues at the University of
Orëbro for supportive contributions.
EXPERIENCE AND PERFORMANCE 337

References
Denzin, N.: 1997, Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century, Sage,
Thousand Oaks, CA.
Phelan, P.: 1993, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Routledge, London, p. 152.
Seigfried, C.H.: 1996, Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric, The University of
Chicago Press, Chicago.
Tong, R.: 1988, Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction, Westview, Boulder, CO.
Turner, V.: 1986, The Anthropology of Performance, PAJ Publications, New York.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.