I have just read/encountered a brilliant, brain stretcher of a book. Joseph Roach’s Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
Roach uses the metaphor of a parade as a way into understanding the forward progression and backward study of cultural memory and identification through performances in liminal spaces—specifically the circum-Atlantic trade triangle of the early modern period. He specifically is interested in kinesthetic imagination (cultural memory through physical performance), behavioral vortices (locations that exist on the interactive borders of several cultures, thereby drawing the performances in), and displaced transmission (practices of cultural memory and identity that are transplanted, adapted and adopted). His method is to compare historical texts (of all sorts) with contemporary texts (of all sorts) in order to see how that parade—in which surrogates must arise to take the place of the things that pass away (thereby remembering and reinventing identity)—restores behaviors from their “scripted records” (11). Roach’s work reads like a parade itself, wandering down the street of the pages as people, themes, and events weave in and out in the interactions.
I found this book particularly interesting because it is a period that I have studied in terms of literature, criticism, historical research, and dramatic literature—it is the research topic of my favorite Professor from my masters. It was a challenging read in the best possible way, and I responded to it on many different topics. As a result, I’m going to go in a couple different directions with this, so bear with me.
1.) Theater & Performance as a Creation of Cultural Memory
As both a performer and a director—as well as someone who is often painfully aware of perceived authenticity or inauthenticity of social performance, Roach struck me with his observations of performers both as caretakers/makers of memory and as effigies/mediums of that cultural definer (77-78). The majority of theater companies and productions that I have worked with/on resurrected plays from the past because there was something within the play that they wanted to remember or recreate in the memory of society/community. It might have just been the “greatness” of that play or a respect for Shakespeare (but then what is that greatness but cultural performance that for one reason or another deserves to be remembered as part of a cultural identity) or perhaps it was the perspective the play could shed on current events (and then it is both a restored and surrogated script). Still, theater is being used to transmit cultural memories and ideas. For example, The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh just closed at the Hilberry (our Wayne State graduate theater) this weekend. It is a play about an Irish community on an Irish Island. While the play is considered a “comic masterpiece” (http://www.druid.ie/productions/the-cripple-of-inishmaan-2011) by the Druid Theatre in Ireland, one of the important professional theater companies in Ireland, the Hilberry production played up the magical and heartrending elements of the story in an Americanized view of the magic of Ireland and a young man’s struggle for life (more than in Ireland), liberty (from his communal place as cripple), and the pursuit of happiness (the girl). While these elements are to some degree present, the Hilberry production highlighted them, bringing a unique performance of American memory and culture out of the Irish play.
2.) Celebrity as effigy (76)
Theater and Movies (a new permutation) still formalize the structural performances and signs of society. While our theater actors rarely find such celebrity as Thomas Betterton, our movie actors occupy roles of celebrity as effigy. They occupy that liminal space where they are of us but not of us—we speak of them in conversation by their first names and gossip about the intimate details of their lives, but are just as willing to enact performances of waste on them in the form of verbal and textual violence. Newsweek magazine published an article in 2010 redefining celebrity as the 21st century art form—life as story. Life as performance art.
3.) Internet Ghost Dancing
The internet multiplies points of contact and intersection between cultures and ideas—the ludic spaces, the behavioral vortices. And everyday performances are filmed and uploaded at a blistering degree, while the cultural process of remembering/forgetting rapidly pushes forward. Myspace (which has given way to facebook) has a fascinating permutation in the webspace selvage between life and death—it’s called mydeathspace. Mydeathspace is an archive of those pages including a short obituary stating how and when the user died and a link to the deceased’s myspace page. Reading the pages is a fascinating connection point between the living and the dead, who seem to live on in cyberspace. When a myspace user dies, their profile page remains in place; their friends and relatives continue to post periodically on the page like a ritual—like a cyber ghost dance. Like the Native American religious ritual that Roach describes, the interactions function as “a rite of memory” between the living and the dead (208).
4.) Community and Displaced Transmission
When discussing groups, Roach observes that as communities create/recreate/remember/forget their identities, they do not function like bodies—which need all their different pieces to survive—rather they function like a quilt which can patch together and lose lots of things, the goal being a cohesive quilt instead of a functioning organism (191). In my mind this observation is in conversation with Miranda Joseph’s book. Both Joseph and Roach agree that the idea of community is one that reifies identities based on exclusion and inclusion—which can (a la Mardi-gras and the non-profit), in the guise of challenging the oppressive system, actually support/supplement/reinforce that very system. Roach also seems to be pointing out the problem that while “community resides in shared conceptions of legitimate performances . . . these conceptions are not fixed and immutable; they are subject to fluctuations and negotiations” (86). The fluctuation and negotiation are precisely where Roach situations his research and ideas, which are at once fascinating, disturbing, and generative.
Well, in place of a conclusion, I will say that the parade goes on. My brain continues to percolate and my homework continues to pile up. Until next time, I heartily recommend the book.
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