Performance and the Conservative Turn in Latin America

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Following the progressive Pink Tide of the early twenty-first century, Latin America is experiencing the rise of a New Right that closely aligns neoliberal economics with social conservatism, specifically attacking advances in human rights, gender politics, and cultural diversity. This panel explores the ways in which performance—both as practice and as methodological lens—has responded to this conservative turn. How have theatre, dance, performance art, street protests, and other forms of performance been instrumental in challenging the closure of alternatives that marks this new moment? What can close readings of performance—embodied, on social media, in the news—reveal about the forces at play in this radical turn, about the echo chambers of fake news and denialism? How can performance practice expand our understanding of the implications of the downfall of the New Latin American Left for a global understanding of difference and diversity?

Sub Track

• Film, Performance, and Culture

Session Organizer

• Marcos Steuernagel, University of Colorado Boulder

Chair

• Marcos Steuernagel, University of Colorado Boulder

Discussant

• Sebastián Calderón Bentin, New York University

Individual Presentations

• “Tocan a una, nos tocan a todas”: Performing Feminisms in a Fujimorized Peru - Leticia Robles-Moreno, Muhlenberg College

• “Petrobras Apresenta” – Performance and Politics in Twenty-First Century Brazilian Theatre - Marcos Steuernagel, University of Colorado Boulder

• Form and Content in the Staging of Caranguejo Overdrive - Claudia Tatinge Nascimento, Macalester College

• Theater at its Limits: Performances of Precarity in Argentina under Macri - Anna White-Nockleby, Harvard University