From Queer Necropolitics to Queer Eschatology: Reza Abdoh’s Unsettling Historiography

• Authors: Patricia Ybarra

Title variants

PL

Od queerowej nekropolityki do queerowej eschatologii: Dezorientująca historiografia Rezy Abdoha

Abstracts

PL

Teatralną twórczość Rezy Abdoha chwalono za ożywienie awangardy, formalną i polityczną odwagę oraz celny komentarz na temat brutalności wirusa HIV (Fordyce, Carlson, Mufson, Bell). Ostatnio odczytano ją jako komentarz do neoliberalizmu – po części ze względu na metody upolitycznienia bricolage’u i pastiszu, przypominające radykalne sposoby teoretyzowania takich badaczy, jak Frederic Jameson (Zimmerman). Dostrzeżono także środki, za pomocą których już na początku lat dziewięćdziesiątych Abdoh poszerzył możliwości queerowania. Celem tego artykułu jest analiza sposobu, w jaki Abdoh wykorzystał eschatologię jako rodzaj historiografii. W tym niekomentowanym dotąd kontekście, bez odwołań do ogólnego postmodernistycznego klimatu, autorka interpretuje wielorakie i sprzeczne czasowości w jego spektaklach. Odnosząc teorie nekropolityki (Mbembe) i kapitalizmu gore (Valencia) do koncepcji queerowej eschatologii i kapitalistycznej przemocy, opiera swoje dociekania na analizie strukturalnych i teoretycznych aspektów samych dzieł (“przedmiotu badań”). Zastanawia się, jak Father Was a Peculiar Man (1990), wystawiony w Meatpacking District na Manhattanie, ukazuje historiograficzne możliwości performansu poprzez ucieleśnienie eschatalogicznej wizji świata, w której binarność płci zostaje performatywnie unieważniona.

EN

The theatrical oeuvre of Reza Abdoh has been lauded for its reinvigoration of the avantgarde, its formal and political daring and its astute commentary about the violence of the HIV virus (Fordyce, Carlson, Mufson, Bell). More recently, Abdoh’s work has been taken up as a commentary on neoliberalism-in part because of its politicization of bricolage and pastiche, recalling the more radical possibilities of theorizations of scholars such as Frederic Jameson (Zimmerman). Others have called out the modes by which Abdoh expanded the possibilities of queerness in the early 1990s. Yet no scholar has commented on Abdoh’s engagement of eschatology as a mode of historiography. That is the purpose of this essay. It is under this rubric, rather than an idea of generic postmodern milieu, that I read the multiple and discordant temporalities in Abdoh’s performances. While drawing on theories of the necropolitical (Mbembe) and gore capitalism (Valencia) in relation to conceptions of queer eschatology and capitalist violence, my inquiry emerges from consideration of the structural and theoretical aspects of the art works (“object’s”) themselves. I consider how Father Was a Peculiar Man (1990), performed in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan, exemplifies the historiographical possibilities of performance through its embodiment of an eschatological vision of the world in which the gender binary is performatively undone.

Keywords

PL

nekropolityka; queerowa perspektywa nekropolityczna; Reza Abdoh; patriarchat; neoliberalizm; transpłciowość; historiografia

EN

necropolitics; queer necropolitics; Reza Abdoh; patriarchy; neoliberalism; transgender; historiography

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Pamiętnik Teatralny
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 70
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 141-159

Dates

published

2021

Contributors

author

Patricia Ybarra

• Brown University

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Identifiers

DOI

10.36744/pt.986

Biblioteka Nauki

32083642