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The Performer
An exploration of public performance in everyday life, by the leading cultural and social thinkerThe Performer explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical dimensions of performing, rather than on words. Richard Sennett is particularly attuned to the ways in which the rituals of ordinary life are performances.The book draws on history and sociology, and more personally on the author's early career as a professional cellist, as well as on his later work as a city planner and social thinker. It traces the evolution of performing spaces in the city; the emergence of actors, musicians, and dancers as independent artists; the inequality between performer and spectator; the uneasy relations between artistic creation and social and religious ritual; the uses and abuses of acting by politicians. The Janus-faced art of performing is both destructive and civilizing.This is the first in a trilogy of books on the fundamental DNA of human performing, narrating, and imaging.
233 pages, Hardcover
Published February 1, 2024
33 people are currently reading
371 people want to read
About the author
Richard Sennett
72 books551 followersRichard Sennett has explored how individuals and groups make social and cultural sense of material facts -- about the cities in which they live and about the labour they do. He focuses on how people can become competent interpreters of their own experience, despite the obstacles society may put in their way. His research entails ethnography, history, and social theory. As a social analyst, Mr. Sennett continues the pragmatist tradition begun by William James and John Dewey.
His first book, The Uses of Disorder, [1970] looked at how personal identity takes form in the modern city. He then studied how working-class identities are shaped in modern society, in The Hidden Injuries of Class, written with Jonathan Cobb. [1972] A study of the public realm of cities, The Fall of Public Man, appeared in 1977; at the end of this decade of writing, Mr. Sennett sought to account the philosophic implications of this work in Authority [1980].
At this point he took a break from sociology, composing three novels: The Frog who Dared to Croak [1982], An Evening of Brahms [1984] and Palais Royal [1987]. He then returned to urban studies with two books, The Conscience of the Eye, [1990], a work focusing on urban design, and Flesh and Stone [1992], a general historical study of how bodily experience has been shaped by the evolution of cities.
In the mid 1990s, as the work-world of modern capitalism began to alter quickly and radically, Mr. Sennett began a project charting its personal consequences for workers, a project which has carried him up to the present day. The first of these studies, The Corrosion of Character, [1998] is an ethnographic account of how middle-level employees make sense of the “new economy.” The second in the series, Respect in a World of Inequality, [2002} charts the effects of new ways of working on the welfare state; a third, The Culture of the New Capitalism, [2006] provides an over-view of change. Most recently, Mr. Sennett has explored more positive aspects of labor in The Craftsman [2008], and in Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation [2012].
His first book, The Uses of Disorder, [1970] looked at how personal identity takes form in the modern city. He then studied how working-class identities are shaped in modern society, in The Hidden Injuries of Class, written with Jonathan Cobb. [1972] A study of the public realm of cities, The Fall of Public Man, appeared in 1977; at the end of this decade of writing, Mr. Sennett sought to account the philosophic implications of this work in Authority [1980].
At this point he took a break from sociology, composing three novels: The Frog who Dared to Croak [1982], An Evening of Brahms [1984] and Palais Royal [1987]. He then returned to urban studies with two books, The Conscience of the Eye, [1990], a work focusing on urban design, and Flesh and Stone [1992], a general historical study of how bodily experience has been shaped by the evolution of cities.
In the mid 1990s, as the work-world of modern capitalism began to alter quickly and radically, Mr. Sennett began a project charting its personal consequences for workers, a project which has carried him up to the present day. The first of these studies, The Corrosion of Character, [1998] is an ethnographic account of how middle-level employees make sense of the “new economy.” The second in the series, Respect in a World of Inequality, [2002} charts the effects of new ways of working on the welfare state; a third, The Culture of the New Capitalism, [2006] provides an over-view of change. Most recently, Mr. Sennett has explored more positive aspects of labor in The Craftsman [2008], and in Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation [2012].
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 28, 2024
Me maravilla la capacidad de Richard Sennett, antiguo chelista y hoy aclamado sociólogo, para sorprender con cada nuevo ensayo. Ya tiene ochenta años, y aun así, se ve con fuerzas para iniciar una trilogía sobre la presencia del arte en el interior de la sociedad: este primer volumen sobre la interpretación, otro que vendrá sobre la narración y un tercero sobre la imagen. Así, aquí analiza qué es la expresión escénica, cómo es el artista, cómo los escenarios y las calles dan lugar a las representaciones, cuál es la mirada del espectador, cómo se atenúa la tristeza mediante las formas de actuación y cómo la interpretación eleva tanto la política como la vida cotidiana. Al igual que en anteriores obras, mezcla el anecdotario personal, fundamentalmente neoyorquino, con el análisis filosófico y sociológico, pero repite conceptos que ya estaban mucho más desarrollados en, por ejemplo, Carne y Piedra, o mejor, en Juntos: rituales, placeres y política de cooperación , obra que por ahora me parece insuperable.
March 7, 2025
Tengo que volver a este libro cuando tenga más fuerzas para investigar referentes. Es un jarro de ubicaína importante, anécdotas jugosas y mucha sabiduría. Abre preguntas importantísimas sobre la dimensión política de la interpretación.
December 30, 2024
maybe not quite about what I anticipated, but an interesting read. DENSE. -1 for user error in choosing this over holidays lol
March 16, 2024
Interesting musings intertwining history, art and politics with sociological and philosophical ideas. I warmly perceived this book as an intellectual grandfather telling me about events he had lived, as well as historical ones, and making live connections to concepts of power (Hannah Arendt) and dramaturgy (Boal and Artaud). It’s ending chapter discussing how body, movement, staging (etc) are bigger and more effective than words at getting their point across was really interesting. “Words often have a weak political punch” he says and that to practice politics without words (through political “theatre”) is often more compelling than political debates. Simply put this book is a beautiful exploration of how performance is a tool for much more than just self expression or theatre but one for activism and political endeavour too. Seen through this lens it left me wondering about how I can both be more critical of political performance and more considerate of how to use it myself - because performance is ultimately bigger than words.
October 9, 2024
Even by Richard Sennett's standards this is an extraordinary, deeply enjoyable and utterly fascinating book. As the title suggests he performs a dazzling enquiry over nnn pages into aspects of performance and those who perform. The scope is as wide as you can possibly imagine and as long historically speaking. From roles we would obviously think as performative - actors, musicians, to kings (e.g. Louis XIV and the effect his dancing had on an assembled court who had been dancing all night when he appeared resplendent at dawn) politicians and interestingly those who organise political acts (a fascinating section on Bayard Rustin's organisation of the March on Washington in 1963 which culminated in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech).
I realised that when I wanted to write a review of this book I was thinking in lists of examples - indeed I have already started! - and I suppose a legitimate question is whether there is a central thesis or whether it is just an enthralling unfurling of a brilliant, highly knowledgable mind. I think it's both probably. On the central theme I think Sennett is simply saying that performance is everywhere and has always been and that by being aware of that and understanding what makes up a successful performance we gain insight not just into how the world works but the performative aspects of our own lives. But you can take or leave that notion, he is never heavy handed and just enjoy the book for the specific instances and insights it offers, from Machiavelli to Erving Goffman, from Montevredi's 'Coronation of Poppea' to Alberta Hunter's recreation of Billie Holliday's 'Strange Fruit' as a discusison of 'late style' in performance, Diderot's 'Paradox of Acting' to a performance of 'As You Like It' by patients in a ward caring for those with AIDS. There is never a dull moment, never a page where one doesn't learn something.
My favourite passage? It has to be Sennett's recollections of Roland Barthes as a duet partner at the piano (four hands, one piano). Barthes played 'passionately and badly' according to Sennett (himself a highly talented musician who studied cello at the Julliard). He goes on:
`Whenever he hit a rough patch, notes he fluffed or simply could not play, he’d suddenly retard the tempo or play loudly to emphasize the feeling rather than the notes.`
How I know that feeling!
This remembrance of Barthes here gives a good feel for what Sennett does throughout the book: accurate description coupled with acute analysis. He goes on here for example to talk about the Zen concept of Kyūdō and how that can help duet partners get over their squeamishness of the physical contact sitting at one piano stool (Barthes was particularly keen to avoid any such contact) will inevitably entail.
I listened to the audiobook as well as reading the text which was a great way to internalise some of the points Sennett is making. I have to say though that Paul Boehmer's often portentous reading is slightly hard going and he could probably have done with the application of a bit of Kyūdō himself when it comes to the pronoun of foreign words and names, which are often painful.
This is a book which 'serious' literary journals have picked up (interestingly the TLS gave it to Emma Smith, the NYRB to Simon Callow) but its accessibility and insight will appeal to anyone who has the slightest curiosity about the internals of performance. Very highly recommended.
I realised that when I wanted to write a review of this book I was thinking in lists of examples - indeed I have already started! - and I suppose a legitimate question is whether there is a central thesis or whether it is just an enthralling unfurling of a brilliant, highly knowledgable mind. I think it's both probably. On the central theme I think Sennett is simply saying that performance is everywhere and has always been and that by being aware of that and understanding what makes up a successful performance we gain insight not just into how the world works but the performative aspects of our own lives. But you can take or leave that notion, he is never heavy handed and just enjoy the book for the specific instances and insights it offers, from Machiavelli to Erving Goffman, from Montevredi's 'Coronation of Poppea' to Alberta Hunter's recreation of Billie Holliday's 'Strange Fruit' as a discusison of 'late style' in performance, Diderot's 'Paradox of Acting' to a performance of 'As You Like It' by patients in a ward caring for those with AIDS. There is never a dull moment, never a page where one doesn't learn something.
My favourite passage? It has to be Sennett's recollections of Roland Barthes as a duet partner at the piano (four hands, one piano). Barthes played 'passionately and badly' according to Sennett (himself a highly talented musician who studied cello at the Julliard). He goes on:
`Whenever he hit a rough patch, notes he fluffed or simply could not play, he’d suddenly retard the tempo or play loudly to emphasize the feeling rather than the notes.`
How I know that feeling!
This remembrance of Barthes here gives a good feel for what Sennett does throughout the book: accurate description coupled with acute analysis. He goes on here for example to talk about the Zen concept of Kyūdō and how that can help duet partners get over their squeamishness of the physical contact sitting at one piano stool (Barthes was particularly keen to avoid any such contact) will inevitably entail.
I listened to the audiobook as well as reading the text which was a great way to internalise some of the points Sennett is making. I have to say though that Paul Boehmer's often portentous reading is slightly hard going and he could probably have done with the application of a bit of Kyūdō himself when it comes to the pronoun of foreign words and names, which are often painful.
This is a book which 'serious' literary journals have picked up (interestingly the TLS gave it to Emma Smith, the NYRB to Simon Callow) but its accessibility and insight will appeal to anyone who has the slightest curiosity about the internals of performance. Very highly recommended.
May 28, 2024
In The Performer, Richard Sennett explores the role of performance, and the experience of performing, in art, politics, and daily life. Though similar in concept to Erving Goffman's seminal text The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (which Sennett acknowledges early on), Sennett's book is unique in that he views social performance from the perspective of a once-professional musician, not merely as a sociologist. The arts are at the heart of the text, and Sennett's combination of knowledge and passion shines through his sociological analyses.
The Performer is an academic text, but Sennett's warm, meandering, even laid-back writing style might make a reader forget this fact, to the reader's benefit. The concepts Sennett tackles are not simple, but his frequent and effective use of artistic and cultural references provides readers with an approachable framework, as well as a built-in education in art and theater history. Readers who are reading in an academic setting, as well as those who are simply performers studying their industry, will find a wealth of information both theoretical and practical.
While Sennett's storytelling style does make his ideas easier to process, it also tends to sound monotonous; I found I could only read a chapter or a few sections at a time before I began to feel sleepy. There is little variation in tone or pace, and I wouldn't have minded passages that were more dense or more highly theoretical, if only for variety's sake. Still, as a musician and casual actress myself, I did find The Performer a worthy read, and would be happy to recommend it to my over-achieving peers.
The Performer is an academic text, but Sennett's warm, meandering, even laid-back writing style might make a reader forget this fact, to the reader's benefit. The concepts Sennett tackles are not simple, but his frequent and effective use of artistic and cultural references provides readers with an approachable framework, as well as a built-in education in art and theater history. Readers who are reading in an academic setting, as well as those who are simply performers studying their industry, will find a wealth of information both theoretical and practical.
While Sennett's storytelling style does make his ideas easier to process, it also tends to sound monotonous; I found I could only read a chapter or a few sections at a time before I began to feel sleepy. There is little variation in tone or pace, and I wouldn't have minded passages that were more dense or more highly theoretical, if only for variety's sake. Still, as a musician and casual actress myself, I did find The Performer a worthy read, and would be happy to recommend it to my over-achieving peers.
July 23, 2024
The premises Sennett begins from so align with my own that it pained me when diversions on inequity and politics amidst a dismissal of the power of language in itself were littered with language that carries, perhaps unbeknownst to the author, real political power & indication of inequity. If I avoid touching on those moments, some of the throughlines are well-argued from a philosophical standpoint, but overall, this seemed to me to be one person's proof of knowledge—a thesis defense—rather than the all-encompassing analysis I had hoped. Sennett does begin with an acknowledgment of the communities he inhabits and their effect on his expression, which I think more treatises on social power and performance could and should, but I do wish his analysis was then more permeable by other ways of being. The search for an absolute truth is almost always now, to my eyes, a red flag.
July 15, 2025
La lectura feta plaer, un llibre que m'ha llegit a mi. Normalment, m'agrada llegir els originals més que les traduccions, però ara sé que he contestat correctament la crida que em va fer aquest llibre. L'autor escriu amb lleugeresa, però lligant capes de complexitat sobre el fenomen de comprendre la voluntat humana de ser més enllà del que s'és. Els records selectes i eclèctics de l'autor, mesclats amb la investigació filosòfica elaboren preguntes sòlides que podem provar de contestar. Un llibre que em deixa pensant, em deixa preocupat i, ara que estic en un procés difícil amb el teatre, em fa veure les noves possibilitats que s'obren més enllà del teló.
May 18, 2025
Beautiful, well formulated essay about love of the theatre, dance and music, and love of the city. The nostalgia for a more mixed, at times rough, city of Sennett’s youth, is fine in a memoir by a now elderly scholar and artist. Do we want freedom or recognition in the city? Can we have both? Can theatre help us salute difference and counter ever more segregation and dead, clean no-friction surfaces in the city? How do we stage a politics of collaboration and wider alliances instead? We need to think of these issues again today.
December 20, 2025
picked this up on a whim at my local book store while waiting for my next book to arrive. i hadn't heard about it beforehand and just jumped straight in. it definitely challenged me a bit but was definitely really enjoyable. it felt like sailing down a calm river, richard's words as the pulling current, always catching the boat and pointing it in the right direction to his main idea of each chapter. i definitely think on a reread i'll pick up different things from it that i might have missed the first time
November 22, 2024
This book is a great continuation to an exploration of what makes a city work, what cities are and how culture and civility evolve. But above all, the author is a trusted thinker and writer. Its a narration of felt experience, connections of great wisdom across multiple thinkers, and four perspectives contained in one thinker - urbanist, musician, scholar on architecture, and a sociologist.
It's a rare book that is edited to the core so that every page delivers a new insight.
It's a rare book that is edited to the core so that every page delivers a new insight.
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November 1, 2024𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣̃𝙖 𝙙𝙚 𝙀𝙇 𝙄𝙉𝙏𝙀́𝙍𝙋𝙍𝙀𝙏𝙀 𝙙𝙚 𝙍𝙞𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙎𝙚𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙩𝙩. @AnagramaEditor
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March 8, 2025
Molt fragmentat, molt tirar de tòpics. Rapapieja.
March 8, 2025
Assaig fet a partir d'experiències humanes, teatre i música (amb el punt just i il·lustratiu de referències religioses). Va tan a la contra del que s'estila en els nostres dies que el fa indispensable i enriquidor.
July 20, 2024
A great collection of reflections that shows Sennett's perceptiveness we have grown so familiar with.
In the first chapters, the book lacked urgence for me, I didn't get where he was heading. The text was lengthy and didn't stick. Though the language was as beautiful as ever, there didn't seem to be a central idea. It seemed a beautiful blur.
But later on, in further chapters, having lowered my expectations a bit, I realised that there was always something available in this text that made me think in a novel way, explaining some of my own observations better than I ever had seen them explained before.
Thus, the blur changed into a kaleidoscope with theatre and non-verbality as its lenses. One can open the book at any chapter and start reading, and the text will offer well-informed musings about phenomena like charisma as 'effortless grace' (but also dependent on faithful followers), non-verbal cooperation, collective violence, ignorance and denial, or theatre as more powerful than sheer narration. The things addressed reflect current events in society and politics. The quality of the reflection is always high and its resulting insights often surprising.
The text is varied. It is fun to see how much the guy knows and how he uses it to explain the world. But the book doesn’t stay with you afterwards, as earlier titles of Sennett did. It has the features of an atlas: one can best look into it for just a short while and then lay it aside again.
In the first chapters, the book lacked urgence for me, I didn't get where he was heading. The text was lengthy and didn't stick. Though the language was as beautiful as ever, there didn't seem to be a central idea. It seemed a beautiful blur.
But later on, in further chapters, having lowered my expectations a bit, I realised that there was always something available in this text that made me think in a novel way, explaining some of my own observations better than I ever had seen them explained before.
Thus, the blur changed into a kaleidoscope with theatre and non-verbality as its lenses. One can open the book at any chapter and start reading, and the text will offer well-informed musings about phenomena like charisma as 'effortless grace' (but also dependent on faithful followers), non-verbal cooperation, collective violence, ignorance and denial, or theatre as more powerful than sheer narration. The things addressed reflect current events in society and politics. The quality of the reflection is always high and its resulting insights often surprising.
The text is varied. It is fun to see how much the guy knows and how he uses it to explain the world. But the book doesn’t stay with you afterwards, as earlier titles of Sennett did. It has the features of an atlas: one can best look into it for just a short while and then lay it aside again.
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September 30, 2024AUDIBLE. ACADEMICS 2024_05_07 KINDLE $16.32
24_09_30 no Iowa holdings
24_09_30 no Iowa holdings
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews