Philipp Schulte focuses on experimental forms of theatre that evade the concept of oeuvre and consider themselves as practices of investigation. His description of critique and style in contemporary performance arts in the mode of alternative genealogies presents the lecture-performance Product of Other Circumstances by the French choreographer and dancer Xavier Le Roy as well as the production Into the Skirt by Japanese performance artist Mamoru Iriguchi. In both cases, their scenic research questions the relationship between theory and practice, as well as that between scientific research and artistic creation. It is in direct reference to core concepts of the political that these performances develop their own resistant potential. Both artists, in spite of their considerable differences, develop pieces within the tension of integration and de-integration in the symbolic orders of a style of dance, an economic system of marketing, or of heteronormative practices. Combining Le Roy’s works with a reading of Foucault and Butler, Schulte emphasizes the usefulness of a concept of style in conceiving of these phenomena of a (not merely) artistic de-submission; meanwhile, the analysis of Iriguchi’s performances denotes a proximity to the philosophical textual form of critical genealogy.

This volume contrasts a number of recently suggested concepts of the political – each of which connects to certain instances of art and literature in its discourse – with questions concerning the rigidity of those connections: How strongly do such claims to politics depend on their specific examples, what is the scope of their validity to understand art with regard to politics, and how can they help us grasp the political within other pieces of art? In each case, manners of thinking concepts of the political, the mutual resistance of such concepts and their academic treatment, and the turn towards specific readings informed by those concepts converge.

The essays collected in “Thinking Resistances. Current Perspectives on Politics, Community, and Art“ engage with political phenomena in their interrelations with arts as well as with recent theoretical and philosophical perspectives on the very meaning of politics, the political, and community.

With contributions by Armen Avanessian, Friedrich Balke, Judith Butler, Simon Critchley, Anneka Esch-van Kan, Josef Früchtl, Andreas Hetzel, Jon McKenzie, Dieter Mersch, Chantal Mouffe, Maria Muhle, Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, Stephan Packard, Wim Peeters, Jacques Rancière, Juliane Rebentisch, Gabriel Rockhill, Frank Ruda and Philipp Schulte.