Author: H. Peter Steeves
Publisher: Sawbuck Books
A Division of Sawbuck Productions, Inc.
Publication date: 4 December 2020
Pages: 283
Description: Being and Showtime is a call to arms. In inviting the reader to perform the text, thus becoming an active collaborator, the work asks nothing less than that we liberate scholarship from its tragic ethos and rediscover what it means to find joy in thinking. Originally given as lectures that included performative elements, Being and Showtime investigates the ways in which the material format of a book might help contribute to the arguments contained in the text. Along the way, topics such as the nature of time, the origin of life, the need for anarchic revolution, and the moral status of plants and rocks are dealt with by means of both a careful phenomenological analysis and an artistic performance of the issues involved. The book itself contains removable tarot and poker cards, scratch-and-sniff, holograms, a flip-book movie, a pop-up page, and other interactive elements—all toward the end of encouraging an analysis of the performativity of Being and the goal of our mutual flourishing.