In this article, I consider Sheep Pig Goat alongside the work of foundational animal studies scholar and philosopher of science, Vinciane Despret-whose important book, What Would Animals Say if We Asked the Right Questions? (2016) was one text amongst many others that the company themselves read as part of the preparation for the project. In particular, I draw from Despret to explore multiple possible understandings of the notion of "interspecies empathy," noting that, for Fevered Sleep, a core aim of the project was to investigate how performance might "increase understanding of, and empathy towards nonhuman animals" (both their own as a company and those of the audiences who encounter their work) 2. Here, though, the mode of empathy I am reaching toward is not one that operates through analogy or identification, but an "embodied empathy" that operates as a mode of affective thinking alongside rather than "about" the animal, and as a performative encounter between human and nonhuman animals that produces both parties anew. Both embodied empathy and attention have key roles to play in securing greater ethical consideration of nonhuman animals in relation to the production of knowledge. As Donna Haraway suggests, the etymology of seeing-from the Latin verb respecere, to look again-invites consideration of the relationship between attention and respect: to taking care in an ethical sense and the careful, iterative act of observation that does not judge on first impressions but considers others as worthy of respect or, a second look. 3 But this ethics of attention is not just about vision or sight and this is why performance might play a leading role in its investigation. Rather, as Amanda Boetzkes has argued, if "the fundamental ethical question" concerns "how we might develop a complex sensibility of and for non-human animals" 4 or, if ethics is a matter of embodied behaviors improvised between actors in the uncertainty of specific contexts, then performance practices surely have much to contribute to the development of our understanding of what constitutes an interspecies ethics. Interspecies performance practice might be understood as a primary domain for the creation and investigation of what Traci Warkentin also describes as "an ethical praxis of paying attention." 5 But whereas Warkentin's work foregrounds notions of attention primarily informed by phenomenology, my own engagement has been shaped by both Bergson and Deleuze, and in this 2

This article draws from the contemporary French thinker François Laruelle to perform a ‘non-philosophical’ analysis of recent literature from the analytic or Anglo-American philosophy of theatre. Much of this literature, I argue, suffers from the problem of application, namely: non- or extra-theatrical assumptions are both brought to bear upon and remain unchallenged by the philosopher’s encounter with theatre – particularly in the form of assumptions as to the nature of philosophy or the role or position of philosophy with respect to other forms of thought, such as theatre and performance. Having sought to articulate some of the problems arising from the conception of the philosophy of theatre as a definitional project, the article then considers – via Laruelle – what kind of ‘stance’ a philosophy of theatre might need to occupy in order not to impose its thought on theatre but to be open to theatre’s thoughts.

The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy is a volume of especially commissioned critical essays, conversations, and collaborative, creative and performative writing mapping the key contexts, debates, methods, discourses and practices in this developing field.Firstly, the collection offers new insights on the fundamental question of how thinking happens: where, when, how and by whom philosophy is performed. Secondly, it provides a plurality of new accounts of performance and performativity -as the production of ideas, bodies and knowledges -in the arts and beyond. Comprising texts written by international artists, philosophers and scholars from multiple disciplines, the essays engage with questions of how performance thinks and how thought is performed in a wide range of philosophies and performances, from the ancient to the contemporary. Concepts and practices from diverse geographical regions and cultural traditions are analysed to draw conclusions about how performance operates across art, philosophy and everyday life.The collection both contributes to and critiques the philosophy of music, dance, theatre and performance, exploring the idea of a philosophy from the arts. It is crucial reading material for those interested in the hierarchy of the relationship between philosophy and the arts, advancing debates on philosophical method, and the relation between Performance and Philosophy more broadly.

This article introduces performance philosophy, despite the risk of performative contradiction such an act involves. First, it considers performance philosophy as a field that questions how performance thinks and thought is performed (including, specifically as philosophy). Drawing from Laruelle’s non-philosophy, it then addresses performance philosophy as method, framing it as an alternative, performative paradigm to the philosophy of the arts approach that has historically dominated approaches to aesthetics. It concludes by affirming the call to the field to address the ethico-political dimensions of knowledge-production in not only disciplinary, but also geopolitical terms.

In diesem Artikel werde ich François Laruelles Begriff der ‚Non-Standard‘ Ästhetik untersuchen, um eine kritische Perspektive auf Alain Badious vielfältige Äußerungen über die Philosophie des Theaters zu entwickeln. Während es zunächst so erscheint, als ob Badiou in Werken wie In Praise of Theatre (2015) aufgeschlossen gegenüber dem eigenen Denken des Theaters wäre und tatsächlich die Funktion der Philosophie im Verhältnis zu einem ontologischen Privileg zurückzustufen würde, das (von ihm) nun der Mengentheorie zugesprochen wird, werde ich aufzeigen, dass eben dieses Wohlwollen, aus einer Laruellschen Perspektive, eine andere Form von philosophischem Authoritarismus konstituiert. Das heißt, während Badiu bekanntermaßen das Theater als „ein Ereignis des Denkens“ beschreibt, „das direkt Ideen hervorbringt“ (Badiou 2009, 121), wird dieser Text von Laruelle ausgehend argumentieren, dass Badiou sich zuletzt als Autorität über das positioniert, was als Theater im „eigentlichen Sinne“ gilt (vgl. Badiou 2015, 72); sein eigenes Denken in performativer Weise als normative Ausnahme und als Türhüter dieser Ausnahme festlegt.