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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Editorial
\nMyron M. Beasley
\npp. 1 – 3
\nNotes Towards a Performance Theory of Orature
\nNg\u0169g\u0129 wa Thiong’o
\npp. 4 – 7
\nWhen I Was There, It Was Not: On secretions once lost in the night
\nLewis R. Gordon
\npp. 8 – 15
\nPerforming Ethnography: The political economy of water
\nD. Soyini Madison
\npp. 16 – 27
\nRewriting Historical Narratives: Adrienne Kennedy’s historic interventions
\nChewen-Woan Kuan, Lisa M. Anderson
\npp. 28 – 35
\nExcerpts from Jungaey\u00e9: An opera
\nDouglas Kearney
\npp. 36 – 41
\nI’ve Got You Under My Skin’: Queer assemblages, lyrical nostalgia and the African diaspora
\nTavia Nyong’o
\npp. 42 – 54
\nThe Quilt: Towards a twenty-first century black feminist ethnography
\nRen\u00e9e Alexander Craft, Media McNeal, Msha\u00ef S. Mwangola
\npp. 55 – 73
\nSpeaking Fluent ‘Joke’: Pushing the racial envelope through comedic performance on Chappelle’s Show
\nKatrina E. Bell-Jordan
\npp. 74 – 90
\nWhen Did You Discover You Are African?’: MoAD and the universal, diasporic subject
\nBrandi Wilkins Catanese
\npp. 91 – 102
\nNice and Rough: The promise of privacy in Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ and I, Tina
\nFrancesca T. Royster
\npp. 103 – 113
\nPerforming Blackness: Transversal diasporas criss-crossing the Atlantic
\nKanta Kochhar-Lindgren
\npp. 114 – 123
\nLocating Tulsa in the Souls of Black Women Folk: Performing memory as survival
\nOlga Idriss Davis
\npp. 124 – 136
\nKissing Ass and Other Performative Acts of Resistance: Austin, Fanon and New Orleans tourism
\nLynnell Thomas
\npp. 137 – 145
\nReviews
\nCaroline Ewing, Jane Anna Gordon
\npp. 146 – 155
\nNotes on Contributors
\npp. 156 – 157<\/p>\n\n\n