18. Ascesis as performance – from antiquity to the present

Ascesis – as self-imposed suffering, public self-discipline, or performative self-injury – has long invited responses ranging from celebratory admiration to derisive condemnation. It appears in religious practices across cultures, from those of the early Christian stylite (pillar-dwelling) saints, to the ascetic Pashupata Shaivites of South India, witnessed in both visual and literary sources. More recently, the long tradition of religious ascesis has been invoked in a secularised western context by performance artists such as Linda Montano and Ron Athey. In the work of Cassils, Yang Zhichao and Tehching Hsieh, extreme physical endurance events enact a powerful form of dissent within specific social and political frameworks. While the specificity of ascetic practice varies across cultures and time periods, it effectively elevates behaviours that might otherwise be read as aberrant to the status of spirituality, with the potential to reveal truth and effect change. The potent social, political and personal meanings embodied in performative acts of self-injury have been considered by scholars including Armando Favazzo, Karen Gonzales Rice, and Richard Schechner. Roland Betancourt and Robert Mills have argued for the continuing relevance of certain ascetic saints, whose lives, and representation in art, defy limited conceptions of gender, sexuality, and race. The meanings of historic ascesis are inflected across time, though like more recent ascetic acts, they are found in relation to the witness, whose own subjectivity is implicit in any response. In performance art, the inclusion of self-injury highlights the direct implication of the viewer, threatens the distinction between self and other, and makes tangible the interdependence of artist, work, and audience.

This panel builds on the existing scholarship, bringing together historic and contemporary artworks and a variety of approaches to explore the ethical demands and ongoing resonance of ascetic performance. It considers the public display of subjective trauma, the implication of the witness, and embodied dissent as a demand for social justice. The experience of ascetic performance, whether enacted or represented, can be profoundly visceral, troubling or transcendent, and its relevance, particularly in our present time of polycrisis, is potent and enduring.

We invite papers that discuss ascesis as performance from any time period and in any medium of art or visual culture. Proposals might consider the enduring appeal of ascesis across geographies, cultures and religious traditions, or issues around gender, trauma, violence, and spirituality. Papers which seek to approach the subject in a long view, drawing links between past and present, thinking across disciplinary boundaries, or which invite a global perspective, are particularly welcome.

Themes: Performance art, self-discipline, representation

Lead Convenor: Amelia Hope-Jones, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Co-convenors: Lucy Weir, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.