Performing Surgery: Commonalities with Performers Outside Medicine

This paper argues for the inclusion of surgery within the canon of performance science. The world of medicine presents rich, complex but relatively under-researched sites of performance. Performative aspects of clinical practice are overshadowed by a focus on the processes and outcomes of medical care, such as diagnostic accuracy and the results of treatment. The primacy of this “clinical” viewpoint—framed by clinical professionals as the application of medical knowledge—hides resonances with performance in other domains. Yet the language of performance is embedded in the culture of surgery—surgeons “perform” operations, work in an operating “theater” and use “instruments.” This paper asks what might come into view if we take this performative language at face value and interrogate surgery from the perspective of performance science.