Framing

 Performatist framing serves to relate a lower state to a higher one, to stylize the possibility of transcendence.  This "framing" must not be confused with Derrida's frame or parergon. By contrast, the parergon is a spatially indeterminate line highlighting the endless problem of conditionality and not resulting in any sort of performative change (except, perhaps, further, temporally and spatially deferred reflexion on the nature of conditionality itself). More relevant than the parergon in this regard seems to me to be Gregory Bateson's concept of framing (Bateson 1972), which emphasizes not just the paradoxical nature of the frame but also its relation to psychological mechanisms prior to the linguistic sign; pertinent is also the sociological frame theory developed by Erving Goffman (1974), which offers, among other things, a typology of of frames as they appear in social reality. (back)

Anthropoetics 6, no. 2 (Fall 2000 / Winter 2001)

Performatism, or the End of Postmodernism

Raoul Eshelman