Chapter 16: Repetition, Duration and Persistance: Temporality in the Performing Arts

Since Aristotle and, from another perspective, Saint Augustine, with a defining role in the work of Bergson, but also Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, and most recently, that of Benjamin and Gadamer, reflections on time and temporality have been intensely focused on the dimension of duration as an essential element in a subject’s understanding of an experience.

In touching on and seeking to articulate a portion of these reflections on time and temporality, on the border between the performing arts and psychology, this chapter will delve into questions regarding the experience that man has in and around time using one of our primordial activities: the performing arts. It is from this angle that repetition—a primordial temporal category in the act of performance—becomes the central focus of the discussion herein. In this, duration is recognized in the context of the performing arts, in the subject’s persistence in symbolic action, with regard to future desired studies.