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Cuban Performances of Blackness as the Timeless Past Still Among Us
Author(s) -
Wirtz Kristina
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1395.2011.01095.x
Subject(s) - chronotope , subjectivity , folklore , racialization , history , trace (psycholinguistics) , semiotics , sociology , literature , anthropology , aesthetics , gender studies , race (biology) , art , linguistics , philosophy , epistemology
“Congo” spirits, “black witches,” African slaves, and maroons are ubiquitous historical figures in religious and folklore performances of eastern Cuba, where they are represented through collocations of Bozal speech register, stereotypical “African” vocal and bodily mannerisms and dance forms, and distinctive uses of deictics that present first‐person, historical‐present accounts of past events. I trace an interdiscursive web across which these racially marked semiotic forms constitute a Cuban racializing discourse that makes blackness highly salient and highly marked by emphasizing a chronotope of blackness as “a timeless past still among us.” This racial chronotope, re‐enacted through different performance genres with diverse purposes, contributes to multiple projects of historical subjectivity. [interdiscursivity, historical subjectivity, racialization, folklore, performance, Cuba]