Performance Writing: Twenty-years and still counting

This article by the launch director of the first degree in Performance Writing, reviews the early 1990s intentions in the light of subsequent changes in the textual environment. The author argues that the original intention to take a broad view of textuality, seen as inseparable from the technologies, cultural practices and domains of conceptual enquiry that sustain it, rather than pursue the narrower, more established, literary and academic notion of ‘creative writing’, still hold good. He reconsiders the two words that make up the name, together with the related notion of performativity, and argues that it remains productive for writing to continue to treat these as problematic and unsettled. Significant developments in digital textuality are acknowledged within an argument that these can usefully remain within a Performance Writing frame of reference. Implications of changes to the ethos and funding of both arts and education are briefly considered.