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The Performer

Art, Life, Politics
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( 59 ratings, 15 reviews)
Brief Description
An exploration of public performance in everyday life, by the leading cultural and social thinker. The Performer explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics, and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical dimensions of performing, rather than on words. Richard Sennett... Read More
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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

An exploration of public performance in everyday life, by the leading cultural and social thinker.

The Performer explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics, and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical dimensions of performing, rather than on words. Richard Sennett is particularly attuned to the ways in which the rituals of ordinary life are performances.

The book draws on history and sociology, and more personally on the author's early career as a professional cellist, as well as on his later work as a city planner and social thinker. It traces the evolution of performing spaces in the city; the emergence of actors, musicians, and dancers as independent artists; the inequality between performer and spectator; the uneasy relations between artistic creation and social and religious ritual; the uses and abuses of acting by politicians. The Janus-faced art of performing is both destructive and civilizing.

This is the first in a trilogy of books on the fundamental DNA of human expressionβ€”performing, narrating, and imaging.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780241637647

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 01 February 2024

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Allen Lane

Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 28.0mm

Width: 158.0mm

Height: 238.0mm

Weight: 440g

Pages: 256

About the Author

Richard Sennett grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, attended the Julliard School in New York and then studied social relations at Harvard. Over the last five decades, he has written about social life in cities, changes in labour and social theory. His books include The Hidden Injuries of Class, The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, The Culture of the New Capitalism, The Craftsman and Building and Dwelling. Sennett has advised the United Nations on urban issues for the past thirty years and currently serves as member of the UN Committee on Urban Initiatives. He is Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at Harvard. Among other awards, he has received the Hegel Prize, the Spinoza Prize and the Centennial Medal from Harvard University.

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