A minor theory of direct action politics and performance in New Orleans’ economic justice movement

2021 ◽  
pp. 026377582110626
Author(s):  
Caroline Keegan
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
The City

In this paper, I develop a minor theory that blurs boundaries between prefigurative direct action and symbolic performance to reconsider strategies for resistance and world-building. Drawing on participant observation and interviews of economic justice organizers and activists in New Orleans in 2015, I examine two events through this minor theory: an immigration reform protest and a collaboratively written skit about income inequality. By emphasizing the performance of protest and the potential for protest through performance, I consider how these events empowered activists to make claims on spaces of the city, develop long-term embodied solidarities, disrupt dominant narratives, and en act more just alternatives. These events took place against the backdrop of intensifying racial and economic inequalities in post-Katrina New Orleans, following a long history of both repression and resistance in the city. Through performance-based direct actions, New Orleans’s economic justice movement moves beyond a reactive politics rooted in outrage and anguish toward a direct action politics constructive of a more just world.

Downtown Mardi Gras

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Wade ◽  
Robin Roberts ◽  
Frank de Caro
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the surrounding region in 2005, the city debated whether to press on with Mardi Gras or cancel the parades. Ultimately, they decided to proceed. New Orleans’s recovery certainly has resulted from a complex of factors, but the city’s unique cultural life—perhaps its greatest capital—has been instrumental in bringing the city back from the brink of extinction. Voicing a civic fervor, local writer Chris Rose spoke for the importance of Carnival when he argued to carry on with the celebration of Mardi Gras following Katrina: “We are still New Orleans. We are the soul of America. We embody the triumph of the human spirit. Hell. We ARE Mardi Gras”. Since 2006, a number of new Mardi Gras practices have gained prominence. The new parade organizations or krewes, as they are called, interpret and revise the city’s Carnival traditions but bring innovative practices to Mardi Gras. The history of each parade reveals the convergence of race, class, age, and gender dynamics in these new Carnival organizations. Downtown Mardi Gras: New Carnival Practices in Post-Katrina New Orleans examines six unique, offbeat, Downtown celebrations. Using ethnography, folklore, cultural, and performance studies, the authors analyze new Mardi Gras’s connection to traditional Mardi Gras. The narrative of each krewe’s development is fascinating and unique, illustrating participants’ shared desire to contribute to New Orleans’s rich and vibrant culture.

“You're Only Ever A Block From The ‘Hood”

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 152-170
Author(s):  
Alex Blue V
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Automobile Plant ◽  
Original Intent ◽  
Spatial Reorientation ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
The City

This article explores the use of sound, lyrics, and performance as tools for spatial reorientation and reimagining, identity formation and affirmation, and counternarrative or counterarchive in a rapidly gentrifying contemporary Detroit, Michigan. Two discrete, yet discursively linked case studies are presented—performances by the same artist in two different spaces—that exhibit various modes of “flipping,” slang that can refer to multiple transformative practices in contemporary Detroit. These practices include the use of overdetermined spaces, or spaces that have been declared abandoned or vacant, for something other than their original intent—i.e. using a decommissioned automobile plant as a music video set; sampling, which can be understood as using sonic components from previously recorded songs in the creation of new hip-hop beats; buying homes in a state of disrepair, fixing and reselling them at large profits; and inverting meaning itself, via slang or coded language. Additionally Black techniques of sounding and performance are illuminated, with a focus on echo as a mode of co-creation. These various practices are all responses to the growing wave of gentrification that gains momentum in the city daily. The analysis draws primarily from ethnographic research conducted from 2016 to 2018, culling data from participant observation, recorded interviews, informal conversations, field notes, lyrical and video analysis, and the analysis of mediated accounts, both print and online. As the analysis shows, the strategies utilized by artists in Detroit ensure that no matter how much the spaces in Detroit continue to change, and no matter how much an attempt is made to provide racially curated space through various forms of violence, you’re only ever a block from the ‘hood.

scholarly journals The Portuguese Maritime Voyages of Discovery: the exploration of the history of a city with an App as an educational resource

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cláudia Faria ◽  
Elsa Guilherme ◽  
Joaquim Pintassilgo ◽  
Maria João Mogarro ◽  
Ana Sofia Pinho ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
School Students ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

In this paper we present an evaluation of an App for mobile devices, ‘Roteiro dos Descobrimentos’, as an educational digital resource for primary school students. The study involved the participation of 131 students and eight teachers. Data were collected from participant observation, students’ questionnaires and interviews to students and teachers. According to students, they learned new things, related with the topics explored, in an easy and funny way. Students also emphasized as positive aspects the fact that they had to face different challenges and the need to mobilize their knowledge to solve them. Teachers referred that students showed great interest and enthusiasm during the activities. As main gains, teachers stressed that the application fosters the relationship of students with the city, facilitates collaboration, and promotes students’ autonomy. In resume, it seems that the playful and interactive dimension of the App promoted the development of important skills such as the ability to interact with the environment, collaborative work, autonomy, and reading and interpretation skills. As a conclusion, there is a great receptivity to integrate mobile technologies in the teaching and learning process, but the role of the teacher can’t be dismissed, as a mediator and educator.

scholarly journals Chapter 3

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Adele Baruch ◽  
Daniel Creek
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Right ◽  
Special Circumstances

The special circumstances related to helping in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—both a natural disaster and a man-made catastrophe—are explored. Stories of individual, formal, and informal networks of helping, alongside stories of exploitation and despair, were shared by participants. Significant to the history of the aftermath of Katrina was the eventual formalizing of some of the informal helping networks, such as the establishment of a musician’s village and performance center in the 9th Ward of New Orleans. The theme of “doing the right thing” echoed throughout our participant interviews, as did “the chance to move beyond angry.” Stories of helping appeared to provide examples of hope to the citizens affected by the storm, as well as encouragement towards purposeful action. The stories of helping, along with participation in altruistic social networks, appear to provide a pathway to the recollection and transformation of traumatic memories.

Empire’s Residuals

2018 ◽  
pp. 169-200
Author(s):  
Long T. Bui
Keyword(s):  
Global Change ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ho Chi Minh City ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This chapter argues that Ho Chi Minh City (also called Saigon) manifests the contradictory historical processes that shaped the city, once the capital of South Vietnam, into the economic hub it is today. For historical context, it first gives a brief summary of urbanization and class transformation under U.S. military rule in Saigon, especially during the time of Vietnamization, and how this period arguably produced a form of “neocolonialism” as many of its critics claimed which never dissipated after the Americans left. By tracking the migration of overseas Vietnamese or Viet Kieu back to the homeland, we can view the ways global change is localized. Through a cultural geography and ethnographic lens, the chapter involves participant observation and interviews with locals and former exiles. Scholars who write about Ho Chi Minh City today tend to focalize contemporary industrialization and globalization processes as manifestations of state governmental reforms or foreign corporate encroachment. This chapter provides this same focus but make connections between current urbanizing developments to the city’s history of war.

“People Want to See What Happened”

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynnell L. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Media Representation ◽  
Cultural Reproduction ◽  
Theatrical Production ◽  
Expressive Culture ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Racial Conflict ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Occupying the space between cultural reproduction and theatrical production, the HBO series Treme offers an important vantage point from which to analyze the intersection of race, class, culture, and media representation animating New Orleans’s post-Katrina tourist identity. Treme illustrates the tension between the welcome recognition and celebration of New Orleans black expressive culture and its spectacularization and commodification. The resuscitation of tourist tropes and an emphasis on jazz and heritage music in the series often render the city’s history of racial conflict and injustice invisible or subordinate to new narratives of cross-racial unity among Katrina survivors and paternalistic actions by white characters uniquely positioned to express the community’s outrage. Treme takes up where the disaster tour leaves off, giving viewers - televisual tourists - access to purportedly authentic places, people, events, and experiences that exist beyond the tourist landscape and that suggest a racial remapping of the city.

City of a Million Dreams

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Berry
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Andrew Jackson ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Michael White ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Secret Agent ◽  
The City

In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods. Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.

A Family Long Free

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally McKee
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Level ◽  
Free African Americans ◽  
The City ◽  
And Training

This chapter argues that no family embodies the anomalous history of New Orleans better than the Dede family. Of all the towns and cities in North America with populations of free African Americans, the chapter goes on to argue, New Orleans was the city most likely to have produced a black man like Edmond Dede—possessed of enough talent, ambition, and training to launch himself up to a high level of accomplishment. Only in New Orleans could African American families trace their family's history back beyond 1864, the year the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. Contrary to later reports that Edmond Dede was the son of West Indian refugees, he in fact belonged instead to a long-established family with roots in North America.

scholarly journals The Artistic Profile of Aleksander Zarzycki: A Forgotten Composer of the Romantic Era

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Klaudia Popielska
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
Polish Music ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Minor ◽  
National Style

The second half of the nineteenth century is a neglected period in the history of Polish music, in the aspects of both research and performance. Works by many composers from this period have unfortunately been forgotten. One such composer is undoubtedly Aleksander Zarzycki (1834–1895), also a teacher and piano virtuoso, the author of more than 40 opuses, including many solo songs with piano accompaniment, which have frequently been compared to the songs of Stanisław Moniuszko. Similarly as Poland’s most famous song composer, Zarzycki created two songbooks that belong to the trend of egalitarian songs. He was also renowned for his short piano pieces, written in the salon style with virtuoso elements. One of his most famous works is the Mazurka in G major, popularised by the Spanish virtuoso violinist Pablo Sarasate. Also of note is his Piano Concerto in A-flat major Op. 17, drawing on Fryderyk Chopin’s Piano Concerto in A minor and Józef Wieniawski’s Concerto in G minor. Zarzycki’s works are characteristic of his era, and contain elements of folklore, national style, virtuosity, and the so-called ‘Romantic mood’.

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