Publication Details
Freeman, J.
(2018).
Problems & provocations around performance, P-a-R & the PhD.
Antropologia e Teatro: Rivista Di Studi, 9.
Abstract
This contribution is deliberately intended as a provocation and questions the ways in which knowledge and understanding are articulated in the Performance-as-Research, as well as through the performance itself. The insidious P-a-R status, more like a mantra than a methodology, requires giving voice to some questions. Here the gaze openly addressed to the United Kingdom is here also influenced by two professional experiences at Australian universities; from residences conducted in the United States, Asia and continental Europe; from collaborations with academics in a dozen countries, as well as from participation in evaluation commissions for doctoral research in three different countries. Although they focus mainly on the British and Australian context, the issues addressed in this article are not entirely circumscribed at the local level; moreover, although it is not a self-ethnographic account, this contribution is based on numerous experiences of evaluation of students in the P-a-R conducted by its author. On this basis, some claims concerning P-a-R are questioned here, not least the idea that creative practice can serve its development in the framework of formal scientific research without difficulty.
Keywords
Practice-as-Research, PhD, performance, exegesis, subjectivity, ethics, truth
