Performance, Paradigms of Visual Culture and The Matrices of Representation: Anna Deavere Smith’s on The Road
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24113/ijellh.v9i5.11025Abstract
This paper attempts to put radically in to question the hegemonic choices of representation in western visual culture by examining Anna Deavere Smith’s performance series On the Road: A Search for American Character. What is brought to the sharp focus of this study is the logic of perpetuating the conventional categories of race, ethnicity, gender and age in performance – a logic that prevails in the mainstream media; more specifically in theatre – and the unmasking of these categories in representation.
Then with a shout we rushed upon him and locked our arms about him; but the ancient god had not forgotten his craft and cunning. He became in turn a bearded lion, a snake, a panther, a monstrous boar; then running water, then a towering and leafy tree, but we kept our hold, unflinching and undismayed, and in the end this master of dreaded secrets began to tire. So he broke into speech ... .
The Odyssey IV, 384 ff.
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