Performance and intelligentsia around the inauguration of an equestrian statue in the 18th century

Abstract

This essay proposes a performative reading of the inauguration of the equestrian statue of the Portuguese king D. José I in 1775 as an event, based on the conceptual perspectives of both R. Schechner and E. Fischer-Lichte about culture as performance, specific conditions of mediality and materiality, and also based on the views of J. Rancière about the distribution of the sensible. The set of these celebrations expands socially in the king's court, in great houses and on the street. They are a frequent example of "bad literature", because they "vulgarize", starting from an aristocratic circles, centered on the King and the Court, reaching an emerging popular class that then reorganizing itself sensibly through reading, theater going and the participation in bourgeois salons ("functions", "assemblies" or "partidas").