Problems & Provocations around Performance, P-a-R & the PhD

• Main Author: John Freeman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Bologna 2018-09-01
• Series: Antropologia e Teatro
• Subjects: practice-as-research; phd; performance; exegesis; subjectivity; ethics; truth
• Online Access: https://antropologiaeteatro.unibo.it/article/view/8556

This paper is intended as a provocation; and it asks questions of the ways in which knowledge and understanding are articulated through P-a-R in and through performance. The article argues that P-a-R’s creeping status as more of a mantra than a methodology necessitates the asking of some questions. The article's overtly UK perspective is tempered by a positions at two Australian universities; residencies undertaken in the US, Asia and mainland Europe; collaborations with academics in a dozen countries and PhD examination in three countries. Whilst the focus of the article remains predominantly British and Australian the issues addressed are not entirely local; whilst not quite an autoethnography, the article draws on its writer’s examination of numerous P-a-R students. It is from this platform of support that the article questions some of the assumptions around P-a-R, not least the idea that creative practice can readily serve as its own articulation within formal research contexts.