In !Presente! Diana Taylor asks what it means to be physically and politically present in situations where it seems that nothing can be done. As much an act, a word, an attitude, a theoretical intervention, and a performance pedagogy, Taylor maps !presente! at work in scenarios ranging from conquest, through colonial enactments and resistance movements, to present moments of capitalist extractivism and forced migration in the Americas. !Presente!-present among, with, and to; a walking and talking with others; an ontological and epistemic reflection on presence and subjectivity as participatory and relational, founded on mutual recognition-requires rethinking and unlearning in ways that challenge colonial epistemologies. Showing how knowledge is not something to be harvested but a process of being, knowing, and acting with others, Taylor models a way for scholarship to be present in political struggles.
Industry Reviews
"Diana Taylor advances a timely and necessary theorization of the politics of performance, delivering nuanced and heartfelt analysis of the creative strategies of artists and activists who labor to intervene in historical and contemporary injustices across the Americas. Showcasing Taylor as a scholar, activist, and accomplice present at the site of performance, !Presente! is an intellectually brilliant and crucial model of politically engaged theory." -- Ramon H. Rivera-Servera, coeditor of * Blacktino Queer Performance *
"A major project drawn from a life's work of travel, searching, introspection, and unceasing political commitment to and collaborations with artists and activists, !Presente! is a work of great power, poetics, and political impact." -- Josh Kun, University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication
"For a work so theoretically rigorous, !Presente! stands out for its wide legibility. By foregoing unnecessary academic jargon and taking pains to explain her own ethical entanglements in plain English, Taylor's scholarship makes for a surprisingly smooth read, though it is at times heartbreaking: she does not minimize the grimmer aspects of her subject matter, which include devastating accounts of kidnappings, torture, and genocide. The uninitiated reader will find her writing clear and unpretentious, and may discover that her gloss of the postcolonial canon does much to demystify." -- Sam Adrien Smith * Full Stop *
"A valuable meditation on what it means to practice the responsibility of writing through social relations, on creating new ways of doing and being in academia, performance, and life." -- Analola Santana * Theatre Survey *
"A call for a new spirit of militancy to see what is missing, learn to unlearn, and energize the fight." -- Angela Marino * Performance Research *
"!Presente! will quickly, and aptly, be assigned in classrooms and discussed by students, artists, and activists who will take up the politics of presence in their practices. Taylor challenges us to reexamine what we believe we know, how we know, and the obligations and responsibilities that accompany such knowledge." -- Kimberly Skye Richards * TDR *
"Taylor writes an excellent study that encourages the reader to take a walk with her. . . . This book collects past Encuentros and invites all of us to be !presente!" -- Paola S. Hernandez * Theatre Journal *
"!Presente! is a vital and timely text that speaks critically to our current national rhetoric." -- Karina Gutierrez * Modern Drama *
"Taylor gives us a deeply captivating book that takes us on a journey across a substantial period, across sites, archives and personal memories. This book is lucidly written and is highly accessible, providing a rich treasure trove of stories and concepts for scholars in performance studies, Latin American and hemispheric studies, Native Studies, Latinx, Chicana/o studies, de- and anticolonial studies, memory, affect, trauma, gender, queer and trans studies. The readers will appreciate and find particularly instructive its method for writing presences, conceptual interventions as well as provocations." -- Adwaita Banerjee * Space and Polity *
