On Repetition aims to unpack the different uses and functions of repetition within contemporary performance, dance practices, craft and writing. The collection, edited by Eirini Kartsaki, explores repetition in relation to intimacy, laughter, technology, familiarity and fear—proposing a new vocabulary for understanding what is at stake in works that repeat. Drawing on psychoanalysis, philosophy, linguistics, sociology and performance studies—and employing case studies from a range of practices—the essays presented here combine to form a unique interdisciplinary exploration of the functions of repetition in contemporary culture.
"'"Repetition creates bliss", Roland Barthes once argued. In an era in which we hear repetition and think strain, when the repeated gesture is a sign for alienated labour, boredom or the abandonment of thought, this collection of essays shows how repetition can be a figure of creativity - not only in the art forms of visual art, dance, performance and poetry which are its subjects, but also in the
Andrea Brady, Professor of English, Queen Mary University of London
"'This is a book full of fascinations. And also of passions, pleasures, novelties, dissatisfactions and griefs. It is a book about the efforts we make to enact and to understand, to educate and politicise, about how to value that which is perpetually arriving, doing and undoing itself; and also how to say goodbye. While making its case for the centrality of repetition, as constitutive of a range o
Joe Kelleher, Professor of Theatre and Performance, University of Roehampton
