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African American Studies

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

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Matter’S “Dark” Powers: Performing Objects And Racialization In Nineteenth-Century American Spiritualism, Hazel Rickards Jan 2023

Matter’S “Dark” Powers: Performing Objects And Racialization In Nineteenth-Century American Spiritualism, Hazel Rickards

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

In this article, I analyze performing objects that were attributed to the agency of Black spirits within the 19th-century American spiritualist movement, exposing how white, female spirit mediums supported and tested a racial metaphysics that assumed white transcendence and Black materiality.


Ralph Chessé And Forman Brown: When Carving The Other Is Carving The Self, Ben Fisler Jan 2023

Ralph Chessé And Forman Brown: When Carving The Other Is Carving The Self, Ben Fisler

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This article examines two “closeted” puppeteers, Forman Brown and Ralph Chessé, who demonstrate alterity’s ability to disrupt itself. Their puppets are both exotic (“different from me”) and incorporated (“like me”), as the artists’ hidden racial and sexual identities blur the boundaries between self and other.