Observing Performance in the Past. From the “Thaumaturge Kings” to “The Grand Massacre of the Cats”

Abstract

The article questions the value and use of the concept of cultural performance, which was introduced by cultural anthropology around the middle of last century, to describe the direct observation and particularly the study of the past of theatrical cultures. The author focuses initially on the parallelisms between the instruments of anthropology and the emphasis on time and space in historical research. He then refers to Marc Bloch’s inaugural work on the ceremonials of sacred royalty. He goes on to discuss a few examples where historiography in the second half of the twentieth century has expanded the limits of analysis of cultures and social history, recurring explicitly or indirectly to Turner and Clifford Geertz’s interpretive anthropology. At the centre is the debate raised by the famous article of 1984 by Robert Darnton on the cruel revenge, around 1730, taken by the workers of a Paris printing press against the owner’s cats. Despite the controversies about Darnton’s method, the author’s analysis has produced concrete achievements and a new shift in the field of research on traditions, applications and identities involved in representational practices.