Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Who, When, What, Why xiii
1. Acts of Transfer 1
2. Scenarios of Discovery: Reflections on Performance and Ethnography 53
3. Memory as Cultural Practice: Mestizaje, Hybridity, Transculturation 79
4. La Raza Cosmetica: Walter Mercado Performs Latino Psychic Space 110
5. False Identifications: Minority Populations Mourn Diana 133
6. "You Are Here": H.I.J.O.S. and the DNA of Performance 161
7. Staging Traumatic Memory: Yuyachkani 190
8. Denise Stoklos: The Politics of Decipherability 212
9. Lost in the Field of Vision: Witnessing September 11 237
10. Hemispheric Performances 266
Notes 279
Bibliography 303
Index 321

Promotional Information

An interdisciplinary study about the centrality of performance in Latin American culture and politics

About the Author

Diana Taylor is Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish and Director of the Hemispheric Institute on Performance and Politics at New York University. Among her books are Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform (coedited with Roselyn Costantino), Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War,” and Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality, and Theatricality in Latin/o America (with Juan Villegas), all also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"While I am trained to appreciate Taylor's analyses of Latino/a theatre and performance, I was most moved and surprised by her discussion of September 11 in chapter 9. As Taylor shows, the abundance of media attention and commentary produced after the destruction of the Twin Towers obscured the lives of nonheroes and nonvictims and turned all of them into spectators. Her testimony as scholar and participant in the events surrounding the attack is enlightening, but also refreshing."--Margo Milleret, Theatre Journal "[A] timely collection of essays...Taylor weaves together insights, examples, and critical strategies from [performance studies and Latina/o American studies] and her exemplary book makes a major contribution to both."--Marvin Carlson, TDR: The Drama Review "The book is itself both a performance and a contribution to the archive. The remarkably effective way in which [Taylor] combines personal story with analytic reflection is a fitting demonstration of the usefulness that can result from being able to sustain an awareness of one's spatio-temporal role as an observer even as one gets lost in the findings of archival discovery."--Dianna Niebylski, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies