Decomposition : post-disciplinary performance

The fluid nature of performance studies and the widening embrace of the idea of performativity has produced in Decomposition: Post-Disciplinary Performance a collection of great interest that crosses disciplinary lines of academic work. The essays move from the local to the global, from history to sport, from body parts to stage productions, and from race relations to global politics.

Part 1. Conferencing About the Unnatural 1. Introducing UNNATURAL ACTS, 1997 Susan Leigh Foster 2. ACTING UNNATURAL:Interpreting Body Art Amelia Jones 3. Listening to Local Practices: Performance and Identity Politics in Riverside, California Deborah Wong Part 2. Contesting White Spaces 4. Black Noise / White Mastery Ronald Radano 5. Like a Weed in a Vacant Lot: The Black Artists Group in St. Louis George Lipsitz 6. Yayoi Kusama's Body of Art Kristine C. Kuramitsu 7. "Oh, You Can't Just Let a Man Walk Over You": Staging Threepenny Opera in Singapore Sue-Ellen Case Part 3. Acting Manly 8. The Britten Era Philip Brett 9. A Question of Balls: The Sexual Politics of Argentine Soccer Jeffrey Tobin 10. Music at Home, Politics Afar Timothy D. Taylor Part 4. Talking Vulvas and Other Body Parts 11. Looking Like a Lesbian: Yvonne Rainer's Theory of Probability Catherine Lord 12. Structure, Size, and Play: The Case of the Talking Vulva B.J. Wray Part 5. De-composing the Unnatural 13. Decomposition Elizabeth Wood Notes on Contributors Index

The fluid nature of performance studies and the widening embrace of the idea of performativity has produced in "Decomposition: Post-Disciplinary Performance", a collection of great interest that crosses disciplinary lines of academic work. The essays move from the local to the global, from history to sport, from body parts to stage productions, and from race relations to global politics. In the title essay, Elizabeth Wood writes with eloquence about a basic human relation cast around the question of performance and triangulated by the role a great performer took within it. In this unnatural act of somatic and sonic decomposition of the maternal body's "soundscape", she seeks to liberate herself and us from the last refuge of patriarchal order and compulsory heterosexuality, the subordinating myth of maternal omnipotence. The decomposition of such myths is a binding force in this volume. Together these essays pursue critical understandings of performance in our postmodern world, embodying perspectives that help us understand the historical and cultural issues that underpin it.

Part 1. Conferencing About the Unnatural 1. Introducing UNNATURAL ACTS, 1997 Susan Leigh Foster 2. ACTING UNNATURAL:Interpreting Body Art Amelia Jones 3. Listening to Local Practices: Performance and Identity Politics in Riverside, California Deborah Wong Part 2. Contesting White Spaces 4. Black Noise / White Mastery Ronald Radano 5. Like a Weed in a Vacant Lot: The Black Artists Group in St. Louis George Lipsitz 6. Yayoi Kusama's Body of Art Kristine C. Kuramitsu 7. "Oh, You Can't Just Let a Man Walk Over You" Staging Threepenny Opera in Singapore Sue-Ellen Case Part 3. Acting Manly 8. The Britten Era Philip Brett 9. A Question of Balls: The Sexual Politics of Argentine Soccer Jeffrey Tobin 10. Music at Home, Politics Afar Timothy D. Taylor Part 4. Talking Vulvas and Other Body Parts 11. Looking Like a Lesbian: Yvonne Rainer's Theory of Probability Catherine Lord 12. Structure, Size, and Play: The Case of the Talking Vulva B.J. Wray Part 5. De-composing the Unnatural 13. Decomposition Elizabeth Wood Notes on Contributors Index