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Article
An Act of Terrorism: Performative (His)trocities and the Eradication of The Black Body
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies (2015)
  • Dr. Michelle Gibbs, Illinois Wesleyan University
Abstract
Diana Taylor asserts that the discipline of performance studies allows scholars to rethink what constitutes an event as performance. Taylor contends that ethnicity, race, and issues of social justice are rehearsed and performed daily in the public sphere. To understand these events as performance suggests that performance also functions as an epistemology: embodied practices that are bound up with other cultural practice and offer us a way of knowing. I will attempt to examine the tragic events of Trayvon Martin’s death on February 26, 2012, within the scope of performance studies as a way of further illustrating how performativity is intrinsically tied to cultural practices. These practices are habitually rehearsed daily in the public sphere. In some cases, cultural performances can produce violent and atrocious outcomes.
Keywords
  • performance,
  • cultural performativity,
  • racial profiling,
  • misrecognition,
  • visuality
Publication Date
Spring April 24, 2015
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708615578413
Publisher Statement
Cultural Studies <-> Critical Methodologies is published by SAGE Journals. For more information about this journal please visit https://journals.sagepub.com/home/csc.
Citation Information
Michelle Gibbs. "An Act of Terrorism: Performative (His)trocities and the Eradication of The Black Body" Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies Vol. 15 Iss. 4 (2015) p. 248 - 252 ISSN: 1532-7086
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/michelle-gibbs/2/