Empathy and Flesh in Performance

ABSTRACT

By analyzing the “ritual of purification” presented on stage in Nao Bustamante’s performance Indigurrito, I show how identity categories influence different, and at times contradictory, readings of enactments of power in ways that enhance or obstruct an empathic response. The methodological lens for this article borrows from Hortense Spillers’s notion of “flesh” to analyze the stage of interaction and the Latina body. “Flesh” is a concept developed by Spillers to denote what is left outside the frame of social conceptualization. In other words, “flesh” is that which is not considered a matter of discussion, because as a structural element of the “social” is hardly ever thought of. After analyzing the perspectives of different kinds of subject positions both by the author/actor and by the audience/participants, I consider the possibility of elaborative empathy. One of its elements, identity categorization, influences not only openness to parallel emotions but also skills at understanding other people’s emotional experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Empathy
• latinx bodies
• enactments of power
• nao bustamante

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Interview by the author with author and performer Nao Bustamante, December 2019. Hereinafter cited as Bustamante interview.

² Good Vibrations, based in San Francisco since 1977, was one of the first female oriented sex-shops in the country. As Paul B. Preciado states, it was “feminine y feminist” (Preciado, 2011, pp. 109 n54). The company, founded by Joani Blank, was the first one exclusively dedicated to female and lesbian pleasure. (Preciado, 2011, p. 256)

³ At this time his play “I Will Marry When I Want/Ngaahika Ndeenda” was produced, and staged, but it was banned after six weeks for “alleged portrayal of post-colonial struggles that harmed citizens” (Kenya News). It was banned again in 1990 and finally, after 32 years, put on stage at the Kenya National Theater from May 22 to May 29, 2022. It features prominent themes on hypocrisy, corruption of religion, capitalism and politics. It is believed that the play was the cause of Ngugi wa Tiongo’s arrest in 1977. One year later, after the death of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, he was released and went into exile. (Kenya News, 2022. “Ngugi wa Thiong’o play back after 32 years,” May 1, Ghanamma.com)

⁴ Foucault defines dispositif as a heterogeneous network linking discourses, institutions, laws, and the like. It is what articulates power and knowledge; it might change relationality while still assuring the continuation of a structure of relations (Foucault, 1980, p. 194).

⁵ After interviewing Nao Bustamante, I learned that the person was a dancer playing “goofy.”