Join us as Myron M. Beasley discusses his new book, Performance, Art, and Politics in the African Diaspora: Necropolitics and the Black Body, including brief conversations with artists and activists Vanessa German and Jelili Atiku.

This book examines necropolitics and performance art, with a particular focus on the black body and the African diaspora.

In this publication, Myron M. Beasley situates artists as cultural workers and theorists who illuminate the political linkages between their own and others’ specific locales. The focus is an interrogation of the political systems that dictate and determine the value of lives (and decide which lives matter) through a lens of performance and art. Beasley highlights how the performances of rupture, which are of artistic and historical significance, reveal both strategies of survival and promises of possibility. Artists and curators examined include Jelili Atiku, Giscard Bouchotte, Nona Faustine, Vanessa German, Simone Leigh, Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Ebony G. Patterson, and Dianne Smith.

The volume is an ideal research and reference book for students and scholars of Contemporary Art, African Studies, and Performance Theory.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Myron Beasley, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the areas of American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates College, USA.

His ethnographic research includes exploring the intersection of cultural politics and art and social change, as he believes in the power of artists and recognizes them as cultural workers; He has conducted fieldwork in Morocco, Brazil, the US and currently in Haiti.

The Andy Warhol Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and most recently the Reed Foundation (The Ruth Landes Award), have awarded him fellowships and grants, for his ethnographic writing about art and cultural engagement. He has also been recognized for his teaching (awarded teaching awards) and works in the area of pedagogy from the International Communication Association, Ohio University, and Brown University. 

His writing has appeared in many academic journals including The Journal of Poverty (which he served as guest editor for a special issue on the topic of Art and Social Policy), Text and Performance Quarterly, Museum & Social Issues, The Journal of Curatorial Studies, Gastronomica, ELSE and Performance Research. He is also an international curator.