Representing the Past : Essays in Performance Historiography
Representing the Past : Essays in Performance Historiography
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代表过去:表演史学论文
作者：
Kim Solga;Charlotte M. Canning
戏剧和表演史学已经进入了某种复兴时期，或者说，从这里审查的两个优秀的收藏中可以看出。同年出版的《再现过去：表演史学和戏剧史学论文集：批判性干预》提供了一系列有见地、经过精心研究、文笔优美的论文，延续了托马斯·波斯特韦特和布鲁斯·麦康纳奇在《解读戏剧的过去：表演史学论文集》（爱荷华州大学出版社，1989年）中首次开始的工作。在批判理论对历史学术价值争论的重要转折点上，《解读戏剧的过去》的出版展示了理论如何能够活跃研究和写作表演史的实践。今天，聚集在《再现过去》和《戏剧史学》一书中的大多数（如果不是全部的话）作者都把理论作为一种给定的东西。然而，他们强调戏剧和表演历史学家需要继续思考他们如何以及为什么优先考虑某些方法和叙事轨迹，重新审视他们的偏见，并考虑从人文和社会科学的其他学科中获得灵感可能会得到什么。正如书名所示，《再现过去》，由夏洛特M.坎宁和托马斯波斯特韦特，是在许多方面期待已久的“续集”解释的过去。尽管编辑们承认与早期的文集有着明确的关系，但他们强调，他们的目标不是“重新思考、重新表述或重新构建对历史的解释”（3），而是“调查历史探究和理解的一些基本条件。. .专注于历史研究、分析和写作中不会改变的方面”（3）通过统一的表征主题。为此，他们邀请了15位著名学者撰写论文，探讨五个关键概念之一-“档案，时间，空间，身份和叙事”（9）-仍然与戏剧和表演的历史研究相关。这些概念，“作为心灵的坐标，作为思想的范畴，”是核心，
Theatre and performance historiography has entered a renaissance of sorts, or so it would seem from the two excellent collections under review here. Published in the same year, Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography and Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions offer a series of insightful, meticulously researched, and elegantly written essays that continue the work first begun by Thomas Postlewait and Bruce McConachie in Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance (University of Iowa Press, 1989). Published at an important turning point in debates over the value of critical theory to historical scholarship, Interpreting the Theatrical Past demonstrated how theory might enliven the practice of researching and writing performance history. Today, most if not all of the authors gathered in Representing the Past and Theater Historiography take theory as a given. They nevertheless stress the need for theatre and performance historians to continue thinking about how and why they privilege certain methodologies and narrative trajectories over others, to reexamine their biases, and to consider what might be gained from turning to other disciplines of the humanities and social sciences for inspiration. As its title suggests, Representing the Past, coedited by Charlotte M. Canning and Thomas Postlewait, is in many respects the long-awaited “sequel” to Interpreting the Theatrical Past. Although the editors acknowledge a clear relationship with the earlier collection, they emphasize that their goal was not to “rethink, reformulate, or reconstitute Interpreting the Theatrical Past” (3), but rather to “investigate some of the fundamental conditions of historical inquiry and understanding . . . focus[ing] on aspects of historical research, analysis, and writing that do not change” (3) through the unifying topic of representation. To that end, they have invited fifteen leading scholars to write essays that explore one of five key concepts—“archive, time, space, identity, and narrative” (9)—that remain relevant to the historical study of theatre and performance. These concepts, which “serve as coordinates of the mind, as categories of thought,” are central to