The anthology Exploring Textual Action is the first publication emanating from the Text, Action and Space interdisciplinary project, developed by scholars from the universities of Bergen, Aarhus, Geneva and Oslo, along with the contributions of J. Hillis-Miller and Erika Fischer-Lichte. In the fourteen essays of the volume, the problem of language performativity is addressed from diverse theoretical perspectives illustrated by the analysis of literary texts, films and theatrical performances. All studies make a foray into the intricate field between aesthetic and cultural analysis, where diverse disciplines as well as the domains of theory and practice overlap. The interdisciplinary objective of the book is partly compromised by its predominant orientation towards literature. However, the quality of the essays and their bold attempt to connect literary and art theories with the theories of subject, intersubjective relations and communication merit respect and recognition.
The starting point of investigations is the conventional conceptual division between language and bodily action, and consequently between literature and performing arts. This division is underlined by Hillis Miller's distinguishing between two notions of performativity. He asserts that the ‘performativity sub one’, originating from Austine's theory of speech acts, is substantially different from the ‘performativity sub two’, related to onstage performances of music, movements and diverse roles. According to Miller, it is literature, with its nuanced explorations of different registers, on the one side, and its simulations of ‘reality’, on the other, that represents the privileged field of exploration of both notions of performativity.
Fischer-Lichte's text ‘Culture as Performance’ demonstrates a completely opposite approach. Here, the performative event (involving both performers and audience) is described as a liminal experience in which ‘the oppositions collapse, the dichotomies dissolve’ (p. 136). Fischer-Lichte links the studies of arts (including literature) with those of culture in that she considers them both as embodied performances.
Most of the following essays focus on literary texts and on diverse modes of textual action in the extratextual reality. The literary works of Dinesen, Kafka, Duras, Balzac, Breton, Virginia Woolf, Williams, Sarraute and Melville are recognized as particularly fruitful for this analysis. In the theoretical elaborations, these essays rely upon Hillis Miller's ideas of performative language, but also introduce the perspectives of Deleuze, Lévinas, Lyotard, Rancière and so on.
The remaining essays focus on textual performativity outside literature. The texts by Lombardo and Grønstad explore language performativity in cinema. The reading of Benjamin's Berlin Childhood focuses on the act of writing seen as ‘performative recollection’ and a new construction of the past. Koppen's text recognizes the idea of cultural performance in Leonard and Virginia Woolf's socially engaged essays. The interpretation of Sasha Waltz's performance Insideout analyses the ‘textual montage’ of the performance (i.e. how contextual discursive framings of the performance become part of its performative action).
Exploring Textual Action reveals an implicit tension between its interdisciplinary objectives, on the one side, and still quite tenacious disciplinary borders that give prevalence to literature and semiotics, on the other. However, the fact that essays with challenging phenomenological perspectives are included in the collection evidences the openness of the project to exploring the points of instability and conflicts which are always a part of the true interdisciplinary discussion.
