Object Lesson(s)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4516692 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Autumn M Womack (Department of English, The University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA), Autumn Womack (University of Pittsburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 59-66 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Women & Performance a journal of feminist theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0740-770X • E-ISSN: 1748-5819 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0740770x.2017.1282123 |
| OpenAlex | W2586539400 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 8 |
This article reconstructs up an impromptu dance performed by Lavinia Baker, a survivor of mob violence and star of an anti-lynching performance revue, and reads it as the occasion for rethinking the performative dimensions of a seemingly familiar spectacle: lynching. As opposed to the familiar scene of the black corpse captured and circulated in photographs, the author argues that Lavinia's 1899 dance and the liveness of her performance – that is, its excess, disruptions, and improvisation – is instantiation of racial violence that strains against the putative framing of mob violence as a finite event that is amenable to documentation, capture, or narrativization. By pivoting a discussion of lynching on Lavinia Baker’s protean performance, this essay not only challenges the shape and structure of nineteenth-century anti-black terror, but also demands that we (re) turn to a deceptively simple question that animates Scenes of Subjection: what does racial violence look like
Aesthetics · Art · Dance · Impromptu · Improvisation · Liveness · Performative utterance · Sociology · Spectacle · Visual arts · Computer Science · Diversity and Impact of Dance · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society · Theater, Performance, and Music History
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2021 (5) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |