Disappearing acts

by Diana Taylor

In Disappearing Acts Diana Taylor looks at how national identity is shaped, gendered, and contested through spectacle and relationship. The specific identity in question is that of Argentina, and Taylor's focus is directed toward the years 1976 to 1983 in which the Argentine armed forces were pitted against the Argentine people in that nation's "Dirty War." Combining feminism, cultural studies, and performance theory, Taylor analyzes the political spectacles that comprised the war - concentration camps, torture, "disappearances"--As well as the rise of theatrical productions, demonstrations, and other performative practices that attempted to resist and subvert the Argentine military. Taylor uses performance theory to explore how public spectacle both builds and dismantles a sense of national and gender identity. Here, nation is understood as a product of communal "imaginings" that are rehearsed, written and staged - and spectacle is the desiring machine at work in those imaginings. Tay