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Between Two Fires - Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Post-Socialism (Hardcover)
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Between Two Fires - Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Post-Socialism (Hardcover)
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Since tsarist times, Roma in Russia have been portrayed as both
rebellious outlaws and free-spirited songbirds--in each case, as if
isolated from society. In Soviet times, Russians continued to
harbor these two, only seemingly opposed, views of "Gypsies,"
exalting their songs on stage but scorning them on the streets as
liars and cheats. Alaina Lemon's "Between Two Fires" examines how
Roma themselves have negotiated these dual images in everyday
interactions and in stage performances.
Lemon's ethnographic study is based on extensive fieldwork in
1990s Russia and focuses on Moscow Romani Theater actors as well as
Romani traders and metalworkers. Drawing from interviews with Roma
and Russians, observations of performances, and conversations, as
well as archives, literary texts, and media, Lemon analyzes the
role of theatricality and theatrical tropes in Romani life and the
everyday linguistics of social relations and of memory.
Historically, the way Romani stage performance has been culturally
framed and positioned in Russia has served to typecast Gypsies as
"natural" performers, she explains. Thus, while theatrical and
musical performance may at times empower Roma, more often it has
reinforced and rationalized racial and social stereotypes,
excluding them from many Soviet and Russian economic and political
arenas. Performance, therefore, defines what it means to be Romani
in Russia differently than it does elsewhere, Lemon shows.
Considering formal details of language as well as broader cultural
and social structures, she also discusses how racial categories
relate to post-Soviet economic changes, how gender categories and
Euro-Soviet notions of civility are connected, and how ontological
distinctions between "stage art" and "real life" contribute to the
making of social types. This complex study thus serves as a
corrective to romantic views of Roma as detached from political
forces.
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