Empathy and Performance: Enactments of Power in Latinx America (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780826506740)

Empathy and Performance advances a study of empathy and enactments of power by examining works from author-actors whose performances explore the boundaries between two kinship positions. Author Laura V. S疣dez studies the dramatized dilemma of cultural understanding in "Our America," a notion that refers first to a collective political identity marking a common belonging in the Spanish-speaking America but also alludes to current struggles in the contemporary US. This book sees empathy as an affective response grounded in subjectivity and kinship. S疣dez argues that to conceptualize empathy one needs to understand how subjects organize, classify, and limit themselves, not only as agents, but also as interpreters. What sort of affiliations do these performances promote? How do they break, reinforce, or queer societal expectations about the Latinx body, the white body, or simply, the staged body?

To survey different answers to these queries, S疣dez studies Indigurrito (Nao Bustamante); Dominicanish (Josefina B疇z); Bienvenidos Blancos! or Welcome White People! (Alex Torra); the apology delivered by the group Veterans Stand with Standing Rock during protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline; and Kukuli Velarde's body of work, from We, the Colonized Ones to A Mi Vida. In these artistic enactments, which range from 1992 to 2021, the historical construct of boundaries and bodies becomes evident. Following recent work on empathy by Lanzoni, Maibom, Calloway-Thomas, Bloom, Hogan, and Matravers, among others, S疣dez examines in-group/out-group divisions, the establishment of identity categories through performance, and the exploration of subaltern identities.

Author: Laura V. S疣dez
ISBN-10: 0826506747
ISBN-13: 9780826506740
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Language: English
Published: 07/15/2024
Pages: 282
Format: Hardcover