Title: <i>Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910</i> (review)
Abstract: Reviewed by: Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 Deborah Elizabeth Whaley Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910. By Daphne A. Brooks. Durham: Duke University Press. 2006. Theater and performance studies—both decidedly different and congruent—focuses on the interplay between bodies, spatial arrangements, movement, and context. In particular, performance studies is a field that contemplates theoretical explications of bodies, voices, and objects engaged in various aspects of representational presentation and movement. Through the prism of performance theory, for example, race, gender, sexuality, and class are all markers of difference that are performed in accordance to or in defiance of prescribed, societal expectations. Daphne A. Brooks' Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910, traces how the performative acts of people of African descent in the nineteenth and early twentieth century sought to "resist, complicate, and undo narrow racial, gender, sexual, and class categories in America and British cultures" (3). These performances, she argues, created counter narratives to the master script of race relations. More than a tracing of hegemony and ensuing counter hegemonic acts by performers, Bodies in Dissent stands out as a unique study that adds to the scholarship in performance and ethnic studies. Brooks presents challenging and useful theoretical constructs for cultural studies scholars to learn from and build upon. One such theory is the author's introduction of "Afro-alienation acts," which are defined as proactive performances of people throughout the African diaspora who draw upon their cultural expressiveness to intervene in unequal social relations. Afro-alienation acts are in this sense a "strategy of critique" that "disassembles" oppressive thought and structures (5). Brooks' theory is more than a smart articulation of Lisa Lowe's discussion of Asian-American agency in Immigrant Acts (1996), W. E. B. Du Bois' definition of double consciousness in Souls of Black Folk (1902), and Bill Mullen's transatlantic theory of Afro-Asian alliances in Afro Orientalism (2004). Brooks' visual and figurative idea of bodies in dissent—or minds in states of dissonance that perform oppositional politics through acts of the body—merges aesthetic, performance, and historical concerns in productive and theoretically rigorous ways. This interdisciplinary study culls from literature, performance, history, music, theater, and dance to make audible the insurgent contributions of nineteenth century black performers and performance. Brooks begins with a case study on spirit rapping (spectacular performances of religiosity), black face minstrelsy, and she provides close readings of theatrical scenes from The Octoroon, and Jekyll and Hyde. While spirit rapping would question and transcend borders of race, space, and the divine, The Octoroon and Jekyll and Hyde showcased white anxieties of blackness and the black body. The former discussion sets the ground work for Brooks to turn to how black performers "mastered the art of spectacle, representational excess, and duality" by signifying "on the politics of racial 'imitation' in order to reinvent the transatlantic cultural playing field from abolition forward" (65). To amplify such resistant performances, Brooks provides an examination of black abolitionist Henry Box Brown's slave narratives and panorama exhibitions. She concludes that Brown's work transgresses boundaries of the panorama genre form by interrogating the "mythic history of progress" that such exhibitions usually seek to create. In so doing, Brown's dialogic, panorama exhibitions challenge and confront spectators [End Page 152] with the ways "slavery ensnares the nation in whirling stasis" thus calling upon her or him to metaphorically "resolve slavery's conundrum" (89). The second half of Bodies in Dissent explores the performative strategies of Adah Isaacs Menken, Bert Williams, George Walker, and Pauline Hopkins. While the performance of Menken and the plays of Hopkins demonstrate fluid performances of race and gender, Williams' and Walker's musical In Dahomey presents significations of the black body to call into question "boundaries of self and black nationhood," (213) thereby reconfiguring black theatric corporeality (how the black body is characteristically perceived on stage). This much needed and firmly historical discussion ends with 21st century black women performers use of the stage as an act of liberation. Tightly weaving the legacy of the 19th century to the trailblazers and dissenting bodies of today, Brooks reminds readers...
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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