Week 5 Reading

These flashcards cover key concepts and terminology from the lecture notes on intercultural performance and the history of ethnographic exhibitions.

Ethnographic Exhibition

The display of non-white individuals in public contexts, often for purposes of entertainment or education, but rooted in colonial ideologies.

Reverse Ethnography

A critique of traditional ethnography where the roles of the observer and the observed are reversed, often revealing biases in understanding cultural representation.

Amerindians

A fictitious race created by artists Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena to critique concepts of discovery and colonization.

Cage Performance

A performance by Fusco and Gomez-Pena where they portrayed Amerindians in a cage, exploring themes of racism and Otherness.

Cultural Relativism

The idea that a person's beliefs and activities should be understood based on that person's own culture, often critiqued in the context of representing racial differences.

Noble Savage

A concept in Enlightenment philosophy that idealizes indigenous peoples as uncorrupted by civilization, often used to critique or challenge contemporary cultural attitudes.

Positivism

A philosophical theory stating that only scientific knowledge derived from empirical evidence is of real value, and often critiqued for ignoring the complexities of cultural narratives.

Performance Art

An art form where the action of the artist is the mode of storytelling, engaging the audience in an interactive experience, as seen in Fusco and Gomez-Pena's work.

Cultural Hybridity

The mixing and blending of different cultural identities and practices, requiring a deeper understanding and redefinition of national and cultural identities.

Public Interest

The assumption that what is good for the general populace and is often invoked in discussions about ethics in performance art and cultural representation.