Mimetic Desires - Impersonation and Guising across South Asia (Hardcover)

Through an exploration of subjects such as Gandhi impersonators, "God-men," performance artists, and participants in ritual enactments of sacred stories through dance and theatre, Mimetic Desires makes an intervention toward understanding the phenomenon of impersonation and guising in South Asia and the world. This volume defines impersonation as the temporary assumption of an identity or guise in performance that is perceived to be not one’s own, regardless of whether this assumption is deliberate, intentional, and conscious or not. Interrogating the legitimacy of the purported dialectic between the "real/original" and "fake/dupe," Mimetic Desires refutes any ordering of identity along the lines of a binary or dichotomy that presupposes the myth of an original identity. Guising captures sartorial and kinetic play more generally. By peeling back the layers of performative masks to reveal the process of the masquerade itself, we can see that those with the most social capital are often those with the most power and opportunities to impersonate "up"—and "down"—social hierarchies. The twelve chapters in Mimetic Desires disclose sites and processes of socio-political power facilitated by normative markers of social status relating to race, ethnicity, gender, caste, class, and religion—and how those markers can be manipulated to express and enhance individual and group power. The first comprehensive study to focus on impersonation in South Asia, Mimetic Desires expands on previous scholarship on impersonation and guising in vernacular theatre, dance, public processions, and religious ritual. It is particularly in conversation with the robust scholarship on gender performance and trans-kothi-hijra engagement in theatrical and dance forms in South Asia. Mimetic Desires explores some of the contexts and forms of impersonation in South Asia, with its remarkable array of performing arts, to gain insight into the very human and quotidian practices of impersonation and guising.

General

Imprint:	University of Hawaii Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific
Release date:	November 2022
Editors:	Harshita Mruthinti Kamath • Pamela Lothspeich
Authors:	Christian Lee Novetzke • Kellen Hoxworth • Rosie Thomas • Chaya Chandrasekhar • Janice Glowski • Sumathi Ramaswamy • Shehzad Nadeem • Aniruddha Dutta
Dimensions:	229 x 152mm (L x W)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	277
ISBN-13:	978-0-8248-9277-7
Categories:	Books
LSN:	0-8248-9277-1
Barcode:	9780824892777

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