Politics of Performance: Neoliberalism and the Logics of Racial Disposability in Performing Arts Programming

• In Event: Emerging Research on Society, Culture, and Change

Abstract

Critical and performance studies theorists argue that the performing arts are particularly fruitful sites for interrogating racialized and neoliberal discourses that persist within higher education and broader society. Grounded in a two-year developmental evaluation project, this study explores whether and how discourses of neoliberal market-orientation and racial disposability are supported and/or challenged within the context of a performing arts initiative designed to promote ‘diversity and inclusion’ at a large public, historically and predominantly white institution. Findings suggest that events demonstrate the following violent and exclusionary discourses: a primary goal of exposure to difference for dominant-culture community members, a marketplace orientation that commodifies minoritized bodies, and an approach to avoiding conflict that maintains the status-quo and limits opportunities for critical discussion.

Authors

• Ali Watts, University of Utah

• Alicia C. Dowd, The Pennsylvania State University

• Branden D. Elmore, University of Maryland - College Park