The Archive and the Repertoire

In "The Archive and the Repertoire" performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory - conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances - offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. "The Archive and the Repertoire" invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice. Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity.Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena's show "Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit..." , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. "The Archive and the Repertoire" is a demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.

“"While I am trained to appreciate Taylor's analyses of Latino/a theatre and performance, I was most moved and surprised by her discussion of September 11 in chapter 9. As Taylor shows, the abundance of media attention and commentary produced after the destruction of the Twin Towers obscured the lives of nonheroes and nonvictims and turned all of them into spectators. Her testimony as scholar and participant in the events surrounding the attack is enlightening, but also refreshing."-Margo Milleret, Theatre Journal "[A] timely collection of essays. . . .Taylor weaves together insights, examples, and critical strategies from [performance studies and Latina/o American studies] and her exemplary book makes a major contribution to both."-Marvin Carlson, TDR: The Drama Review "The book is itself both a performance and a contribution to the archive. The remarkably effective way in which [Taylor] combines personal story with analytic reflection is a fitting demonstration of the usefulness that can result from being able to sustain an awareness of one's spatio-temporal role as an observer even as one gets lost in the findings of archival discovery."-Dianna Niebylski, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies”

"While I am trained to appreciate Taylor's analyses of Latino/a theatre and performance, I was most moved and surprised by her discussion of September 11 in chapter 9. As Taylor shows, the abundance of media attention and commentary produced after the destruction of the Twin Towers obscured the lives of nonheroes and nonvictims and turned all of them into spectators. Her testimony as scholar and participant in the events surrounding the attack is enlightening, but also refreshing."--Margo Milleret, Theatre Journal "[A] timely collection of essays...Taylor weaves together insights, examples, and critical strategies from [performance studies and Latina/o American studies] and her exemplary book makes a major contribution to both."--Marvin Carlson, TDR: The Drama Review "The book is itself both a performance and a contribution to the archive. The remarkably effective way in which [Taylor] combines personal story with analytic reflection is a fitting demonstration of the usefulness that can result from being able to sustain an awareness of one's spatio-temporal role as an observer even as one gets lost in the findings of archival discovery."--Dianna Niebylski, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

Diana Taylor is Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish and Director of the Hemispheric Institute on Performance and Politics at New York University. Among her books are Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform (coedited with Roselyn Costantino), Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War,” and Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality, and Theatricality in Latin/o America (with Juan Villegas), all also published by Duke University Press.

"Diana Taylor's ideas, carefully etched out here to great effect, provide a new vocabulary to understand the work that performance does in culture and broadens our sense of how performance achieves its effect. Full of insight and information,The Archive and the Repertoireshould finally unsettle the hegemony of narrative in Latin American literary and cultural studies."-David Rom

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