Synopses & Reviews
In
The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memoryandmdash;conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performancesandmdash;offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact.
The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice.
Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gandoacute;mez-Peandntilde;aandrsquo;s show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.
Review
andldquo;Diana Taylor is that rare scholarandmdash;a master of theory who speaks from experience and writes with passion. She tells us that as a child she andlsquo;learned that the Americas were one.andrsquo; In this extraordinary book Taylor exploresandmdash;from the pre-Columbian to the postmodernandmdash;Americaandrsquo;s oneness of contradictions, revelations, wounds, celebrations, rituals, and arts.andrdquo;andmdash;Richard Schechner, University Professor of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and author of Performance Studies: An Introduction
Review
andldquo;Diana Taylor is perhaps the most lucid and original Latin American performance theorist. In her new book, she tackles a very complex topic: the relationship between writing, performance, and historical memory on our continent. Her interdisciplinary approach provides us with new bridges and pathways between cultures, metiers, and disciplines. My colleagues and I have long been waiting for such a book.andrdquo;andmdash;Guillermo Gandoacute;mez-Peandntilde;a, performance artist and writer
Review
andldquo;The Archive and the Repertoire is an original and brilliant contribution. It will take the study of Latin American performance to a new level with its attention not only to politics and to history and its consequences, but also to memory, the media, and aesthetic/political practices that take into account the hemispheric and the global.andrdquo;andmdash;Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, author of The Wounded Heart: Writing on Cherrandiacute;e Moraga
Review
andldquo;Diana Taylorandrsquo;s ideas, carefully etched out here to great effect, provide a new vocabulary to understand the work that performance does in culture and broadens our sense of how performance achieves its effect. Full of insight and information, The Archive and the Repertoire should finally unsettle the hegemony of narrative in Latin American literary and cultural studies.andrdquo;andmdash;David Romandaacute;n, author of Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS
Review
andldquo;This is a unique and valuable book. Tyburczyandrsquo;s grand theme is sexuality on display and the individual case histories presented are very compelling and studded with wholly new interpretations. Tyburczy has selected a notably diverse array of incidents that beautifully index period ideas about sex and its structures of visibility and invisibility. Ultimately, in weighing these discreet histories within a new category of displaying sex, Sex Museums manages to make them speak to one another.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Grounded in extensive multi-site research, Sex Museums is a far-reaching, original, and timely account of the rhetoric and material practices of the display of erotic materials. Tyburczy draws on her experience as a curator as well as interviews, observation, and archival research to present rich portraits of these often precarious institutions. Deeply engaged with museum studies and queer studies, as well as with work on affect, performance, and empire, Sex Museums grapples intelligently with the paradoxes of exhibiting and archiving sex.andrdquo;
Review
andnbsp;andldquo;Tyburczyandrsquo;s Sex Museums hitsandnbsp;the sweet hotandnbsp;spot between sexuality studies and museum studies to offer a smartandnbsp;analysis of theandnbsp;politics of the erotic in theandnbsp;public sphere. Read it andandnbsp;teach itandnbsp;if you love art, appreciate the power of representation to change our understandings of the world,andnbsp;and care about the place ofandnbsp;sexual and gender minorities in civic space.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [303]-320) and index.
Synopsis
An interdisciplinary study about the centrality of performance in Latin American culture and politics.
Synopsis
All museums are sex museums. In
Sex Museums, Jennifer Tyburczy takes a hard look at the formation of Western sexualityandmdash;particularly how categories of sexual normalcy and perversity are formedandmdash;and asks what role museums have played in using display as a technique for disciplining sexuality. Most museum exhibits, she argues, assume that white, patriarchal heterosexuality and traditional structures of intimacy, gender, and race represent national sexual culture for their visitors.
Sex Museums illuminates the history of such heteronormativity at most museums and proposes alternative approaches for the future of public display projects, while also offering the reader curatorial tacticsandmdash;what she calls queer curatorshipandmdash;for exhibiting diverse sexualities in the twenty-first century.
Tyburczy shows museums to be sites of culture-war theatrics, where dramatic civic struggles over how sex relates to public space, genealogies of taste and beauty, and performances of sexual identity are staged. Delving into the history of erotic artifacts, she analyzes how museums have historically approached the collection and display of the material culture of sex, which poses complex moral, political, and logistical dilemmas for the Western museum. Sex Museums unpacks the history of the museum and its intersections with the history of sexuality to argue that the Western museum contextandmdash;from its inception to the presentandmdash;marks a pivotal site in the construction of modern sexual subjectivity.and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
About the Author
“Diana Taylor is perhaps the most lucid and original Latin American performance theorist. In her new book, she tackles a very complex topic: the relationship between writing, performance, and historical memory on our continent. Her interdisciplinary approach provides us with new bridges and pathways between cultures, metiers, and disciplines. My colleagues and I have long been waiting for such a book.”—Guillermo Gómez-Peña, performance artist and writer“Diana Taylor is that rare scholar—a master of theory who speaks from experience and writes with passion. She tells us that as a child she ‘learned that the Americas were one.’ In this extraordinary book Taylor explores—from the pre-Columbian to the postmodern—America’s oneness of contradictions, revelations, wounds, celebrations, rituals, and arts.”—Richard Schechner, University Professor of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and author of Performance Studies: An Introduction“Diana Taylor’s ideas, carefully etched out here to great effect, provide a new vocabulary to understand the work that performance does in culture and broadens our sense of how performance achieves its effect. Full of insight and information, The Archive and the Repertoire should finally unsettle the hegemony of narrative in Latin American literary and cultural studies.”—David Román, author of Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS“The Archive and the Repertoire is an original and brilliant contribution. It will take the study of Latin American performance to a new level with its attention not only to politics and to history and its consequences, but also to memory, the media, and aesthetic/political practices that take into account the hemispheric and the global.”—Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, author of The Wounded Heart: Writing on Cherríe Moraga
Table of Contents
Who, when, what, why -- Acts of transfer -- Scenarios of discovery : reflections on performance and ethnography -- Memory as cultural practice : mestizaje, hybridity, transculturation -- La raza cosmetica : Walter Mercado performs Latino psychic space -- False identifications : minority populations mourn Diana -- "You are here" : H.I.J.O.S. and the DNA of performance -- Staging traumatic memory : Yuyachkani -- Denise Stoklos : the politics of decipherability -- Lost in the field of vision : witnessing September 11 -- Hemispheric performances.