Relationality, Comparison, and Identity: The Performance, Politics, and Academic Reception of Denise Stoklos

Glenn Odom

doi:10.1353/dtc.2020.0009

Relationality, Comparison, and Identity: The Performance, Politics, and Academic Reception of Denise Stoklos

Glenn Odom

Centre for Research in Arts and Creative Exchange

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Literature and cultural production from around the world is subject, within the Anglo-European academy, to analysis via a set of institutionalized theories that, while diverse and often contradictory, represent only one such body of institutionalized theory. When these different theoretical terrains become the object of comparison, the definition of comparison itself shifts. The comparison at stake here is between two analyses of the theatre of Denise Stoklos, a Brazilian performance artist – the first grounded in Lacanian psychoanalysis and the second in Brazilian cultural theory. The Brazilian theory suggests that a multiplicity of contradictory elements contained within a single subject or nation is, in fact, a source of democratic strength rather than an obstacle to an imagined unity. Similarly, Brazilian comparative theory suggests that keeping both the Anglo-European and the Brazilian theoretical terrain in sight simultaneously allows for a richer understanding of the political implications of cultural production within Brazil and of new definitions of comparison more broadly.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	71-91
Journal	Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1353/dtc.2020.0009
Publication status	Published - 24 Jun 2020

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10.1353/dtc.2020.0009

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/758133#info_wrap

Cite this

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