This dissertation deploys an interdisciplinary methodology, extending what is conventionally understood as discourse to include performance. It brings together the fields of performance studies, discourse analysis and theatre studies to document, contextualize, and analyze the events after the Los Angeles rebellion of 1992. It examines gang youth who turned to community activism to help maintain truce between former warring gangs; small community-based organizations of mothers who worked to defend their incarcerated sons; and a variety of other groups that organized demonstrations, meetings, and gatherings to publicize the community's opposition to brutal police practices, unjust court procedures, and degrading media images. The dissertation also addresses the intersections between grassroots activism and the celebrated performance and video Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith. Together, activists and performers developed new counter-public spaces and compelling counter-narratives that confronted the extremely negative media representations of the Los Angeles rebellion. In these spaces and narratives, the activists/performers nurtured and developed their oppositional identities and interests, often despite dire economic conditions and social dislocations. By examining their discourses in light of Victor Turner's model of the social drama, including social breach, crisis, and their redressive actions, this dissertation provides a theoretical context and an intertextual reading of performance-conscious activism and activist-conscious performance as discourse.

Last modified

• 06/27/2018

Creator

• Kamran Afary

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N29412

Subject

• Performance Studies

Keyword

• Anna Deavere Smith
• performance studies
• gangs
• African American Studies
• Los Angeles riots
• grass roots activism

Date created

• 2007-05-11

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright