Performing Afro-Cuba: Image, Voice, Spectacle in the Making of Race and History (Book) [show prizes]
Title: Performing Afro-Cuba: Image, Voice, Spectacle in the Making of Race and History
Author: Kristina Wirtz
Abstract: Visitors to Cuba will notice that Afro-Cuban figures and references are everywhere: in popular music and folklore shows, paintings and dolls of Santería saints in airport shops, and even restaurants with plantation themes. In Performing Afro-Cuba, Kristina Wirtz examines how the animation of Cuba's colonial past and African heritage through such figures and performances not only reflects but also shapes the Cuban experience of Blackness. Employing Bakhtin's concept of "chronotopes"--the semiotic construction of space-time--she examines the roles of voice, temporality, embodiment, imagery, and memory in the racializing process. The result is a deftly balanced study that marries racial studies, performance studies, anthropology, and semiotics to explore the nature of race as a cultural sign, one that is always in process, always shifting.
Year: 2014
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780226118864
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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