Enacting Others: Politics of Identity in Eleanor Antin, Nikki S. Lee, Adrian Piper, And Anna Deavere Smith by Cherise Smith (review)

For the major US social movements of the 1960s and '70s, the act of affirming a political and cultural identity was crucial to forging coalitions, spurring activism, and building communities. In recent decades, however, identity has become the target of political and theoretical suspicion. Claims that identity politics enforce a stifling political correctness, privilege group interests over individual freedoms, and distract from other social concerns have all gained traction. Meanwhile, poststructuralist critiques have scrutinized theories of identity for exclusions and inconsistencies.

Cherise Smith's Enacting Others: Politics of Identity in Eleanor Antin, Nikki S. Lee, Adrian Piper, and Anna Deavere Smith offers a timely reminder of how shifting notions of identity have vitally shaped, and continue to reshape, American art and politics. Contributing to studies of race and gender, performance studies, and art history, Enacting Others explores how boundary-crossing performances by four prominent artists engaged with contemporaneous discourses about identity. Preferring the term "politics of identity" to "identity politics," which has become burdened with negative associations, Smith is less concerned with developing a general theory of identity than with historicizing the notions of identity that influenced particular artists. This meticulous contextualization sets her formalist readings of works by Antin, Lee, Piper, and Smith in a densely drawn landscape of political and cultural struggles, and illuminates how these artists incorporated, tested, and challenged prevalent conceptions of identity by performing across lines of race, gender, and class.

As Enacting Others makes clear, Antin, Lee, Piper, and Smith participate in a long and fraught tradition of boundary-crossing performances, which includes passing, blackface, cross-dressing, and drag. Importantly, the four artists do not produce seamless performances of the "Other," but dwell in the murkier space of embodying both self and Other. Smith argues that while these performances suggest a utopian impulse, they primarily served in their moment as vehicles for exercising artistic autonomy. As her analysis of the complex relationships between performer and spectator further shows, however, the artist's agency is necessarily modulated by the audience's reception.

Chapter 1 centers on Mythic Being (1973-75), a project encompassing photographs, advertisements, and a film, all of which depict Piper taking on a male persona. As the Mythic Being, Piper, who is mixed race and identifies as black, wore an Afro and a mustache and occasionally enacted stereotypes of black masculinity. Smith sets Mythic Being in tension with both the women's and Black Arts movements, which cultivated bonds among art, community formation, and political activism. Piper's performance, by contrast, stressed the authority of the artist. Smith adds, however, that through the ambiguous use of stereotypes, Mythic Being also compelled the audience to recognize its role as co-creator of the identities staged in Piper's performance.

Whereas Piper enacted the Mythic Being on and off for two years, Antin inhabited the life of the invented Eleanora Antinova—a glamorous black woman and former ballerina—for twenty straight days in 1981, darkening her skin, frequenting expensive businesses, and taking speaking engagements. In chapter 2, Smith puts Antin's performance in dialogue with third-wave feminism, noting that the movement's exemplary collection, This Bridge Called My Back, was published in the same year. Smith argues that in contrast to the artists of third-wave feminism, who combined sharp critiques of oppressive forces with an affirmation of communities of women of color, Antin prompted a more ambivalent relationship with her audience. For example, some of Antinova's "outbursts" could be read as expressions of either sympathy for or mockery of minority protests against discrimination. Smith further situates Antin's work in a history of Jewish American blackface performances and suggests that playing Antinova helped Antin connect to her Jewish identity.

Moving into a time of growing backlash against identity politics, chapter 3 offers a compelling analysis of Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. For the project, Anna Deavere...