Synopses & Reviews
In
Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play, Jennifer DeVere Brody places punctuation at center stage. She illuminates the performative aspects of dots, ellipses, hyphens, quotation marks, semicolons, colons, and exclamation points by considering them in relation to aesthetics and experimental art. Through her readings of texts and symbols ranging from style guides to digital art, from emoticons to dance pieces, Brody suggests that instead of always clarifying meaning, punctuation can sometimes open up space for interpretation, enabling writers and visual artists to interrogate and reformulate notions of life, death, art, and identity politics.
Brody provides a playful, erudite meditation on punctuationandrsquo;s power to direct discourse and, consequently, to shape human subjectivity. Her analysis ranges from a consideration of typography as a mode for representing black subjectivity in Ralph Ellisonandrsquo;s Invisible Man to a reflection on hyphenation and identity politics in light of Strunk and Whiteandrsquo;s prediction that the hyphen would disappear from written English. Ultimately, Brody takes punctuation off the andldquo;stage of the pageandrdquo; to examine visual and performance artistsandrsquo; experimentation with non-grammatical punctuation. She looks at different ways that punctuation performs as gesture in dances choreographed by Bill T. Jones, in the hybrid sculpture of Richard Artschwager, in the multimedia works of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, and in Miranda Julyandrsquo;s film Me and You and Everyone We Know. Brody concludes with a reflection on the future of punctuation in the digital era.
Review
andldquo;Here is a book that earns the right to the spaces between its sumptuously smart words. Here is a book that pays attention to the andlsquo;minorandrsquo; detail of punctuation in ways that percolate with questions pertaining to history, subject formation, ethnicity, racialization, technology, authorship, physiology, philosophy, aesthetic value, the social, the political, and more (to pile up the commas). Lacing her arguments with humor as well as insight, Jennifer DeVere Brody here tracks punctuationandrsquo;s contradictory performances across a number of times and places. She offers close readings of artists and authors who deploy punctuation pointedly in a variety of mediums, amplifying the mark of the mark, the score of the score, the thrust or lean of the emphaticals that prop our points. Here is a book that doubles as a stage upon which the understudied finally gets to strut and fret with an embodied wit, critical grace, and socially relevant verve.andrdquo;andmdash;Rebecca Schneider, Brown University
Review
andldquo;In Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play, Jennifer DeVere Brody productively bridges both performance criticism and literary analysis through a consideration of punctuation. To be certain, this is a bold and innovative move that compels us to consider what is too often taken for granted: how punctuation performs. Brodyandrsquo;s book is decidedly interdisciplinary, as she analyzes a diverse array of performance texts always mindful of the intersections of art, politics, and play. As a result, Brody brings important insight to issues of race, gender, and performance through this examination of punctuation. Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play is a most ambitious and significant work that will certainly have a cross-disciplinary impact.andrdquo;andmdash;Harry J. Elam Jr., Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University
Review
andldquo;[Brodyandrsquo;s] sophisticated and diverting links in Punctuation: Art, Politics and Play opens up writing not only as both performance and notation (as an instructional element concerning the dramaturgical aspects of a text) but also the political effects of the use of hyphenation as an element of arts. The surprising and promising aspect of the study makes readers aware of the very fact that politics are found exactly inside the landrsquo;art pour landrsquo;art conception of punctuation marks. . . . Punctuation is a valuable contribution to the repoliticisation of art through performance.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play is a good book, a clever book, and an exciting book. The singularity of Brodyandrsquo;s approach, the verve and creativity of her readings, and the workandrsquo;s interdisciplinarityandmdash;particularly its much-needed liaisons among textual, queer, and performance studiesandmdash;are significant strengths.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[D]azzling in its inter-disciplinarity and most delightful to read. Jennifer DeVere Brody has produced a study on performance art which is itself a performance, a play on punctuation which defamiliarizes the mundane accompaniment to communication, which is punctuation, and reinvents its components as significant cultural markers.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;This is the book that puts the andlsquo;punandrsquo;, not to mention the andlsquo;punkandrsquo;, in andlsquo;punctuation.andrsquo; Jennifer DeVere Brody focuses on punctuation as performance, highlighting its role in novels, poetry, art, dance and racial and gender politics. She plays with full stops, semicolons and apostrophes all the while, including a chapter in the form of a dialogue during which one character talks largely in smileys. The result is a book of spirited cultural criticism, not a monograph on linguistics.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;DeVere Brodyandrsquo;s work is undeniably vanguard in a subject that has long ceased to be edgy and new. She should be applauded for her vigor and bravery. Itandrsquo;s a hefty dose of insight and perspective for the prescriptivist in all of us.andrdquo;
Review
andrdquo;A puncturing of semantic space, Jennifer DeVere Brodyandrsquo;s Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play performs at every turn a subversive politics that celebrates the margins as places where the real deal goes down. . . . Hats off to Brody for taking us someplace new.andrdquo;
Synopsis
An examination of the poetics and politics of punctuation and how seemingly neutral markers affect the construction of subjects, identities, and ideas.
Synopsis
Punctuation offers playful interpretations of punctuation in relation to aesthetics, performance, and experimental art.
About the Author
Jennifer DeVere Brody is Associate Professor of English, African American Studies, and Performance Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture, also published by Duke University Press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
For(e)thought: Pre/Script: gesturestyluspunctum 1
1. Smutty Daubings 27
2. Belaboring the Point . . . 62
3. Hyphen-Nations 85
4. andquot;Queerandquot; Quotation Marks 108
5. Sem;erot;cs ; Colon:zat:ons : Exclamat!ons ! 134
Post\Script: Cyberpunktuations? 156
Notes 169
Bibliography 191
Index 207