Performing Ethnicity, Performing Gender Transcultural Perspectives

256 Pages·2016·1.599 MB·English

by  Bettina Hofmann, Monika Mueller

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Performing Ethnicity, Performing Gender
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A Performance and performativity are important terms for a theorization of
1 gender and race/ethnicity as constitutive of identity. This collection reflects
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9 the ubiquity, diversity, and (historical) locatedness of ethnicity and gender
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: by presenting contributions by an array of international scholars who focus
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0 on the representation of these crucial categories of identity across various
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a media including literature, film, documentary, and (music) video perfor-
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o mance. The first section, “Political Agency,” stresses instances where the per-
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e formance of ethnicity/gender ultimately aims at a liberating effect leading
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to more autonomy. The second section, “Diasporic Belonging,” explores the
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a different kinds of negotiations of ethnic performances in multiethnic con-
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a, texts. The third part, “Performances of Ethnicity and Gender,” scrutinizes
i instances of the combined performance of ethnicity and gender in novels,
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r films, and musical performances. The last section, “Cross-Ethnic Traffic,”
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if contains a number of contributions that are concerned with attempts at
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y Bettina Hofmann is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Humanities and
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si Cultural Studies at the University of Wuppertal, Germany.
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ni Monika Mueller is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the
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University of Bochum, Germany.
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Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.
82 Social Memory Technology
7 Theory, Practice, Action
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Crisis, Communication, and Change
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A History of Self-Service
Michael Palm
91 Performing Ethnicity, Performing Gender
Transcultural Perspectives
Edited by Bettina Hofmann and Monika Mueller
Performing Ethnicity,
Performing Gender
Transcultural Perspectives
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A Edited by Bettina Hofmann
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1 and Monika Mueller
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First published 2017
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
7 © 2017 Taylor & Francis
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p Patents Act 1988.
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1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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9 utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
2 known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
0: any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
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] Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
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g registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
e without intent to infringe.
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n Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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ia, NTiatlme:e Ps:e rHfoorfmmianngn e, tBhentitcinitay,, p1e9r6f4o–rm edinitgo gr.e |n Mdeur:e ltlrearn, Mscuolntuikraa,l 1p9er6s0p–e cetdiviteosr /.
n edited by Bettina Hofmann and Monika Mueller.
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o Description: New York; London: Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge
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li research in cultural and media studies; 91 | Includes bibliographical
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C references and index.
f Identifiers: LCCN 2016013182
o Subjects: LCSH: Sex role in literature. | Sex role in the theater. | Performing
y arts—Political aspects. | Ethnicity in literature. | Ethnicity in the theater.
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si Classification: LCC PN56.S52 P45 2016 | DDC 809/.93353—dc23
er LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016013182
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n ISBN: 978-1-138-68268-9 (hbk)
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ISBN: 978-1-315-54497-7 (ebk)
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A For Dorothea Fischer-Hornung
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9 President of MESEA (2004–2012)
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Contents
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A Introduction: Performing Ethnicity, Performing Gender:
1 Transcultural Perspectives 1
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9 MonIkA MuELLER AnD BETTInA HoFMAnn
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t PART I
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] Political Agency
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Di 1 old Print Media, Radical Ideas, and Vernacular Performance
n in the Life and Work of Robert Wedderburn and
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S Henry Box Brown 23
a,
i ALAn RICE
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f 2 Speaking up, Speaking out: Performing Migrant
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a Identity in Two Italian African Memoirs 35
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f WILLIAM BoELHoWER
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it 3 Recovering Queequeq’s Body: Performing Alterna(rra)tives
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er in the Borderlands 53
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ni ASTRID M. FELLnER
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y 4 Limning the Limit or notes toward an outline
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d of Activist Performance at the Limit 69
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d SAMIR DAYAL
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n PART II
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o Diasporic Belonging
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5 Performing Ethno-Cultural Identity in Réka Pigniczky’s
Autobiographical Documentary Incubator (2009) 91
MónIkA FoDoR
6 Diasporic Bollywood: Fusionist Practices and Gender
Performativity in Deepa Mehta’s Bollywood/Hollywood 106
PIn-CHIA FEnG
viii Contents
7 Asian American Family Memoirs and the Performance
of Identity and Readership in Transcultural Societies 118
RoCío G. DAVIS
PART III
Performances of Ethnicity and Gender
7 8 Gallo-Gallina: Gender Performance and the
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0 Androgynous Imagination in Elena Poniatowska’s
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l Hasta no verte Jesús mío 133
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A CARMEn SERRAno
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1 9 Performing Identity as a Challenge to Heteronormativity:
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2 Public and Private Spaces in R. Raj Rao’s The Boyfriend 150
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] 10 Performing Butterfly: Medial Constructions of Ethnic Identity 161
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g AnGELIkA koEHLER
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n PART IV
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S Cross-Ethnic Traffic
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n 11 Asian American Literature and Literary Theory:
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f onoto Watanna’s Panethnic Impersonation in
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a Miss Numė of Japan 181
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f IPInG LIAnG
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er in Michael Bond’s Paddington Here and Now and
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i Don’t Eat the Neighbours 193
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JoPI nYMAn
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d 13 The Performance of Ethnicity in Bollywood-Style
e Music Videos by Cornershop and by Ramesh B. Weeratunga 207
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14 Performing Poetry: Langston Hughes, “I, too”
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D and Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool” 222
BETTInA HoFMAnn
List of Contributors 237
Index 241
Introduction
Performing Ethnicity, Performing Gender:
Transcultural Perspectives
Monika Mueller and Bettina Hofmann
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A The concepts of ethnicity and gender are categories by which human beings
1 define themselves. Ethnicity and gender are performed in myriad ways in
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9 daily life, on the streets, and in the media. As cultural constructs, ethnic-
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: ity and gender are subject to continuous change brought about in their
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0 enactment or performance. Since they are normative, both categories are
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a often viewed as oppressive. According to Judith Butler’s theories on perfor-
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o mance and performativity, which are based on the findings of J. L. Austin
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e and S. J. Tambiah, all normative behavior, including the behavior pre-
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scribed by the norms of race/ethnicity and gender, can actually be resignified
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a and changed by performing a repetition with a difference, a more or less
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a, “parodic repetition” (Gender Trouble 138). Theorists, including Butler her-
i self, who opts for a resignification that is contingent rather than deliberate,
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r have debated how exactly gender and race are constructed and to what
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if extent a transformation of oppressive norms can actually be the intended
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C outcome of performance. Thus, Heath R. Davis, for example, formulates the
f following questions:
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si How is gender [and, by extension, race] read in or on the body? When
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e coming into a world that pre-exists us how does surface, a series of
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ni movements or gestures, “energy,” create a language with which we
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speak, communicate and transmit/produce knowledge? If our gender
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y [race/ethnicity] is unintelligible, misread or misunderstood, how does it
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d threaten the legitimacy of hegemonic gender [racial] structures? (online)
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o The contributors to this volume address the important controversy over
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n contingency versus intent in practices of poststructuralist resignification by
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o exploring or even postulating a space in-between poststructuralism and poli-
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tical activism. In this context, Davis’s notion of an “aesthetics of activism”
elucidates that a new political activism—informed by the poststructuralist
turn—needs to be considered in order to theorize ethnicity and gender in the
twenty-first century. This “aesthetics of activism” proves to be an important
concept because it calls for performance-based expression that “scrambles”
normative representations and thus makes “their common sense unintelligi-
ble” (H. Davis, online) in order to create space for resignification.