This book discusses affective practices in performance through the study of four contemporary performers – Keith Hennessy, Ilya Noé, Caro Novella, and duskin drum – to suggest a tentative rhetoric of performativity generating political affect and permeating attempts at social justice that are often alterior to discourse. The first part of the book makes a case for the political work done alongside discourse by performers practising with materials that are not-known, in ways that are directly relevant to people carrying out their daily lives. In the second part of the book, four case study chapters circle around figures of irresolvable paradox – hendiadys, enthymeme, anecdote, allegory – that gesture to what is not-known, to study strategies for processes of becoming, knowing and valuing. These figures also shape some elements of these performances that make up a suggested rhetorical stance for performativity.

Lynette Hunter has a background in rhetoric, philosophy and political theory. She has researched women’s history and feminism, the history of science and medicine, decolonialism and Canadian Studies, and, more recently, performance and practice. Writer, co-writer and co-editor of 30 books, her work is significantly informed by learning from daoist epistemology and indigenous ways of knowing.