Empathy and Flesh in Performance

Abstract

ABSTRACT By analyzing the “ritual of purification” presented on stage in Nao Bustamante’s performance Indigurrito, I show how identity categories influence different, and at times contradictory, readings of enactments of power in ways that enhance or obstruct an empathic response. The methodological lens for this article borrows from Hortense Spillers’s notion of “flesh” to analyze the stage of interaction and the Latina body. “Flesh” is a concept developed by Spillers to denote what is left outside the frame of social conceptualization. In other words, “flesh” is that which is not considered a matter of discussion, because as a structural element of the “social” is hardly ever thought of. After analyzing the perspectives of different kinds of subject positions both by the author/actor and by the audience/participants, I consider the possibility of elaborative empathy. One of its elements, identity categorization, influences not only openness to parallel emotions but also skills at understanding other people’s emotional experiences.