Transcript: Performing Remains

Alex: Welcome to another episode of ResearchPod. Today, we're exploring the infrastructure of academic publishing — specifically, how we navigate the vast digital libraries that hold scientific knowledge.

Sam: So this is about the tools we use to find research? It feels like we're often looking for a needle in a haystack.

Alex: That's a fair way to put it. One of the core challenges is that websites are built using standardized, repetitive blocks of code to organize their pages. Think of it like the skeleton of a building — the same steel beams and stairwells appear on every floor, even though each floor has completely different rooms. In web design, we call these repeated structural elements "boilerplate."

Sam: Like the menus and footers that appear on every single page of a site? They provide structure, but they aren't the actual research.

Alex: Exactly. And alongside those structural elements, there's another layer — information about the information. The title of a paper, who wrote it, when it was published, which journal it appeared in. None of that is the research itself, but it helps you locate and evaluate the research. We call this kind of descriptive labeling "metadata." Think of it like the label on a library book — the label isn't the story, but without it, you'd never find the right shelf.

Sam: So the problem is that when we try to access a specific study, we often run into these navigation layers before we even reach the content itself. How do we separate what we're actually looking for from all the surrounding structure?

Alex: That's really the central question. These structural elements — the boilerplate and the metadata — are genuinely useful. They make large collections of information navigable. But they can also get in the way when what you want is the actual findings buried inside a document. It's a bit like trying to read a recipe when the page is half-covered by ads and site navigation. The content is there, but you have to work to get to it.

Sam: It makes you realize that the way we store and organize knowledge matters almost as much as the knowledge itself.

Alex: That's a point worth sitting with. The architecture of how information is structured shapes what we can find, how quickly we can find it, and sometimes whether we find it at all. Without these digital signposts, the sheer volume of scientific literature would be genuinely unnavigable — but designing those signposts well is its own significant challenge.

Sam: So there's real work happening just to make sure the map of science is readable, not just the science itself.

Alex: Precisely. And that work tends to be invisible until something goes wrong. Thanks for listening to ResearchPod.

Performing Remains

Rebecca Schneider

Mar 1, 2011·2:18·zotero·Original Paper

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2 min

Briefing

The Persistence of Performance

Rebecca Schneider challenges the traditional binary between the 'live' performance and the 'archival' record. In much of performance studies, the field has been dominated by the idea that performance is inherently ephemeral—that it vanishes the moment it occurs. Schneider argues against this 'ontology of disappearance,' suggesting instead that performance is a powerful mode of memory and historical survival.

Challenging the Archive

Schneider posits that the body itself acts as an archive. Rather than viewing the live act as the opposite of the document, she suggests that performance is a way of 'doing' history. By repeating gestures, rituals, and reenactments, performers engage in a form of cultural transmission that keeps the past alive in the present. This perspective shifts the focus from the loss of the performance to the ways in which performance remains through the body’s capacity to store and transmit experience.

Why It Matters

This work is foundational for scholars interested in how history is embodied. By reframing the relationship between the ephemeral and the permanent, Schneider allows researchers to see performance not as a fragile, vanishing act, but as a robust method of historical engagement. It provides a critical lens for analyzing reenactments, oral histories, and the ways in which marginalized communities maintain their heritage through embodied practice rather than traditional written records.

Key Terms and Definitions

Ontology of Disappearance — The prevailing academic assumption that performance is defined by its fleeting nature and its inability to be captured or preserved.
Inter-corporeality — The concept that memory and history are transmitted between bodies through shared gestures and physical reenactments.
Archival Logic — The traditional reliance on static, material documents as the primary evidence of history, which Schneider critiques as incomplete.
Reenactment — A performance practice that serves as a method of historical inquiry, allowing the past to be physically re-experienced in the present.

Abstract

'At last, the past has arrived! Performing Remains is Rebecca Schneider's authoritative statement on a major topic of interest to the field of theatre and performance studies. It extends and consolidates her pioneering contributions to the field through its interdisciplinary method, vivid writing, and stimulating polemic. Performing Remains has been eagerly awaited, and will be appreciated now and in the future for its rigorous investigations into the aesthetic and political potential of reenactments.' - Tavia Nyong'o, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University 'I have often wondered where the big, important, paradigm-changing book about re-enactment is: Schneider’s book seems to me to be that book. Her work is challenging, thoughtful and innovative and will set the agenda for study in a number of areas for the next decade.' - Jerome de Groot, University of Manchester Performing Remains is a dazzling new study exploring the role of the fake, the false and the faux in contemporary performance. Rebecca Schneider argues passionately that performance can be engaged as what remains, rather than what disappears. Across seven essays, Schneider presents a forensic and unique examination of both contemporary and historical performance, drawing on a variety of elucidating sources including the "America" plays of Linda Mussmann and Suzan-Lori Parks, performances of Marina Abramovic´ and Allison Smith, and the continued popular appeal of Civil War reenactments. Performing Remains questions the importance of representation throughout history and today, while boldly reassessing the ritual value of failure to recapture the past and recreate the "original."

Performing Remains | Rebecca Schneider | ResearchPod

Performing Remains: Research Paper Podcast