Performing Neurology (PDF)

Jonathan W. Marshall, born on February 22, 1970, is an interdisciplinary scholar who has published on the relationship between neurology and the arts, as well as photomedia, sound art, butoh dance, Australian painting and choreography, and other topics. Marshall is a freelance critic and reviewer of contemporary arts. He is currently based at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, Perth.

“Marshall argues that Charcot is “best understood through the lens of dramaturgy. He demonstrates the spatial and temporal implications of Charcot’s neurological practice as steeped in neo-classical aesthetics and deeply attuned to scenography, showmanship, and stage production. Using convincing evidence drawn from critiques of Charcot, Marshall demonstrates … that the power and danger of mixing medicine and theatrics was not lost on Charcot’s contemporaries.” (Maia Woolner, New Books network, newbooksnetwork.com, May, 2018)




“Drawing on a range of textual, artistic, architectural, and photographic materials, Marshall offers a vivid analysis of Charcot’s neurological dramaturgy from the laboratory to the lecture hall. … Marshall’s compelling study troubles neat distinctions between theatre and medicine, knower and known, rational and irrational, and pathology and health in and beyond the space of Salpêtrière, as theatricality moves center stage in this rich archaeology of neurological practice.” (TDR: The Drama Review, Vol. 62 (3), 2018)





“This is an erudite cultural history that encompasses medicine, visual art, cultural thinking and theatre in the later decades of the nineteenth century in a thoughtful analysis that integrates these divergent elements fluently. Ambitious in its scope, at the same time the book is highly detailed and impresses with its descriptions of the medical and artistic milieu surrounding major figures. ” (Peta Tait, Australasian Drama Studies, Vol. 71, 2018)




Translated from French:

“Moving through the different sites for the constitution and exercise of the Charcotian dramaturgy, Marshall offers a new course through which to look at the master [Charcot]’s thinking … [Marshall] brings the rich contributions of theatrical theory and art history to the analysis of Charcotian works, illustrated for example by the study of the paintings of the Salpêtrière and