The Performance Apparatus
On Ideological Production of Behaviors
How aesthetic performance can provide insights into the ideological creation and dissemination of behaviors
Description
The publication of Louis Althusser’s 1969 article “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” made a deep impact on cultural studies and was instrumental in the formation of the apparatus theory in film studies. While contemporaneous with the emergence of performance art, this article and the questions of ideology and apparatus it raises barely registered in the field of performance studies, which was then in its formative phase. Jakovljević takes this absence of Althusser’s apparatus theory from performance studies as an indicator of the ideological position of the field at the moment of its emergence, arguing that, while theories of ideology played no major role in early performance studies, performance art itself offered a number of incisive critiques of ideology. Jakovljević looks at permutations of the apparatus by investigating the work of theorists such as Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Judith Butler, and engagements with the apparatus by a number of artists, such as Amiri Baraka, Philippe Thomas, New York Art & Language, Terry Fox, Every house has a door, Clive Robertson, and Cassils.
Jakovljević suggests that the centrality of behavior in early performance theory is important for the understanding of contemporary society, which is dominated by surveillance capitalism. If ideology is lodged in behaviors, and if surveillance capitalism thrives on the monetization of the behavioral surplus, then performance theory can make significant contributions to our understanding of the moment in which we live and the future we are facing. The Performance Apparatus argues for the importance of continuing attention to the question of ideology in contemporary, neoliberal order.
Branislav Jakovljević is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University and is author of Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia, 1945–91.
Reviews
“I admire Jakovljević’s latest book enormously. I admire its erudition, its seriousness, its respect for the performance practices it considers. The Performance Apparatus promises to make a groundbreaking contribution to our understanding of the politics of performance in capitalism.”
- Nicholas Ridout, Queen Mary University of London
“There are few scholars writing today who possess the theoretical range that Jakovljević commands, and The Performance Apparatus solidifies Jakovljević as one of the preeminent theorists working in theater and performance studies today. The Performance Apparatus is a rich text that will be extremely valuable for many within the profession.”
- James M. Harding, University of Maryland
“Branislav Jakovljević’s The Performance Apparatus is a landmark book, providing both a substantive engagement with the ideological complexity of locating performance as an apparatus, and a searching reading of how live art performances in the 1960s and 1970s developed a complementary perspective, through a critical fashioning of the apparatus of performance. Situating performance studies within a broader cultural critique, Jakovljević focuses our attention on this political, theoretical, and disciplinary contestation, and on the responsive uptake of artmaking, circling through jazz and funk, dance, and a range of now-celebrated performances and performers.”
- W. B. Worthen, Barnard College, Columbia University
"Jakovljević's study places performance within a broad cultural critique that draws on a wide range of theoretical writings in philosophy, the social sciences, and performance theory. He builds his argument via Louis Althusser’s influential essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” situating the performance apparatus of his title within the broad area of everyday behaviors and practices as realized in the work of artists from the 1960s through the 2010s. Summing up: Recommended, Researchers and faculty only."
- Choice
News, Reviews, Interviews
Listen: Branislav Jakovljevic and Kimberly Jannarone interviewed on the On TAP podcast | December 10, 2025