Act III - Acts of activism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
Summary
In Act III we come to the realm of street performance and ask the question: What is at stake when performance enters and becomes public space? This section is introduced through an event signifying my own Diaspora citizenship as an African American woman finding home between two geographies of belonging – the United States and West Africa. My black Diaspora account of street performance is then followed by reflections on street performances by three Ghanaian women in the modes of oral history and poetic verse. In this section I choose to distinguish the speakers' words and bodily presence through verse in order to capture their unique poetics and verbal artistry, as well as to document the experiential and performative aspects that constituted their delivery or telling. These women were the primary agents in transforming an idea, relating to the protection and well-being of other women, into a public performative act. They transformed an urgent need into a performance, ordinary citizens into actors and audience, and quotidian spaces into memorable events. For African women whose voices are too often under-represented, representing their tellings in verse distinguishes them as performative narrators within the present space of the ethnographic interview as well as performance makers within a particular moment in history.
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- Information
- Acts of ActivismHuman Rights as Radical Performance, pp. 157 - 223Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010