D\u27Amore, Laura Mattoon

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Book Review: Enacting History

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Roger Williams UniversityDOCS@RWUFeinstein College of Arts & Sciences FacultyPublications Feinstein College of Arts and Sciences2011Book Review: Enacting HistoryLaura Mattoon D'AmoreRoger Williams University, ldamore@rwu.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://docs.rwu.edu/fcas_fpPart of the American Studies CommonsThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Feinstein College of Arts and Sciences at DOCS@RWU. It has been accepted forinclusion in Feinstein College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DOCS@RWU. For more information, pleasecontact mwu@rwu.edu.Recommended CitationD’Amore, Laura Mattoon. November 2011. "Book Review: Enacting History." H-Net Book Reviews.Scott Magelssen, Rhona Justice-Malloy, eds. Enacting History. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011. vi +230 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8173-5654-5; $39.75 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8173-1728-7.Reviewed by Laura M. D’AmorePublished on H-Memory (November, 2011)Commissioned by Linda LeviEnacting History is a critical addition to the expand-ing canon of scholarly literature that examines the in-tersections of history and performance. As more peoplethan ever learn their history through the performancesand interpretations of enactors, it is more important thanever to deconstruct what they are seeing and learning.is compilation of essays, edited by ScoMagelssen andRhona Justice-Malloy, contributes new and innovativeideas about this phenomenon, while examining modes ofperforming history outside of the traditional theater.In his introduction, Magelssen notes that perfor-mance oﬀers audiences a more accessible understand-ing of the past than do books, and has the potential notonly to reinforce cultural ideologies but also to challengethem. He suggests that practitioners of performance cre-ate space for the past in the moment of the present, si-multaneously giving voice to “those who have been si-lenced by other histories” (p. 9). e question of authen-ticity, of course, is always looming over performance ofthe past, in much the same way that it looms over any at-tempt to accurately and fairly represent a historical mo-ment. Magelssen and his contributors take this questionhead on, arguing that not only do enactors shape histor-ical understanding, but audiences do so as well throughthe knowledge and interpretation that they bring to ev-ery performance. As LindsayAdamson Livingstonwritesin her chapter, “’is Is the Place’: Performance andthe Production of Space in Mormon Cultural Memory”:“through performance, the body (of both spectator andperformer) is made complicit in the authenticity of originand aids in the perpetuation of those claims” (p. 31). Infact, this reimagining of authenticity–one that actuallyprivileges the emotive connection that historical recre-ation oﬀers–is central to the analyses oﬀered in this book.Enacting history works precisely because its very exis-tence depends on the active process of questioning truthin historical representation.emes covered in the book address the importanceof performance in maintaining a historical connection toreligion, gender roles, race, slavery, and migration, aswell as the complexities involvedwith developing, direct-ing, and performing historical tributes. Magelssen andJustice-Malloy selected essays that create a cohesive di-alogue with one another. For example, Leigh Clemons’schapter, “Present Enacting Past: e Functions of BaleReenacting in Historical Representation,” dovetails nicelywith the chapter by Amy M. Tyson, “Men with eirMuskets and Me in My Bare Feet: Performing Historyand Policing Gender at Historic Fort Snelling Living His-tory Museum,” in examining the gendered constructionof historical performance as it relates to both the past,which is represented, and the present, in which it is con-tained. Clemons, in addressing the participants in a Tex-ian reenactment “Remember Goliad,” notes that “most ofthe participants are self-reﬂexive about their role in reen-acting, seeing the need for communication with the au-dience as more important than the need to be continu-ously ’in character”’ (p. 14). However, at Fort Snelling,Tyson argues, the need to be “in character” is, in the parkmanagement’s view, the greatest indicator of the authen-ticity of a reenactor’s performance. She notes that “whilewomenwere subject to scrutiny about, say, sewing, cook-ing, and cleaning, men were most oen scrutinized fortheir ability to march, ﬁre muskets, be ’good soldiers’–and to convincingly portray masculinity, in both its his-toric and present-day dimensions” (p. 43).e critique of “aﬀective and emotional” perfor-mances of history, and its relationship with authentic-ity, is taken on by Patricia Ybarra in “Performing His-tory as Memorialization: inking with … And JesusMoonwalks the Mississippi and Brown University’s Slav-ery and Justice Commiee.” Slave history is largely un-available for us to analyze, as so much about the livesof slaves went undocumented. As such, Ybarra argues,creating ﬁctional representations “such as Jesus Moon-walks, which acknowledge these absences, but nonethe-less try to write subjectivity within and through them,1H-Net Reviewscomplicate[s] the issue” (p. 120). She writes about aresearch-to-performance method that produces “a nec-essary supplement not only to dialogue but also to mon-uments as memorialization of slavery on the Brown cam-pus” (p 128). Magelssen’s chapter, “Tourist Performancein the Twenty-First Century,” also addresses the emo-tional performance of history when he tells the storyof his “tourist” adventure as a Mexican migrant illegallycrossing the U.S. border in the dead of night. Puingoneself in the shoes of the subject of representation, thisexperience oﬀered people the opportunity to be chased,hunted, and led across precarious terrain in search offreedom. A story of race and poverty that is oen ig-nored, this method of performance permanently changedparticipants’ perspectives on issues of border crossing onthe U.S./Mexico border, creating a ﬁction for themselveswhile commemorating the real pasts of others.In “Ping Chong & Company’s Undesirable Ele-ments/Secret Histories in Oxford, Mississippi,” Justice-Malloy describes a style of playwriting that collects thevoices of local people who “share the common experi-ence of being born into one culture but living as part ofanother” (p. 204). In this particular production, Justice-Malloy follows director Leyla Modirzadeh as she re-searches and writes a performance based on residents ofOxford, Mississippi, called Secret Histories: Oxford. Oneof the operating questions examined by this performancewas “how can a work of art provoke or move an audiencethat has not felt excluded to beer understand those whohave? How can it help those who feel excluded feel lessso” (p. 204)? is question is critical to this entire editedcompilation: enactors create a bond with the spectatorthat evokes an emotional response, connecting them tohistory in a way books cannot. Oentimes, in so doing,enactors are able to bring light to histories that have tra-ditionally been kept in the darkness.e book is composed of twelve highly accessiblechapters, each of which engages readers with the prob-lem of performance when it comes head to head with his-torical authenticity. What is refreshing about this text,however, is that it does not treat this intersectionalityas a problem; rather it is this space of interconnected-ness that improves the experience of history for enac-tors and for audiences. In “Is is Real?: An Explo-ration of What Is Real in a Performance Based on His-tory,” Catherine Hughes argues that the “engagementof visitor/spectator’s imagination” is the general goal ofmost museums and performance sites. Using reader reac-tion theory as her methodology, she notes that “meaningcannot be found solely within a text, but must be real-ized in the construction of interpretation by a reader” (p.143). As such, the interpreter’s experience is signiﬁcant–and interpreters here are multilayered as text, enactor,and audience. It is what happens between these interac-tions that actually forges meaning. Authenticity, Hughesargues, is elusive: when text and reader–or performerand audience–meet, they necessarily change each other.Spectators are always involved in the making of mean-ing, despite the control enactors might wish to wield overtheir interpretive cra. Furthermore, in her conclusion,Justice-Malloy argues that performances of the past “di-rect our aention. We look, andwhenwe aend to some-thing we are changed by it. When we tell our stories andhear them and aend to them we are connecting withone of the most human of aributes: storytelling … thesense that ’we are all from the same place”’ (p. 221). Inour modern, mediated world, this analysis is provocativeand insightful, and opens doors to new possibilities oftheorizing about history’s authenticity as the subject ofperformance.is text is well suited for general academic audi-ences, and works well with theater and performancestudies, history and public history, memory studies,American studies, and popular culture. e text is acces-sible for undergraduate and graduate students, and is anexcellent guide for researchers seeking to theorize aboutissues of public history and memory.If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at:hp://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.Citation: Laura M. D’Amore. Review of Magelssen, Sco; Justice-Malloy, Rhona, eds., Enacting History. H-Memory,H-Net Reviews. November, 2011.URL: hp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=33785is work is licensed under a Creative Commons Aribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.2

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