Transoceanic blackface, imperial whiteness : performing "race" in the global nineteenth century
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- During the long nineteenth century, the capitalist world-system turned on the economic and affective investments of two Anglophone empires -- the British Empire and the United States of America. These far-flung empires were knitted together not merely through the circulation of commodities via transoceanic trade routes but also through the global itineraries of popular performers and performances and their circulations of affect. Transoceanic performance networks trafficked heavily in racial impersonation such as blackface minstrelsy and its cognate forms. Though much research has explored the racial politics of blackface minstrelsy in the United States, this study focuses on the broader circulations of racialized performance and its entanglements with global processes of colonization. Throughout the Anglophone empire -- and particularly in the Indian Ocean littoral -- blackface performance animated white, colonial affective publics, forging popular cultures around impressions of non-white subjects. Within this "theatrical public sphere, " white performers and audiences alike invested in "common sense" feelings and beliefs about "race, " tracing numerous color lines across the globe. These enactments were not strictly discursive representations; rather, they circulated within the repertoires of imperial whiteness to animate popular beliefs about the non-white peoples of the expanding Anglophone world. The transmission of these repertoires via transoceanic performance tours signal the interconnectedness of histories of performance, "race, " and politics, as well as the deep imbrications of colonization with global theater. Such transhistorical repertoires offer fertile ground for reconsiderations of globalization, world theater, and the cultures of imperialism.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Hoxworth, Kellen Lewis |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Theater and Performance Studies. |
| Primary advisor | Menon, Jisha, 1972- |
| Thesis advisor | Menon, Jisha, 1972- |
| Thesis advisor | Brody, Jennifer DeVere |
| Thesis advisor | Cole, Catherine |
| Thesis advisor | Elam, Harry Justin |
| Advisor | Brody, Jennifer DeVere |
| Advisor | Cole, Catherine |
| Advisor | Elam, Harry Justin |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Kellen Lewis Hoxworth. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Theater and Performance Studies. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2017. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2017 by Kellen Lewis Hoxworth
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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