Without papers: Legal identity, legal consciousness, and performance

Title: Without papers: Legal identity, legal consciousness, and performance
Identifier: d_2009_2013:6048f2fc6c45:10849
identifier: 11127
Creator: Guterman, Gad,
Contributor: Jean Graham-Jones
Date: 2011
Language: English
Publisher: City University of New York.
Subject: Theater | Public policy | Theater history | immigration law | Latino/Latina theater | legal consciousness | performance | undocumented immigration
Abstract: The undocumented immigrant is a recurring figure in the legal and cultural fields. By examining various stagings of this figure in contemporary US theatre, I analyze the intricate relationship between cultural and legal production and also observe law's capacity to shape identity and practices of belonging. My dissertation relies on developments in legal anthropology and employs concepts of legal identity and legal consciousness to consider theatre's engagement with unauthorized immigration. An explicit focus on law and its material consequences allows me to problematize theatre scholarship's privileging of ethnic/racial categories when approaching the overdetermined issue of identity. Importantly, as I investigate theatre's contribution to the immigration debates, I theorize how performance intersects with legal categorization and, in particular, how performance can counteract the legal nonexistence that characterizes life without papers.
Type: dissertation
Source: 2009_2013.csv
degree: Ph.D.
Program: Theatre