Yours Sincerely: a history and theory of the performance of truth

Through an undertaking into an historical and theoretical enquiry into the performance of the self within Protestant (largely English) culture, I will discuss the emergence of "sincerity" as a naturalised good, through a consideration of representations from the fields of art history, theatre history, law, theology, philosophy, economic history and music. I am interested in the dialectical relation between performances on and off stage, in order to bring both social studies and art critical discourses together. I also hope to demonstrate the interest of an interdisciplinary enquiry, for performance studies. My purposes are several. On one hand, I will be continuing my  investigation into the significance of mass commoditisation for ideas of the self and value during the early modern period. In this sense, the project has an historical object. At the same time I hope to show how the concept "sincere" masks its own discursive specificity and situates a particular set of assumptions about affect and truth as outside of cultural and political parameters. In the second half of the paper I will consider the ways in which this set of inherited convictions has implicitly informed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, as well as particular media representations of the War in Iraq. Given the increasingly normative logic of discourses on Global Justice, it seems to me useful that the philosophic assumptions behind this model of the performance of truth be examined.  

Jane Taylor, Skye Professor of Dramatic Art, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa