ABSTRACT

Performing Blackness offers a challenging interpretation of black cultural expression since the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Exploring drama, music, poetry, sermons, and criticism, Benston offers an exciting meditation on modern black performance's role in realising African-American aspirations for autonomy and authority.
Artists covered include:
* John Coltrane
* Ntozake Shange
* Ed Bullins
* Amiri Baraka
* Adrienne Kennedy
* Michael Harper.
Performing Blackness is an exciting contribution to the ongoing debate about the vitality and importance of black culture.

chapter |21 pages

Prologue

Performing blackness

part I|90 pages

Will the circle be unbroken?

chapter 1|28 pages

Sighting blackness

Mimesis and methexis in Black Arts theatrical theory

chapter 2|60 pages

Site-ing blackness

Abjection and affirmation in modern black drama

part II|74 pages

Blow into the freezing night

chapter 3|30 pages

Innovating blackness

Praxis and passion in (late) Coltrane

chapter 4|42 pages

Renovating blackness

Remembrance and revolution in the Coltrane Poem

part III|58 pages

Find the self, then kill it

chapter 5|39 pages

Sounding blackness

Vision and voice in the performative poetics of Amiri Baraka 1

chapter 6|17 pages

Rehearsing blackness

Spectre and spectacle in the theatrical prefaces of Adrienne Kennedy

part IV|62 pages

I was myself within the circle

chapter 7|36 pages

Improvising blackness

Telling and testifying in the modern chant-sermon

chapter 8|24 pages

Re-calling blackness

Recollection and response in contemporary black autocritography