Writing as life performed

In this chapter I explore the interrelatedness of practice, rehearsal, and performance and their applicability in the domain of “life.” These relationships are complicated when, in reference to Adorno’s Minima Moralia, the content of critical-essayistic production (which is analogous to aesthetic production in many ways) is ultimately that of the life of the author. I propose that to a large extent, the categories of practicing, rehearsing, and performing that are derivable from artistic-productive experience can be extended to lived experience. Working and living seriously and critically have significant points of convergence. What I attempt to disrupt is the presupposition of any “natural” hierarchy between these categories, whereby, for example, performance – connoting the tangible accomplishment of goals and the visibility of that accomplishment – takes precedence over the open-ended tasks of practice and rehearsal