Description
Book SynopsisThe contributors to
Race and Performance after Repetition explore how theater and performance studies account for the complex relationship between race and time. Pointing out that repetition has been the primary point of reference for understanding both the complex temporality of theater and the historical persistence of race, they identify and pursue critical alternatives to the conceptualization, organization, measurement, and politics of race in performance. The contributors examine theater, performance art, music, sports, dance, photography, and other forms of performance in topics that range from the movement of boxer Joe Louis to George C. Wolfe''s 2016 reimagining of the 1921 all-black musical comedy
Shuffle Along to the relationship between dance, mourning, and black adolescence in Flying Lotus''s music video “Never Catch Me.” Proposing a spectrum of coexisting racial temporalities that are not tethered to repetition, this collection reconsiders centra
Trade Review“Offering a groundbreaking take on one of the most central premises of performance studies, this innovative volume advances theoretical and interpretive articulations of time that expand upon and challenge long-held assumptions about performance as repetition. It significantly expands performance theory and promises to animate conversations about performance, race, and time going forward. This collection is truly a breath of fresh air.” -- Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, coeditor of * Blacktino Queer Performance *
“‘What time is it?!’
Race and Performance after Repetition offers a pathbreaking and long overdue intervention in performance studies by posing this sly and urgent question from a multiplicity of critical vantage points. This brilliant and inspired collection of essays unsettles the very foundations of the field by tracing, interrogating, and ultimately questioning the dominant logic of repetition as a foundational theoretical axiom in performance studies scholarship by way of calling attention to the difference that race makes. As this anthology demonstrates, the material historical conditions of race demand a wider, deeper, and more robust critical lexicon that moves beyond the grammar of temporal repetition. It is a volume that heralds new times in the field.” -- Daphne A. Brooks, author of * Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910 *
“
Race and Performance After Repetition is worth reading from cover to cover, both for the engaging and diverse methodologies on offer and for its overarching interest in what scholars of performance studies miss if they adhere too closely to the conventions of the field.” -- Christina Knight * American Literary History *
“The new collection
Race and Performance After Repetition moves several fields forward, among them theatre, dance, and performance studies, Black studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and American studies. That it does so is a testament to the richness and interdisciplinarity of the animating impulse behind the collection, the thought of José Esteban Muñoz.” -- Ariel Nereson * Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism *
“Colbert, Jones, and Vogel have assembled a truly excellent collection of new work . . . of some of the most exciting performance theorists working in the field today. . . . The editors and contributors alike have collectively produced something magnificent.” -- Takeo Rivera * Modern Drama *
“As a collection [
Race and Performance after Repetition] pushes on how repetition takes shape; it offers enlightening albeit disparate interventions in thinking about how race, time and performance produce meaning as an ensemble. . . . I finished the book and wanted to start it again.” -- Sean Metzger * Performance Research *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: Tidying Up after Repetition / Soyica Diggs Colbert, Douglas A. Jones Jr., and Shane Vogel 1
Part I. Toggling Time: Metatheaters of Race
1. So Far Down You Can't See the Light: Afro-Fabulation in Branden Jacob-Jenkins's
An Octoroon / Tavia Nyong'o 29
2. The Performance and Politics of Concurrent Temporalities in George C. Wolfe's
Shuffle Along / Catherine M. Young 46
3. A Sonic Treatise of Futurity: Universes'
Party People / Patricia Herrera 71
Part II. Choreo-Chronographies
4. Joe Louis's Utopic Glitch / Tina Post 103
5. Sorrow's Swing / Jasmine Johnson 127
6. Parabolic Moves: Time, Narrative, and Difference in New Circus / Katherine Zien 142
7. Choreographing Time Travel: Rethinking Ritual through Korean Diasporic Performance / Elizabeth W. Son 173
Part III. Temporal (Im)mobilities: Dwelling Out of Time
8. Carceral Space-Times and
The House That Herman Built / Nicholas Fesette 199
9. Performance Interventions: Natality and Carceral Feminism in Contemporary India / Jisha Menon 220
10. Whitnessing Queer Flights: Josué Azor's
Lougawou Images and Antihomosexual Unrest in Haiti / Mario Lamothe 242
11. The Body Is Never Given, nor Do We Actually See It / Joshua Chambers-Letson 270
Bibliography 293
Contributors 317
Index 321
