ABSTRACT
"Black Markets" posit that the piratic, which refers broadly to possessory acts that exist outside the law, constitutes both a poetics and a model for understanding how persons who have been left outside the restrictive and exclusive categories of citizen resist the regulatory powers of and demand redress from the liberal state. More specifically, "Black Markets" turns to John Brougham's burlesque Columbus, El Filibustero! and Eligio Ancona's El Filibustero: Novela Historica, texts that center on pirates and piracy, to signal the importance of the piratic in the creation of exceptional American property regimes. The language of piracy, in other words, permeates the play as colonization is reduced to low-investment/high-yield marketing, at best, and get-rich-quick schemes, at worst. The piratic serves as a model for understanding why certain forms of unlawful property ownership can become the vehicle for personhood and representation.
