The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas

by Diana Taylor

In The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory—conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances—offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice. Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theatre, Theory, History, Cultural Studies, Art, Research

326 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2003

About the author

Diana Taylor is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at New York University. She is the author and editor of several books, including Performance; The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas; and Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's “Dirty War,” all also published by Duke University Press. Taylor was founding director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics from 1998 to 2020. In 2018 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Emer O'Toole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Approaching the history and political present of the Americas through the lens of performance, Taylor offers methodological tools for approaching those unwritten histories, the histories of the never quite vanquished, that persist in our cultural repertoires. Particularly striking and useful for me in terms of approaching history as a scholar of performance is the idea of repetitive "scenarios" that play out over time as kinds of scripts. Taylor takes the "scenario" of encounter, underscoring the theatricality of European colonial narratives, and cleverly tracing not only their continued use in contemporary cultural and political discourse, but also the clever ways in which performance artists and activists subvert them. Taylor's clear, accessible, charmingly personal style is a breath of fresh air in academia, and shows that accessibility and theoretical sophistication make happy bedfellows when the quality of thought is as strong as this.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Busquei este livro, que li em PDF, depois de ter sido absorvido pelas teorias da performance por Diana Taylor. De nome anglófono, percebi que ela dava bastante atenção à américa latina. Isso porque seu pai é canadense e sua mãe é mexicana. Ao ler este livro, um dos principais da obra de Diana, vi como seu pensamento é decolonial e como tem uma aderência com as teorias de memória social que estudei no mestrado. Vi um círculo se completar, principalmente nos três primeiros capítulos deste livro, em que o direcionamento é mais teórico, e muitos insights que eu poderei usar em meus trabalhos. Os capítulos seguintes vão ficando mais pessoais e autobiográficos, com mais declarações de gosto do que exatamente uma análise sendo construída. Ainda assim, fiquei muito feliz de ter tido acesso ao trabalho de Diana Taylor e espero poder ler mais trabalhos dela e que eles me ajudem a construir minhas pesquisas num futuro próximo.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

We have a description of interactions between native cultures and then we’re discussing murals to Tupac and Diana, and all the grief and floral tributes, converging cultures of mourning:

Living a trauma and watching it play out and then we can identify. The infidelity, the other woman, the boundaries of appropriateness and then she’s dead. A game of hide and seek played out for billions, reflecting our own whispered doubts. The same story, but its happening amidst the glamour and myths of the upper echelons. She crystallised into the original, quintessential, tragic lover, beautiful princess, angel of mercy, and doting mother. Evita’s corpse, a thousand replicas, dyed blond hair. Diana’s charity in death: guaranteed a visa, she crosses borders on stamps, calendars, magazines. But also hints of Sontag: the paparazzi ‘doing her’, banging, blitzing, hosing, ripping, smudging and wacking her. Violence and photography.

Marilyn Monroe, Selena, Evita. The death of beautiful women preserving the culture, through social critique or a sacrifice of the dangerous. Aristotelian tragedy, inevitable tragedy. Also reminds me of the Cantonese signer, Anita Mui, on the stage in her wedding dress, in the final stages of Ovarian cancer. Then Taylor's feeling of the one-night stand, why do we care for the coloniser? Her face lost from the mirror, and the brown girl in pigtails and popped buttons, forced into a colonial box, looks back.

Sixteenth century indigenous poet, Fernando Alvarez Tezozomoc, ‘Never will it be lost, never will it be forgotten, that which they came to do… their renown, their history, their memory… Always we will treasure it… we will tell it, we will pass it on.’ All part of an important developing corpus. Memory as a beating heart: crepuscular canals, wide enough for royal gondolas, locks open and close in rhythm, currents beating like petals of the anemone, healing herbs, death and madness, growing heavy with tiny flowers. :)

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taylor explores the notion of repertoire, or performance practices, that can constitute a field of study or supplement to the archive (for the unarchivable).

[Andrea Armas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me encanta, pero creo que nuestra idea de performatividad puede expandirse a otras prácticas

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

The distinction between the archive and the repertoire as different modes of conveying knowledge and culture is a useful one, though I am not convinced it is as distinct from the written/oral language divide as Taylor would like to believe. She distinguishes between the archive as the set of physical artifacts--including written texts, relics, recordings, etc.--and the repertoire of scenarios and performed behaviors passed down through cultures that make communication and meaning-making practices intelligible. Picking up from postcolonialism, Taylor emphasizes how the repertoire has been largely ignored as a mode of legitimate cultural, historical, and embodied knowledge in a logocentric Western culture, and how utilizing the repertoire as a means of viscerally shared experience can bind colonized or oppressed peoples in a shared community. But she also argues that one of the chief functions of performance studies is to reintroduce the repertoire as a crucial and legitimate supplemental resource alongside the archive.

The main reason I rated this book a three rather than higher is that the other stated goal of this book is to intervene in Latin American studies, particularly as regards performance. I don't work on Latin American literature, and there are problems with paralleling Latin American lit/drama/performance with the works I do study. For instance, because of the sophisticated degree of racial distinction introduced by the Spanish caste system in Latin America, the postcolonial concerns of Latin America will generally be very different than those of Africa or Ireland, where such systems didn't really exist (apartheid South Africa might be the exception, but even then I think the classification system served a different political purpose in a different context than the Spanish caste system).

[Amy D.P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book makes you rethink the whole concept of what is an archive, what deserves to be archived, what is the historical context of the archive, who gets to choose what is archived, and how is a performance an archive. To be honest, it poses a bunch of more thoughts as well. Diana Taylor brings up so many questions that don't necessarily provide you with an answer, but gets you critically thinking about archives, performances, transculturism, and plethora of other thoughts and theories. This book has me thinking so much, this small box is not enough to describe how wonderful this book is and how much it gets you to critical engage with the text and the performances around you.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful interrogation of the nature of knowledge and the cultural tensions at play whenever "knowing" happens. Taylor presents the central issues of the field of Performance Studies through a dual lens of Theater Studies and the culture(s) of the Americas. She succeeds in making both accessible to an audience lacking background in either, though I suspect that previous knowledge in one or both fields would further enrich the reading experience.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a theory-laden book that many will find challenging to read; yet the reward is very thought-provoking, subtle analysis of fascinating cases. I would especially recommend the chapters on the theater troupe Yuyuchkani and on the Madres & H.I.J.O.S. of the disappeared victims of the Dirty War in Argentina. I anticipate revisiting Taylor's work in the future.

[Steph · Rating 1 out of 5]

Such an overly pedantic text, all I wanted to do was punch the author and the editors. Not a pleasant read.
Really interesting and current ideas, a necessary discussion of "the other" and how marginalization happens, but when the language is prohibitive, reading the text just becomes a chore rather than a discovery.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the chapters assigned by my professor. I love her idea of repertoire and theatre as a way to transmit knowledge--embodied knowledge. It raises quite a few interesting questions about archive and repertoire, about writing and performing, and about memorizing and forgetting ...

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in three sittings, for a class. The overall consensus of the class was that the stories and examples of performance as an alternative to the archive were fascinating and relevant. However, the over-use of the word "liminality" was a turn-off.

[Christopher Carmona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have an academic crush on Diana Taylor...she makes me want to do performance studies...

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I carry it around with me! So influential on my current thinking.