Island studies and performance studies

english

2026

volume 14, issue 1

islands studies   oceanic epistemologies   performance studies   schoal   transpasifika

Slovenski gledališki inštitut (SLOGI)
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

This article explores the dialogue between Island Studies and Performance Studies through two theoretical perspectives emerging from different contexts. The essay first reconstructs some of the key genealogies through which Island Studies has developed as a field, highlighting the shift from insularity as a fixed geographical condition to islandness as a relational epistemological lens. The article then examines two conceptual contributions that bring Island Studies into conversation with Performance Studies. Rebecca Schneider’s notion of the shoal, developed from an Atlantic perspective, foregrounds littoral zones as epistemological thresholds where bodies, histories and environments meet in unstable and transformative relations. Diana Looser’s concept of transpasifika, emerging within Pacific Studies and transpacific scholarship, proposes a relational framework for analysing how performances circulate across islands, diasporic communities and global networks. Read together, these perspectives reveal how performance and islandness can be understood as relational processes shaped by movement, instability and ecological interdependence. The encounter between Island Studies and Performance Studies thus opens a productive analytical terrain for investigating how artistic practices participate in the reconfiguration of insular worlds and their broader epistemological configurations.

31.08.2026