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Performance as a Way of Life

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Abstract

Introduces social therapeutic performance activism as an improvisational approach to living one’s life and embodying one’s values by consciously performing who-one-is-becoming in the context of who-one-is. Looks at the conceptual roots of this approach in Karl Marx’s early methodological writings, the discoveries of Lev Vygotsky, the early Soviet developmental psychologist, who saw in play the means of human development, in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of language as a meaning-making activity, and in the conceptual leadership of Fred Newman and Lois Holzman, who initiated and developed this stream of performance activism for over four decades.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Friedman (2009) for an in-depth look at the history of this political tendency.

  2. 2.

    For a discussion of Vygotsky’s influence on social therapy and social therapeutics see Holzman (1999).

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Friedman, D. (2021). Performance as a Way of Life. In: Performance Activism. Palgrave Studies In Play, Performance, Learning, and Development. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80591-3_17

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