The Performer

An acclaimed sociologist's exploration of the connections among performances in life, art, and politics

"A thought-provoking, essayistic and touchingly personal exploration of the ethics and aesthetics of performance from one of the leading intellectuals of our time."--Lucasta Miller, The Spectator, "Best Books of 2024"

"Constantly fascinating and often illuminating."--Simon Callow, New York Review of Books

In The Performer, Richard Sennett 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. 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.