Disappearing Acts

In "Disappearing Acts", Diana Taylor looks at how national identity is shaped, gendered, and contested through spectacle and spectatorship. The specific identity in question is that of Argentina, and Taylor's focus is directed toward the years 1976 to 1983 in which the Argentine armed forces were pitted against the Argentine people in that nation's 'Dirty War'. Combining feminism, cultural studies, and performance theory, Taylor analyses the political spectacles that comprised the war - concentration camps, torture, 'disappearances' - as well as the rise of theatrical productions, demonstrations, and other performative practices that attempted to resist and subvert the Argentine military. Taylor uses performance theory to explore how public spectacle both builds and dismantles a sense of national and gender identity. Here, nation is understood as a product of communal 'imaginings' that are rehearsed, written, and staged - and spectacle is the desiring machine at work in those imaginings. Taylor argues that the founding scenario of Argentineness stages the struggle for national identity as a battle between men - fought on, over, and through the feminine body of the Motherland. She shows how the military's representations of itself as the model of national authenticity established the parameters of the conflict in the 70s and 80s, feminised the enemy, and positioned the public - limiting its ability to respond. Those who challenged the dictatorship, from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo to progressive theater practitioners, found themselves in what Taylor describes as 'bad scripts.' This telling analysis of the aesthetics of violence and the disappearance of civil society during Argentina's spectacle of terror will interest students and scholars - including sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, psychologists, and feminist, postcolonial, and literary critics - concerned with issues of power and the interrelations of gender and nationhood.

ISBN 0822318687   Pages 328 ISBN13 9780822318682 (What's this?)   Volumes 001 Publisher Duke University Press   Weight (grammes) 553 Imprint Duke University Press   Published in North Carolina Format Paperback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 01 Mar 1997   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress PN2451.T28   Spine width (mm) 24 DEWEY 792.098209045   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC21

		Preface
1		Caught in the Spectacle		1
2		Gendering the National "Self"		29
3		Military Males, "Bad" Women, and a Dirty, Dirty War		59
4		The Theatre of Operations: Performing Nation-ness in the Public Sphere		91
5		Percepticide		119
6		Disappearing Bodies: Writing Torture and Torture as Writing		139
7		Trapped in Bad Scripts: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo		183
8		Staging Battles of Gender and Nation-ness: Teatro Abierto 1981		223
9		Crossing the Line: Watching Violence in the "Other" Country		255
		Notes		267
		Bibliography		291
		Index		305

"Stunning, in every sense. Disappearing Acts is a compelling performance in words and in pictures of the seductions played by Argentina's dictatorship." Doris Sommer, Harvard University "Disappearing Acts is brilliant. Clearly written, passionate, informed, will-argued, interesting in the extreme, it is a model piece of scholarship." Richard Schechner, New York University "Taylor's study is an important interpretative contribution to understanding the ideological, psychological, and gender dynamics of the Argentinean military's campaign of terror against fellow Argentinean's from 1976 to 1983." --British Bulletin of Publications, October 1997

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