When political protest is read as epidemic madness, religious ecstasy as nervous disease, and angular dance moves as dark and uncouth, the 'disorder' being described is choreomania. At once a catchall term to denote spontaneous gestures and the unruly movements of crowds, 'choreomania' emerged in the nineteenth century at a time of heightened class conflict, nationalist policy, and colonial rule. In this book, author Kélina Gotman examines these
choreographies of unrest, rethinking the modern formation of the choreomania concept as it moved across scientific and social scientific disciplines. Reading archives describing dramatic misformations-of bodies and body
politics-she shows how prejudices against expressivity unravel, in turn revealing widespread anxieties about demonstrative agitation. This history of the fitful body complements stories of nineteenth-century discipline and regimentation. As she notes, constraints on movement imply constraints on political power and agency. In each chapter, Gotman confronts the many ways choreomania works as an extension of discourses shaping colonialist orientalism, which alternately depict riotous bodies as
dangerously infected others, and as curious bacchanalian remains. Through her research, Gotman also shows how beneath the radar of this colonial discourse, men and women gathered together to repossess on
their terms the gestures of social revolt.
Industry Reviews
"[...] what Gotman accomplishes in the process is a daring negotiation with the history of 'movement', one that persuades her readers to imagine the possibilities inherent in the sight of bodies dancing beyond the rigid confines of the ordinary - outside, perhaps, the onward march of late capitalism - and into states of dissent, disruption, and ecstatic disorder." -- Megan Girdwood, The Cambridge Quarterly
"choreomania encourages broader notions of how discourse on dance is produced and reproduced in order to better understand dance's political and social potential." -- Tessa Nun, Comparative Literature Studies
"Choreomania is as progressive in its historical methodologies as it is in its provocative analyses of heretofore undertheorized modes of movement, dance and gesture. I have no doubt that it will deeply impact dance and performance studies as a pathbreaking analysis of social bodies in motion as well as an inspiring example of how the durable roots of rigorous critical and historical methodologies strengthen scholarship that stretches so far across
geography and time." -- Rebecca Chaleff, Theatre Research International
"[Choreomania] is a significant contribution to theatre and performance studies methodologies, advancing a historiographical method that attends to movement, motility, kinetics, dynamics, efforts, push, and pull...It is exciting to imagine what new research Choreomania will make possible." -- Broderick D. V. Chow, Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, Contemporary Theatre Review
"Choreomania is consistently enlightening and Provocative." -- Megan Girdwood, Cambridge Quarterly
"A conceptual tour-de-force! Gotman effectively mobilizes Foucault, Said, Foster, Agamben, and Gilroy to assemble a discursive history of choreomania. Progressive, 21st-century thinking that incorporates critical race theory, feminist theory, and the crucial critique of modern scientific approaches to movement. A triumph for dance studies that reflects an always-changing world-in-motion, ever-activated by shifting political circumstances." -- Thomas F.
DeFrantz, Professor of Dance, African and African American Studies, and Theatre Studies, Duke University
Offering an astute history of ideas about dance that charts both fears and desires about bodies in movement, Gotman crafts a truly insightful way of thinking, which is to say moving, across and among the archives and the fields in which dance is practiced and given to remain, deployed and never quite contained. Throughout Gotman s keen analyses, 19th-century choreomania is read not only in relationship to but also as the best and the worst of modern
biopolitics. -- Rebecca Schneider, Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University
