Culture And Performance In The Circum-Atlantic World By Joseph Roach

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In his article, Culture and Performance in the Circum-Atlantic World, Joseph Roach presents “restoration of behavior” as a useful concept for understanding the broad academic applications of the term “performance” (46). He defines “restored behavior” (also known as “twice-behaved behavior”) as actions “which can be repeated, rehearsed, and above all recreated [emphasis his]” (Roach 46). But, restored behavior is a contradictory term because no action or set of actions can ever be performed in exactly the same way again. Put simply, an actor who takes the stage night after night to perform the same role and deliver the same lines will never deliver a performance that is exactly the same as the one before or the one which comes next. In a similar way, no generation of a social group ever performs its rituals or its customs in the same manner—each one draws from the last and leaves a different set of behaviors for the next (Roach 46-7). …show more content…

It is this repetition of behaviors, each time slowly changing the nature of the behavior, which affects the ways in which the social group’s members behave. From a sociological standpoint, Roach posits that the reasons for why and how you act are intrinsically linked to the behaviors performed by your social group’s ancestors. Your actions and reactions to certain events or behaviors are not the result of innate ability, but rather the result of a long line of restored, repeated behaviors (Roach 47). While Roach does not explicitly define “social group,” in the context of his essay it is inferred to simply refer to a group of people bounded together by a set of shared

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