The room's need of a name : a philosophical study of performance

In much contemporary philosophy, language seems to be impaired by an epistemic paradox. On the one hand, language is considered as an inevitable means for justifying knowledge, but, on the other hand, linguistic applicability is undermined by a notion of referential inadequacy. This has brought about theories which rely on self-referential signification without empirical pertinence.

A way out of this prisonhouse of language can be found in the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He reflects on language as a set of games which acquire meaning by being used in social practices. However, inasmuch as language pertains to social circumstances, it is not necessarily functions which determine the outcome of the practices, but rather the way communication is enacted relative to a particular cultural environment. Wittgenstein's account of language is employed in a brief reading of historical theories of the theatre - which have always depended on philosophical presuppositions - and then extended through Nelson Goodman's pragmatic philosophy, in which art as well as science serve as epistemological instruments.

In the light of these philosophical reflections, Ola Johansson attempt to lay open an interpretive middleground on which performance theory and practice intersect.