Text and Performance in Africa

Abstract

In written literary traditions the distinction between text and performance seems self-evident. The text is the permanent artifact, handwritten or printed, while the performance is the unique, never-to-be repeated realization or concretization of the text, a realization that "brings the text to life" but which is itself doomed to die on the breath in which it is uttered. Text fixes, performance animates. But even in written traditions, there are all kinds of different relations possible between a "text" and a "performance." Written texts can be cues, scripts, or stimulants to oral performance, and can also be records, outcomes, or by-products of it. Even texts usually thought of as belonging purely within the written sphere can have a performative dimension. If, as is true in many traditions, text depends on performance and performance on text, comparative literary studies should help us to conceptualize the nature and degree of these varying relations of dependency.

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