Crawley, Ashon T. ~ Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility. Ch 2 “Shout” Crawley’s book theorizes Blackpentecostalism (BP) as an extra-subjective mode of being together—grounded in, and as a celebration of, the flesh. As a “way of life” (138) based on itinerancy and choreosonicity, BP is ultimately a (non)being, or, as he puts it, a “being beside oneself in the service of the other” (5). Methodologically, it is… Read More
Barbara Fuchs ~ Cultural Mimesis, Syncretism: “Virtual Spaniards” Fuchs, Barbara ~ Virtual Spaniards Barbara Fuchs remains to me one of the clearest voices articulating the inexorable Moorishness of the Spanish past and present. This kind of cultural entanglement is of course largely due to the history of Iberian Islam: the Mediterranean “chronotope” from which Spain inherits its cultural and historical background, “whose horizons… Read More
Zadie Smith ~ Swing Time I keep coming back to Barthes’ assertion that what power imposes in the first place is a rhythm (of life, thought, discourse, time). In this book, Zadie Smith explores this idea but gives it a spin: Black people had a place and a rhythm—the TA slave trade robbed black people of them. And of course… Read More
Charles Hirschkind ~ The Feeling of History: Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia An important argument is that the aesthetic world of the Andalusi tradition “suffuses and conjoins the past and the present,” and that this becomes especially acute through an exploration of the sensorial aspects of this tradition. This means: music, affect, and the “fondo sonoro” Andalucismo as a challenge to European ontology Andalucistas are concerned… Read More
José Esteban Muñoz ~ Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts In the introductory notes to “Queer Acts,” Jose Esteban Munoz gives a glance of how ephemera can act as a form of archive, while pointing at the question of under what value-making system would such a notion—the ephemeral—become a form of evidence. The spirit is very much one of anti-rigor. I would guess that in… Read More
Llano, Samuel ~ Discordant Notes: Marginality and Social Control in Madrid, 1850-1930 Introduction The demographic and socioeconomic makeup of large industrial(izing) centers in Europe were rapidly changing during late 19th, early 20th C. Population growth and rural-to-urban migration led to rising levels of crime, poverty, and epidemics. In Madrid, measures to control these issues were largely and consistently inefficient, partly due to the general mistrust in the… Read More
Peiró, Eva Woods ~ White Gypsies On the surface, and according to mainstream scholarship (the little that exists) on 20th century musical films in Spain, folkloricas were nothing but fascist propaganda, based on and endlessly propagating a range of cliched narratives, performances, and myths about Spanishness, femininity, honor, drama, and comedy. No beef with this reading—on the surface, they do appear… Read More
Alsonso, Celsa ~ Musica y Construccion Nacional en Espana: Teatro Muiscal, Cine y Musica Popular (1900-1936) Author begins from the premise that, in the Spain of the turn of the 20th century, theatre and cinema are places of convergence between what they regard as competing sentiments between the national and the cosmopolitan, the traditional (regional) and the modern (European). From as early as the Golden era, Spanish theatre has had a… Read More
Onto-Epistemologies of Flamenco List: January Updates Social History of Flamenco Articulations of (counter)modernity Articulations of (counter)national history Flamenco Bodies as Archives (In)Authenticity and (Im)Purity Technologies of Capture (Film) The Beyond… Read More
Scattered Notes: Lepecki’s Various Texts A movement forward and backward: (from history to/through the body) the body’s will to archive: the body’s capacity to activate a still un-exhausted creative fields of possibility in a past work, historical event, or ritualized performance, (what else would fall under this category?). this creative act tapping into a very concrete and very real virtuality… Read More