Performance Research - Volume 23, Issue 6: On Generosity

On Generosity offers critical examinations of the ethics and practices of generosity, as well as generosity’s inherent performativity. Without recourse to a naïve faith in its potential, but also without devolving into cynicism about its limits, this volume takes a fresh look at how generosity appears in performance and how generosity is performed. Contributors analyse practices and discourses of generosity in political and economic interventions, in everyday life, in social practice art and as represented in theatrical performances. Generosity is considered as a performative relation, and the volume includes enquiries into the generosity and generativity that may lie at the heart of performance itself. This is amplified in a special showcase section, ‘Cabinet of Generosities’, which proliferates examples of performance works that engage generosity as practice and as theme.