The Pot Calling the Kettle "Black"

Abstract

The world of performance provides a space in which to theorize and reflect upon identity. Traditionally, "blackness" has been susceptible to the identity politics circulating within the particular historical context of its representation on and off the stage. On the proscenium stage that was the auction block, for example, there was no question in the auctioneer or the buyer's mind that blackness was sutured to the phenotypical black body. That particular "opening" on the auction block was a command performance of blackness. The subversive, coded performances of the slave in the presence of slaveholders, on the other hand (i.e., spirituals, signifying, etc.), bespoke yet a different kind of "playing black"—a performance whose doubly intended signification had varying effects—e.g., escape, food, avoidance of beatings. To complicate matters, when white bodies began their "love and theft"34 shuffle of blackness via minstrelsy, playing black became an even more ironic, if not troubling, phenomenon. Undoubtedly, each of these terms—performance and blackness—signifies differently within the specifics of its historicity. Wedded together in dialogic and [End Page 605] dialectic tension, however, these terms are at the interstices of black life, politics, and cultural production. "Blackness" and "performance" complement one another in a dialectic that becomes an ontology of racialized cultural production. "Blackness," for instance, is a simulacrum until it is practiced—i.e., performed. The epistemological moment of race manifests itself in and through performance in that performance facilitates self- and cultural reflexivity—a knowing made manifest by a "doing." Far from undergirding an essentialist purview of blackness, performance, as a mode of representation, emphasizes the ways in which cultures struggle to define who they are and who they want to be. Blackness, however, is not only a pawn and consequence of performance; it is also an effacement of it. Indeed, according to Rinaldo Walcott, "to read blackness as merely 'playful' is to fall into a willful denial of what it means to live 'black.'"35 And as I have stated elsewhere, "blackness does not only reside in the theatrical fantasy of the white imaginary that is then projected onto black bodies. Nor is blackness always consciously acted out. It is also the inexpressible yet undeniable racial experience of black people—the ways in which the 'living of blackness' becomes a material way of knowing."36 The implication of this construction of blackness in relation to performance is that performance may not fully account for the ontology of race. The interanimation of blackness and performance and the tension between blackness as "play" and material reality further complicates the notion of what constitutes a "black play," and of what "playing black" is and what "playing black" ain't. A performance of an adapted short story for the stage at Northwestern exemplifies this complexity. In 2004 a class called "Performance of Black Literature" staged a production of Bruce Jay Friedman's short story titled "Black Angels." The story chronicles the life of Stefano, a New York Jewish suburbanite suffering a mid-life crisis because his wife has left him and taken their ten-year-old son with her. To make himself feel better, he decides to fix up his house and hires four black workers (the "black angels") who, much to his delight, charge him ridiculously low prices to do the work on his home (e.g., $58 to paint his two-story colonial). After the black men have transformed Stefano's home into a showplace, he is still unhappy. It turns out that what Stefano really needs is someone to talk to about his problems. In the end, it turns out to be Cotten, the head worker, who is most sympathetic to Stefano's plight. Realizing how "therapeutic" it is to talk to Cotten, Stefano asks Cotten how much he would charge to "listen" to him talk about his troubles once a week. Cotten's reply of "fo' hunerd" an hour sends Stefano into paroxysms, yet he accepts the offer and Cotten sits...