"Sista Docta": Performance as Critique of the Academy

Abstract

Before I even open my mouth with these words and drummer Alli Aweusi strikes first PA on djembe, critique of academy has begun. sista docta was created in 1994 as seriate sketches that offer my commentary on being an African American woman professor at predominantly European American academic institutions.' This essay explores ways performance in general, and sista docta specifically, challenges academy's philosophy of inclusion and academy's predilection for print scholarship. By time I speak in sista docta, there has already been drumming, which invokes long history of African American women in academy. That history is a collective biography marked on downside by exclusion, silence, and overt and covert discrimination, and on upside by determination, courage, and achievement. While genre of autobiography explores singularity of experience, autobiography of marginalized peoples often serves as a collective biography, giving name to experiences of many through experience of one.2 In a discussion of Maya Angelou's autobiographical work, Selwyn Cudjoe explains that the Afro-American autobiography, a cultural act of selfreading, is meant to reflect a public concern rather than a private act of selfindulgence (1990:275). African American autobiography as collective cultural