ABSTRACT
The rise of modern Europe and its subsequent colonization of the world brought into being what Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano calls the colonial matrix of power. Philosopher Santiago Castro-Gomez states that colonization and its colonial matrix of power is not a historical period, but "a technology of power" and "not modernity's 'past' but its other face". Drawing from both feminist and postcolonial theorists the Matryoshkas' alien-ness was that of being the Other. From the positioning developed Critical Butoh, a performative research method that uses the power of the aesthetic and butoh's body archaeology to re-write the colonial matrix of power as it manifests in us as individuals. It offers a physical practice and process to enact this transformation in our bodies as well to communicate this transformation through performance. Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo used this power of the aesthetic in their movement investigations called butoh.
