Description
On Blackness/Diaspora contemplates, what does it mean to ‘perform’ blackness? How might performance be the link (conceptually, theoretically, and even perhaps literally) in the African Diaspora? Situating the concept of Diaspora as it pertains to the grammar of lineage, fragmented histories, ontological movement, dispersion of bodies, and cultural/ geo-politics –this issue will highlight the vastness of blackness. Locating the African Diaspora as the site of discourse, we explore race through modalities of performance. Appreciating the transnational and the deterritorializing nature of the African Diaspora, we critically engage in the multiplicity of thought, the fluidity of identity, language, representation, space, and gender, as derived in narrative, memory, popular culture and intellectual histories. This issue is a pastiche of what or how we conceive the performance of Blackness/ Diaspora.
Editorial
Myron M. Beasley
pp. 1 – 3
Notes Towards a Performance Theory of Orature
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
pp. 4 – 7
When I Was There, It Was Not: On secretions once lost in the night
Lewis R. Gordon
pp. 8 – 15
Performing Ethnography: The political economy of water
D. Soyini Madison
pp. 16 – 27
Rewriting Historical Narratives: Adrienne Kennedy’s historic interventions
Chewen-Woan Kuan, Lisa M. Anderson
pp. 28 – 35
Excerpts from Jungaeyé: An opera
Douglas Kearney
pp. 36 – 41
I’ve Got You Under My Skin’: Queer assemblages, lyrical nostalgia and the African diaspora
Tavia Nyong’o
pp. 42 – 54
The Quilt: Towards a twenty-first century black feminist ethnography
Renée Alexander Craft, Media McNeal, Mshaï S. Mwangola
pp. 55 – 73
Speaking Fluent ‘Joke’: Pushing the racial envelope through comedic performance on Chappelle’s Show
Katrina E. Bell-Jordan
pp. 74 – 90
When Did You Discover You Are African?’: MoAD and the universal, diasporic subject
Brandi Wilkins Catanese
pp. 91 – 102
Nice and Rough: The promise of privacy in Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ and I, Tina
Francesca T. Royster
pp. 103 – 113
Performing Blackness: Transversal diasporas criss-crossing the Atlantic
Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren
pp. 114 – 123
Locating Tulsa in the Souls of Black Women Folk: Performing memory as survival
Olga Idriss Davis
pp. 124 – 136
Kissing Ass and Other Performative Acts of Resistance: Austin, Fanon and New Orleans tourism
Lynnell Thomas
pp. 137 – 145
Reviews
Caroline Ewing, Jane Anna Gordon
pp. 146 – 155
Notes on Contributors
pp. 156 – 157
