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International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital

Media

ISSN: 1479-4713 (Print) 2040-0934 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpdm20

On repetition. Writing, performance & art

Clio Unger

To cite this article: Clio Unger (2017): On repetition. Writing, performance & art, International
Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, DOI: 10.1080/14794713.2017.1281644

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2017.1281644

Published online: 26 Jan 2017.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA, 2017

BOOK REVIEW

On repetition. Writing, performance & art, edited by Eirini Kartsaki, Bristol, UK/
Chicago, US, Intellect, 2016, 231 pp., £75.00 (hardcover), ISBN 9781783205776

On Repetition is a book about arts, philosophy, humanities and the West. In the West, an air of
staleness clings to the concept of repetition. Artistic value is prescribed according to ideas of
novelty and originality. A work of art that is branded repetitive might as well have been called
unoriginal, apathetic or redundant. It is precisely this persisting notion of negativity that the 12
authors of this volume write against. In the process, they unearth not only a multiplicity of per-
spectives on the aesthetic, political, emotional and cognitive implications of the use of rep-
etition in performance and art, but they also manage the self-reflexive task of asking what
role repetition can play when writing for and within the humanities. The answers they find
are surprisingly varied.
The interdisciplinary collection approaches repetition through 11 case studies within con-
temporary performance, dance, cinema, craft and literature. Springing from Steven Conner’s
idea that ‘repetition is at one and the same time that which stabilizes and guarantees the Pla-
tonic model of origin and copy and that which threatens to undermine it’ (3), Eirini Kartsaki and
her contributors understand repetition as a ‘notion of practice that is not subordinated to the
idea of the original but is rather appreciated in its own right’ (5). The practices of repetition, of
what it means to repeat and what it means to return to works that repeat in writing are inter-
rogated through an array of different theoretical perspectives ranging from psychoanalysis,
philosophy and linguistics to sociology, queer theory and performance studies. Even though
there is such variety in approach and method, certain themes shine through: questions of
desire, trauma, interruption, citation, the uncanny and their relation to repetition come up
again and again in the different explorations.
In her endorsement of the book, Andrea Brady calls the collection ‘more than a little com-
pulsive.‘ Yes, there is something compulsive, maybe even obsessive, in the way these authors
return to the art works they analyse. Often, the reader follows the authors as they return to
works they have previously discussed, thought or written about. Quite a few of them describe
their reasons for engaging with a specific work of art in terms of haunting, nostalgia and obses-
sion. And many struggle and experiment with the way of transcribing and fixating these experi-
ences of artistic repetition. As a reader, one follows Alan Read down the corridors of the Victoria
and Albert Museum in London as he reimagines Kierkegaard’s Constantine Constantius
‘coming home’ to and from the theatre. One observes Emma Bennet as she re-re-tells a joke
by Stewart Lee, enthusiastically questioning her own reading again and again and again. Or,
one listens to Gareth Farmer and Lisa Kemp as they passionately and carefully dissect the inter-
sections of language and trauma, as they lay open the repetitive binds of social inscription.
These are but four examples of how the essays in this collection compellingly portray the intel-
lectual obsessions of their authors.
Repetition lies at the heart of the discussion around writing for the humanities since it is the
nexus of sameness, difference, virtuosity and alterity. The volume, therefore, has a distinctly
self-reflexive character. ‘To repeat is to simultaneously fix and transform’ (213), Clare Foster con-
cludes in the afterword. And thus, the authors constantly fix and transform their texts and their
attitudes towards these texts, and let their readers be privy to their process. In re-thinking their
own topics, they engage in repetition as a writing and thinking practice. They come across pro-
blems of plagiarism, ingenuity, self-doubt and creative approach. Some try to strike a balance
2 BOOK REVIEW

between their own artistic practice or auto-ethnographical research and theory. Others write
themselves into wormholes and then attempt different strategies to come out again. The
texts themselves become iterative performances asking the reader to re-read, or maybe
better yet, to re-write them over and over in their own minds.
At times the collection seems eclectic, and a rationale for the seemingly random selection is
never given. Similarly, breadth is privileged over depth. There is great variation in the detail
with which the authors tackle their objects of analysis. Sometimes, after following an author
down a particular wormhole, one would like to think through the problems posed there in
detail and is subsequently disappointed when that discussion does not ensue. The collection
choses to give a glimpse into various ideas around repetition rather than opt for a coherent
theoretical thread. Yet, it is exactly this wide range of topics that gives the volume its breezy
character that makes for such an intriguing and entertaining read, and often provokes one
to think along unexpected lines of thought.
Furthermore, the flow of the chapters is elegantly curated and compelling to follow. Often a
theme or idea is broached in one chapter and then picked up or expanded upon in the next. In
the end, the last essay echoes the first, which lets the collection come full circle. But it is Derri-
da’s twice traced circle that emerges here. As a reader, one wonders whether one is seeing
traces of the same in the different or traces of the different in the same. The promise of the
return to the beginning, the ‘original’ so to say, is nurtured and refused. And there is pleasure
in this paradox.
Lastly, the question that remains is one of perspective, access and recognition. This is unde-
niably a book about the West – a fact that the editor and the authors acknowledge throughout
the collection. It is written in the tradition of European philosophy, and the case studies are
Western examples as are voices of the contributors. Repetition poses a specific problem for
Western thought and has thus become a particularly Western obsession – one that is deeply
rooted in its conceptions of linearity and chronology. Especially since this is a point the collec-
tion drives home so well, it would have been interesting had it included some non-Western
perspectives that could have shed a different light on this Western dilemma or provided the
ground for a broader discussion of repetition in a globalized (art) world today.

Clio Unger
The Graduate Center, CUNY
cunger@gradcenter.cuny.edu
© 2017 Clio Unger
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2017.1281644

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