Performance and Performativity in the Rio Carnival and Torontonian Caribana

Excerpts from the Paper

Performance and Performativity in the Rio Carnival and Torontonian Caribana
This paper will apply the concepts of performance and performativity – as explored in the works of Schechner and Butler respectively – to an analysis of the public spectacles of the Rio Carnival in Brazil and the Toronto Caribana in Canada. As will be seen, while both events can be understood as ritualized performances that mark identities, it is critically important to see performances in both contexts not as actions but as interactions between a number of different agents. In this regard, with critical reference to Butler’s theory of performativity, it will be argued that performativity in both cases involves not simply a web of discourse and power but also...

.....n of gender and race, through disciplined bodies, in physical and discursive space.
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