Performance and Cognition: How the Performing Arts Contribute to The Science of Mind

What is it about?

The explosion of interest in “4E cognition” in recent years marks a change, not merely in scientific approaches to material brains and bodies, but in attitudes to the processes by which humans think, feel, communicate, and create. This article traces how the evolution of the new field of “the cognitive humanities”—which fosters cross-fertilization between theorists and practitioners from the “humanities” and empirical experimenters in the “sciences”—has been expressed in the work of performers and performance scholars over the last thirty years, leading up to the most recent projects currently underway (in the summer of 2017). I analyze how these forms of artistic and scholarly production contribute to our increasingly nuanced understanding of the breadth and complexity of the human affective, emotional, cognitive, and cultural spectrum. Keywords: performance, cognitive humanities, neurophenomenology, affect, 4E cognition, embodied knowledge, extended mind.

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