Total performance

Abstract

Emerging in the 1960s, ethnopoetics sought to bridge the gap between ethnography and poetry in presenting indigenous oral literatures from around the world to contemporary US audiences. Jerome Rothenberg, a leading figure of the movement, developed a set of innovative translation techniques based on a perceived affinity between oral literature and the formal experiments of European and American avant-gardes. This paper discusses Rothenberg's search for universal forms and themes across widely divergent cultures and times, arguing that his translations of oral literature subvert the universalizing tendencies of his critical work and assert the irreducible difference of the source texts. They do so by emphasizing the moment of performance unique to each text. Rather than providing a transcript of a hypothetical performance, Rothenberg's translations enact a performance of their own with the use of avant-garde techniques adopted from concrete, visual and sound poetry.