Performing memory/speech
Aesthetic boundaries and “the other” in Ghetto and the normal heart
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12370104 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jennifer Cox (0000-0002-1744-2599, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, corresponding author), J Robert Cox (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1992 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 385-390 |
| Publication date | 1992-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Text and Performance Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1046-2937 • E-ISSN: 1479-5760 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10462939209359660 |
| OpenAlex | W2053539827 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
Tudy Yordon's and Robert Bradley's extraordinary accounts of their producJ tions of Ghetto and The Normal Heart invite us to consider a number of intriguing questions about its audiences, and praxis. And, for me, these are inevitably rhetorical questions. How, for example, do performances such as these create spaces for social or political speech? In what manner do they re-position their audiences within these spaces? And, how might these capacities of constitute instrument for discourse about change (Capo 31)? Initially, at least, each of these accounts seems at odds with Marcusens claim that art's relation to praxis is inexorably indirect, (xii). And this is what intrigues me most. While Marcuse believed political dimension of art must be translated outside context of aesthetic form, drama of events surrounding Ghetto and The Normal Heart appears to be intimately connected with performances themselves. How is this? Certainly, Yordon and Bradley seem to claim such a praxial moment in performances: against forgetting of Holocaust, Yordon insists that Joshua Sobol's drama is a testament to durability of memory; and against silence surrounding AIDS, Bradley praises The Normal Heart for its dramatic punch in exposing cover up that had prevented public knowledge of disease. Both authors, therefore, distinguish performances in some sense as rhetorical: Yordon insists on the saving power of art, and Bradley, even more explicitly, affirms the power of theatre to persuade. What engages me as a rhetorical critic, however, is precisely indirect and mediated nature of this rhetorical moment, particularly manner in which each becomes an occasion for its own discursive deferral. That is, controversies—the anti-Semitic and homophobic incidents and replies to these incidents—for most part,precede and anticipate staged performance. How then does this occur? And with what effect? In brief discussion that follows I want to suggest that reactions and debate swirling around The Normal Heart and Ghetto re-position performance as discursive production of remembrance and a refusal of silence, and
Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive science · Linguistics · Communication · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |