Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (1996)
Pithy one-sentence summary:
Through surrogation, or substitution, memory is enacted in performance.
Pithy summary of my love for this book:
No notes will do this book justice. It is that great. I highlight some key terms/ideas, here, but it is no indication of the richness of his historical evidence, the creative but solid brilliance of his methodology, the sheer resounding joy that is this book. This is one of those books everyone quotes, and everyone uses to bring together points that are only seemingly related; it is one of those books that have spurned forward so many other books it's almost staggering. And it gets better with every read. Example: I hadn't paid much attention to this quote before (I'm paraphrasing from memory, here): "For the urban underclasses in the late twentieth century United States, violence is one of the few forms of excess expenditure available in the absence of money." True? False? I'm not sure. I thought it was a fascinating way of thinking about violence (I don't study violence thematically-- maybe this has been written on elsewhere?). But I'm also hesitant to ascribe "excess" anything to classes and races already and historically described as "too much" and simultaneously "not enough." This is probably not the best example of why this book is so continuously provocative... but it's an example nonetheless. I wish I could have really re-read it for orals instead of flying through it and taking notes from my marginalia, but it's not going to ever be too far from my side.