Performing Hybridity

1998

May Joseph and Jennifer Natalya Fink, editors

A kaleidoscopic consideration of transnational culture and performance

Amid the modern-day complexities of migration and exile, immigration and repatriation, notions of stable national identity give way to ideas about cultural “hybridity.” The authors represented in this volume use different forms of performative writing to question this process, to ask how the production of new political identities destabilizes ideas about gender, sexuality, and the nation in the public sphere.

Contributors: Meena Alexander, Awam Amkpa, Tony Birch, Barbara Browning, Manthia Diawara, Fiona Foley, Sikivu Hutchinson, Deborah A. Kapchan, Toby Miller, Shani Mootoo, Fred Moten, José Esteban Muñoz, Chon A. Noriega, Celeste Olalquiaga, Ella Shohat, and Robert Stam.

Performing Hybridity brings together a collection of poems, essays, case studies and photographic works in the fields of performance studies and cultural studies that examine instances in which the notion of hybridity challenges ideas of identity and performance. Contributors such as Toby Miller, Fiona Foley, Shani Mootoo, Celeste Olalquiaga and Fred Moten provide a sampling of how artists are articulating new hybrid identities as a way of rethinking questions of identity, sexuality, social agency and national affiliation. Highlights of the book include Robert Stam’s fashioning of the ‘aesthetics of garbage’ as they relate to Brazilian cinema as well as Jose Esteban Munoz’s complex reading of Richard Fung’s autoethnographic videos. Performing Hybridity establishes an important mise-en-scene for the shifting notions of hybridity and its implications for the production of knowledge.

Parachute

Amid the modern-day complexities of migration and exile, immigration and repatriation, notions of stable national identity give way to ideas about cultural “hybridity.” The authors represented in this volume use different forms of performative writing to question this process, to ask how the production of new political identities destabilizes ideas about gender, sexuality, and the nation in the public sphere.

Contributors use forms such as the essay, poem, photography, and case study to examine historically specific cases in which the notion of hybridity recasts our ideas of identity and performance: the struggle for Aboriginal land rights in Australia; Bahian carnival; the creolization and pidginization of language in the Caribbean world; queer videos; and others.

Contributors: Meena Alexander, CUNY; Awam Amkpa, Mount Holyoke; Tony Birch; Barbara Browning, New York U; Manthia Diawara, New York U; Fiona Foley; Sikivu Hutchinson; Deborah A. Kapchan, U of Texas; Toby Miller, New York U; Shani Mootoo; Fred Moten, U of California, Santa Barbara; José Esteban Muñoz, New York U; Chon A. Noriega, UCLA; Celeste Olalquiaga; Ella Shohat, CUNY; Robert Stam, New York U.

May Joseph is assistant professor of Performance Studies at New York University.

Jennifer Natalya Fink is visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute and adjunct professor of drama at New York University.

Performing Hybridity brings together a collection of poems, essays, case studies and photographic works in the fields of performance studies and cultural studies that examine instances in which the notion of hybridity challenges ideas of identity and performance. Contributors such as Toby Miller, Fiona Foley, Shani Mootoo, Celeste Olalquiaga and Fred Moten provide a sampling of how artists are articulating new hybrid identities as a way of rethinking questions of identity, sexuality, social agency and national affiliation. Highlights of the book include Robert Stam’s fashioning of the ‘aesthetics of garbage’ as they relate to Brazilian cinema as well as Jose Esteban Munoz’s complex reading of Richard Fung’s autoethnographic videos. Performing Hybridity establishes an important mise-en-scene for the shifting notions of hybridity and its implications for the production of knowledge.

Parachute

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: New Hybrid Identities and Performance May Joseph

Part I: Transnational Hybridities

Three Poems on the Poverty of History Meena Alexander
Culture and the Global Economy Toby Miller
A Blast from the Past Fiona Foley
Palimpsestic Aesthetics: A Meditation on Hybridity and Garbage Robert Slam
The Daughters of Gandhi: Africanness, Indianness, and Brazilianness in the Bahian Carnival Barbara Browning
Floating Signification: Carnivals and the Transgressive Performance of Hybridity Awam Amkpa
Hybridity and Other Poems Shani Mootoo
The Autoethnographic Performance: Reading Richard Fung's Queer Hybridity Jose Esteban Munoz
Taboo Memories and Diasporic Visions: Columbus, Palestine, and Arab-Jews Ella Shohat

Part II: Urban Hybridities

The Anatomy Contraption Tony Birch
From Pastiche to Macaroni Celeste Olalquiaga
Afro-Kitsch Ma nth ia Diawara
"Barricades of Ideas": Latino Culture, Site-Specific Installation, and the U.S. Art Museum Chon A. Noriega
Lincoln Highway Sikivu Hutchinson
Hybrid Genres, Performed Subjectivities: The Revoicing of Public Oratory in the Moroccan Marketplace Deborah A. Kapchan
Bridge and One: Improvisations of the Public Sphere Fred Moten

Conclusion. Pushing through the Surface: Notes on Hybridity and Writing Jennifer Natalya Fink
Contributors
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