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The nineteenth-century study of hysteria at the Salpêtrière hospital was a medical project, but also a theatrical one. The hysteric's public appearance was a continual ethical provocation, pointing not only to the vulnerability of her person but to the unstable position of her spectator. Hysteria in Performance sets out to uncover what kind of performance the hysterical attack is, as well as the nature of hysteria in and as performance as it occurred at Salpêtrière.
The Salpêtrière documents undeniably show the gravity of the institutional violence committed against its female patients. Using the lenses of performance studies and performance theory, Jenn Cole expresses the overt and subtle damages done to hysterical women in Jean-Martin Charcot's hospital, drawing attention to the hysteric's resistance to these experiences: it is often simply by being herself that the hysteric points to the inherent weaknesses in these systemic modes of violence. In Hysteria in Performance, the hysteric becomes a figure who represents possibilities for ethical encounters within performance and everyday living.
Revealing the fraught and exciting nature of theatrical representation, and continually drawing out the dilemmas and unexpected dynamics of witnessing the suffering of others, this groundbreaking study explores how Charcot's findings on hysteria produced a unique mixture of theatre and science that still has unexpected things to teach us.
“Hysteria in Performance addresses the relationship between hysteria and photography, painting, dramaturgy, performance, dance, textuality, and verbal expression. Through these topics, Cole provides a reflection on the dynamics of looking, examining, and seeing in a ‘theatre of masculine desire’ that renders the individual hysterical woman invisible, yet the object of a most meticulous gaze. Captivating and beautifully written.” Claudie Massicotte, author of Trance Speakers: Femininity and Authorship in Spiritual Séances, 1850–1930
“Jenn Cole moves fluidly between English and French and shows a mastery of sources in the study of hysteria and early psychoanalysis. Precisely by underlining the ways in which these women eluded, exceeded, and resisted the forms of representation and performance, she finds a space for their agency that evades and critiques even the reader’s scrutiny.” Roberta Barker, author of Early Modern Tragedy, Gender and Performance, 1984–2000: The Destined Livery