Three scenes of performance, corresponding to a parallel effort by Giorgio Agamben in his critique of the “anthropological machine,” suggest a strategy of “negative mimesis” to counter the stubborn anthropocentrism of the Western philosophical tradition.

Focusing on four dimensions of the journal's 50-year history—objects of analysis, methods of analysis, functions the journal fulfilled with respect to the theatrical culture it engaged, and changing institutional relations and affiliations—reveals how TDR was crucially shaped by the entanglements among these dimensions.