The Anthropology of Performance - Introduction

I have decided to use tel quel the introduction of my thesis on the Mystery Dramas of Rudolf Steiner (Paris 8 Saint Denis, 2002, Summa Cum Laude) which is a brief synthesis of Victor Turner's article The Anthropology of Performance. In my thesis on Steiner's dramatic art, contextualized in the frame of his universal vision of the world and the art, this introduction at the expense of the brilliant work of Turner provided me with the bridge I needed to get a close-up of the vast work of Steiner starting from the notion of 'Performance'.
The essence behind Turner's work is the universality of human thought. The universality of the Nous, the human reason that makes each human being an individual, independent intelligence. All individual intelligence has access to the highest reality or truth. By virtue of the nature of the human thought. This is the principle behind the idea of the 'Social Drama'. It is because of this universality that we now take his work as the starting point of our conception of the world whose motto is: 'the real history of man only exists from man himself inasmuch as an evolving rational animal'. Because, before having access to the highest truths it is necessary to untie the Gordian Knot of the animal instinct and the 'mythical thought'.
This sudden awareness transforms the animality of the rational being into a song that comes to be a part of the universal concert. Our humble work is therefore placed under the sign of the 'Socratic Method' (Irony and Mayeutic). To humiliate man to force him admit his more than evident animal nature with the purpose of helping him to give birth to the 'Mother Idea' of the human Culture. From that evolving Purgatory which hides, metamorphosed in deep brain tissue, under the weight of his proud intellect, a creator both of progress as of destruction.