Duke University Press The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (A John Hope Franklin Center Book)

In The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory―conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances―offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice. Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others. Review "A timely collection of essays. . . .Taylor weaves together insights, examples, and critical strategies from [performance studies and Latina/o American studies] and her exemplary book makes a major contribution to both."--Marvin Carlson "TDR: The Drama Review" "Persuasively argued and elegantly theorized, The Archive and the Repertoire constitutes a necessary intervention in performance scholarship."--Lisa Wolford Wylam "Theatre Research International" "Taylor's work is an important step in acknowledging marginalized expressions of cultural memory. Its most notable contribution is undoubtedly a defense of the growing field of performance studies as a tool of decolonization."--Katherine M. Hedeen "Latin American Research Review" "Diana Taylor is perhaps the most lucid and original Latin American performance theorist. In her new book, she tackles a very complex topic: the relationship between writing, performance, and historical memory on our continent. Her interdisciplinary approach provides us with new bridges and pathways between cultures, metiers, and disciplines. My colleagues and I have long been waiting for such a book."--Guillermo Gómez-Peña, performance artist and writer "The Archive and the Repertoire is an original and brilliant contribution. It will take the study of Latin American performance to a new level with its attention not only to politics and to history and its consequences, but also to memory, the media, and aesthetic/political practices that take into account the hemispheric and the global."--Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, author of The Wounded Heart: Writing on Cherríe Moraga "Diana Taylor's ideas, carefully etched out here to great effect, provide a new vocabulary to understand the work that performance does in culture and broadens our sense of how performance achieves its effect. Full of insight and information, The Archive and the Repertoire should finally unsettle the hegemony of narrative in Latin American literary and cultural studies."--David Román, author of Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS "Diana Taylor is that rare scholar--a master of theory who speaks from