The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (review)

Diana Taylor's new book promises to spend more time doing performance studies than debating how to define it. Therefore, following an introduction to key terms and their definitions, it moves quickly into a series of nuanced and sophisticated arguments about a fascinating range of performances past and present from the American hemisphere. The methodology of performance studies, as Taylor explains, looks at paradigms of human events that contain recognizable elements of narrative and plot but that also attend to theatrical elements such as setup and action, as well as to the specifics of social, economic, and political contexts.

The key words in the title—"archive" and "repertoire"—appear to present a dichotomy, yet Taylor argues that these terms function in a dynamic relationship, since each one illuminates and invigorates the other. "Archive" refers to cultural events that are preserved in a permanent manner, such as in writing, photographs, or recorded tapes, and therefore are perceived as stable and unchanging over time. "Repertoire" applies to culture that is embodied in the practices of such events as ritual, dances, or political rallies and that follow a script or scenario, but nonetheless are perceived as temporary, fragile, and easily forgotten. Another key word from the title, "Americas," addresses the author's conviction that our political, social, and cultural worlds of North, Central, and South America overlap and intermingle in important ways that demand greater attention and engagement.

Those who are familiar with Taylor's earlier books will recognize chapter topics related to her scholarship on Latin American theatre, specifically her work on Mexican playwright Emilio Carballido and on plays and events related to Argentina's Dirty War. Taylor has also established a reputation for her studies of Latino/a performance, seen here in the chapters on Univisión's astrologer, Walter Mercado, and performance artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco. In addition, the book contains chapters on Princess Diana's death, the Brazilian performance artist Denise Stoklos, and two chapters on life in New York. Nine of the ten chapters are organized as case studies in which a concrete example serves as the focus for a detailed analysis that untangles the messy and often hidden relations between those elements that Taylor identifies as the archive and the repertoire.

The worlds and events that Taylor studies relate to each other in an episodic fashion rather than in a traditional dramatic format. Indeed, the chapters connect the Americas by developing and layering similar themes that emanate from the foundational event of the new world—the discovery. The violence of that scenario seeps into and colors most of the performances that Taylor studies in the book. For example, although chapter 7 refers explicitly to Peru's traumatic past/present of unequal multi-ethnic and multiracial human relations as staged by the theatre group Yuyachkani, many of the other chapters treat traumatic events as well. Chapters 5, 6, and 9 explore the meaning of tragedy in the death of Princess Diana, the disappearances in Argentina, and the losses of September 11, 2001 in New York. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 10 examine the attempts of authorities to erase the embodied expressions of the racialized Other at the time of the conquest and even more recently in New York's Central Park. Chapters 4 and 8 investigate the attitudes or aesthetics created by Walter Mercado and Denise Stoklos in response to dominant and/or authoritarian powers that attempt to marginalize or exile them.

While I am trained to appreciate Taylor's analyses of Latino/a theatre and performance, I was most moved and surprised by her discussion of September 11 in chapter 9. As Taylor shows, the abundance of media attention and commentary produced after the destruction of the Twin Towers obscured the lives of the nonheroes and nonvictims and turned all of them into spectators. Her testimony as scholar and participant in the events surrounding the attack is enlightening...