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9780271083476 Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Staging Habla de Negros:

Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain
  • ISBN-13: 9780271083476
  • Publisher: PENN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: PENN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Nicholas R. Jones
  • Price: AUD $75.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/07/2020
  • Format: Paperback 248 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: European history [HBJD]
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In this volume, Nicholas R. Jones analyzes white appropriations of black African voices in Spanish theater from the 1500s through the 1700s, when the performance of Africanized Castilian, commonly referred to as habla de negros (black speech), was in vogue.
 
Focusing on Spanish Golden Age theater and performative poetry from authors such as Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Rueda, and Rodrigo de Reinosa, Jones makes a strong case for revising the belief, long held by literary critics and linguists, that white appropriations and representations of habla de negros language are “racist buffoonery or stereotype. Instead, Jones shows black characters who laugh, sing, and shout, ultimately combating the violent desire of white supremacy. By placing early modern Iberia in conversation with discourses on African diaspora studies, Jones showcases how black Africans and their descendants who built communities in early modern Spain were rendered legible in performative literary texts.
 
Accessibly written and theoretically sophisticated, Jones's groundbreaking study elucidates the ways that habla de negros animated black Africans' agency, empowered their resistance, and highlighted their African cultural retentions. This must-read book on identity building, performance, and race will captivate audiences across disciplines.

List of Illustrations

Preface: Talking Black in Spanish

Acknowledgments

Translating Blackness: An Editorial Note on Translations

Introduction: The Habla de Negros Palimpsest; Theorizing Habla de Negros

1. Black Skin Acts: Feasting on Blackness, Staging Linguistic Blackface

2. The Birth of Hispanic Habla de Negros: Signifying for the Black Audience in Rodrigo de Reinosa

3. Black Divas, Black Feminisms: The Black Female Body and Habla de Negros in Lope de Rueda

Afterword: B(l)ack to the Future; The Postmodern Legacy of Habla de Negros, or Talking in Tongues

Notes

Bibliography

Index



“This compelling study offers many fresh insights into the literary reception of African-Iberian speech performance and recovers depictions that previous scholarship derided as hopelessly biased or monologic. It utilizes these depictions to read not just the formation of early modern black subjectivities but also the role they played in defining the hegemonic order under which these were crafted and codified. Jones directs critical attention to multiple stagings of subaltern performance by Blacks, Africans, and Ibero-Africans as well as their instrumental roles in the formation of early modern global empires.”

—Israel Burshatin, Haverford College

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