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This is the editorial for Performance Philosophy 7(2) (2022)

This is the editorial for Performance Philosophy 7(2) (2022)

This editorial introduces issue 4.2 of the Performance Philosophy journal. As a culmination of an "open call" for proposals, this edition prompts the reflection, "What is open?" The editorial pursues that question in order to map the open field of Performance Philosophy as it currently presents itself in this historical moment.

The ubiquity of "crisis" and its sheer pervasiveness as a description of the contemporary world means that we do not so much write about crisis as much as we write from crisis. What type of thought is possible within crisis? If crisis extends to thought itself, insofar as we find ourselves in a crisis of thought (i.e., the crisis of not being able to think beyond the crisis of thought), then what kind of thinking is possible anymore? These are the questions raised by this special issue of Performance Philosophy, introduced here by the issue's co-editors.

This collectively authored article is a curated response to a set of questions (or fragments of questions) derived from a year-long collaboration focused on the figure of the refugee. Delivered through mixed-media, the responses cover a vast range of territory, from the relation between refugees and global capitalism to the reign of bio- and necro-politics, from analytical philosophies of naming to continental philosophies of territorialized flows, and from conceptual mappings of interstitial space to concrete mappings of “refugee” movements across the globe.While the article addresses many different questions, the authors are concerned primarily with the following: How can performance philosophy conceptualize “crisis” in its methods and subjects of study? How is crisis organized, delivered and received in thought and performance? The form our response has taken is one of arranged fragments that speak to the “trailing off” of thought that so frequently occurs when faced with “big ideas.” Meanwhile, the content delivers multiple theses on the ways performance philosophy scholarship might grapple with the figure of the refugee, a figure that will surely dominate ethical discussions for years to come.

Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection

“Your Face”, RumiYou may be planning departure, as a human soulleaves the world taking almost all its sweetnesswith it. You saddle your horse.You must be going. Remember you have friendshere as faithful as grass and sky.Have I failed you? Possibly you'reangry. But remember our nights of conversation,the well work, yellow roses by ocean,the longing, the archangel Gabrielsaying So be it. [Finlay], your face,is what every religion tries to remember.I've broken through to longing now,filled with a grief I have felt before,but never like this.The center leads to love.Soul opens the creation core.Hold on to your particular painThat too can take you to God.My work is to carry this loveas comfort for those who long for you,to go everywhere you've walkedand gaze at the pressed-down dirt.Pale sunlight,pale the wall.Love moves away.The light changes.I need more gracethan I thought.

Declaration of belief:Performance Philosophers seek to think anew, not only for the fun of it but also to destroy (or at least artfully ignore) the well-tended perception that thinking must unfold in a certain way, through specific channels, and with the legitimacy bequeathed to thought (i.e., commodified thought; a kind of thought that might be trademarked) through validated keywords and slogans. For these reasons, Performance Philosophers seek to think the doing of life, with the expectation that to do so would mean to live a life worthy of the name. This manifesto elaborates on these claims and calls for the creation of an Invisible College through which we might express the potential of performance philosophy.