Reflection: Beyond Metaphor: Hunger and the Response-ability of Performance

Abstract

The essay forms part of the Editorial of the concurrent issues of Performance Research and Global Performance Studies on the theme of Hunger, picking up from the 'Introduction' written by Laurie Beth Clark and Michael Peterson, co-editors of these issues. Styled as a conversation with key contributors to the journal issues, the keynote speakers in the PSi conference, and authors that inspired the initiative on hunger, Jazmin Llana recalls the contexts and prompts of the journal issues and the 2022 conference of Performance Studies international (PSi) from which many of the featured articles began. She identifies the challenges that hunger as a material condition poses to performance and performance studies, tracing key critical threads on the supposed 'unrepresentability' of hunger in performance and the critique of humanitarianism as a framework for hunger relief and world aid, among others. The reflection ends with possible ways forward in responding to hunger.