Drama Trauma: Specters of Race and Sexuality in Performance, Video and Art

by Timothy Murray

Overview

In this engaging cross-disciplinary study, Timothy Murray examines the artistic struggle over traumatic fantasies of race, gender, sexuality, and power. Establishing a retrospective dialogue between past and present, stage and video, Drama Trauma links the impact of trauma on recent political projects in performance and video with the specters of difference haunting Shakespeare's plays.
The book provides close readings of cultural formations as diverse as Shakespearean drama, the Statue of Liberty, contemporary plays by women, African-American performance, and feminist interventions in video, performance and installation. The texts discussed include:
* installations by Mary Kelly and Dawn Dedeaux,
* plays by Ntozake Shange, Rochelle Owens, Adrienne Kennedy, Marsha Norman and Amiri Baraka
* performances by Robbie McCauley, Jordan, Orlan, and Carmelita Tropicana
* stage, film and video productions of King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet and All's Well that Ends Well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415157896
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/18/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Timothy Murray is Professor of English at Cornell University. His most recent publications include Like a Film: Ideological Fantasy on Screen, Camera and Canvas (Routledge 1993) and Mimesis, Masochism and Mime: The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought (1997).

Table of Contents

List of Figures, Acknowledgements, 1. Introduction, Part One: Sounding Silence in Shakespeare, 2. Getting Stoned: Psychoanalysis and the Epistemology of Tragedy in Shakespeare, 3. Othello, An Index and Obscure Prologue to the History of Foul Generic Thought, 4. 'Misshapen Chaos of Well-Seeming Forms': Specters of Jointure in Romeo and Juliet, Part Two: Writing Women's Vision, 5. Patriarchal Panopticism, or the Enigma of a Woman's Smile: Getting Out in Theory, 6. The Play of Letters: Writing and Possession in Chucky's Hunch, Part Three: Color Adjustments, 7. Differa(n)ce: Screening the Camera's Eye in African-American Drama, 8. In Exile at Home: Tornado Breath and Unrighteous Fantasy in Robbie McCauley's Indian Blood, Part Four: Televisual Fear, 9. Camera Obsura Ideologica: From Vermeer to Video in All's Well That Ends Well, 10. The Contrast Hurts: Censoring the Ladies Liberty in Performance, 11. Televisual Fears and Warrior Myths: Mary Kelly Meets Dawn Dedeaux, Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

Murray (English, Cornell U.) examines the artistic struggle over traumatic fantasies of race, gender, sexuality, and power. He provides close readings of installations by Marry Kelly and Dawn DeDeaux; plays by Ntozake Shange, Rochelle Owens, Adrienne Kennedy, Marsha Norman, and Amiri Baraka; performances by Robbie McCauley, Jordan, Orlan, and Carmelita Tropicana; and state, film and video productions of , and . Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

' ... an intelligent, finely-argued, and always interesting book ... Murray provides a bravura performance of his own.' - Film-Philosophy

From the Publisher