The main question we raise with this book is how performance can be political in present day
European representative democracy a system which no longer draws on the live gathering of
people. Several leading European (mostly female) thinkers analyse artistic practices that have
emerged alongside new social movements - such as Solidarity in Greece or Municipalism in Spain
- investigating how theatre dance and performance respond to the new political insights and
experiments. It is a context wherein the previously well-known tactics and tools such as
participation identity politics or spontaneous usage of public space don't suffice. Thus we
must build and learn a new vocabulary of politicality of performance that includes opaque words
such as 'innervation' 'preenactment' 'prefiguration' or 'recreation'.
