The Sense of Brown

The Sense of Brown is JosÉ Esteban MuÑoz's treatise on brownness and being as well as his most direct address to queer Latinx studies. In this book, which he was completing at the time of his death, MuÑoz examines the work of playwrights Ricardo Bracho and Nilo Cruz, artists Nao Bustamante, Isaac Julien, and Tania Bruguera, and singer JosÉ Feliciano, among others, arguing for a sense of brownness that is not fixed within the racial and national contours of Latinidad. This sense of brown is not about the individualized brown subject; rather, it demonstrates that for brown peoples, being exists within what MuÑoz calls the brown commons-a lifeworld, queer ecology, and form of collectivity. In analyzing minoritarian affect, ethnicity as a structure of feeling, and brown feelings as they emerge in, through, and beside art and performance, MuÑoz illustrates how the sense of brown serves as the basis for other ways of knowing and being in the world.

JosÉ Esteban MuÑoz (1967–2013) was Professor of Performance Studies at New York University and author of Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity and Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Joshua Chambers-Letson is Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Tavia Nyong’o is Professor of American Studies, African American Studies, and Theater and Performance Studies at Yale University.

Acknowledgments  vii Editors' Introduction. The Aesthetic Resonance of Brown / Joshua Chambers-Letson and Tavia Nyong'o  ix 1. The Browns Commons  1 2. Feeling Brown: Ethnicity and Affect in Ricardo Bracho's The Sweetest Hangover (and Other STDs)  8 3. The Onus of Seeing Cuba: Nilo Cruz's CubanÍa  24 4. Meandering South: Isaac Julien and The Long Road to MazatlÁn  29 5. "Chico, What Does It Feel Like to Be a Problem?": The Transmission of Brownness  36 6. The Vulnerability Artist: Nao Bustamante and the Sad Beauty of Reparation  47 7. Queer Theater, Queer Theory: Luis Alfaro's Cuerpo Polizado  59 8. Performing the Bestiary: Carmelita Tropicana's With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit?/ Con Que Culo se Sienta la Cucaracha?  78 9. Performing Greater Cuba: Tania Bruguera and the Burden of Guilt  86 10. Wise Latinas  100 11. Brown Worldings: JosÉ RodrÍguez-Soltero, Tania Bruguera, and MarÍa Irene FornÉs  118 12. The Sense of Wildness: The Brown Commons after Paris Burned  128 13. Vitalism's Afterburn: The Sense of Ana Mendieta  141 Notes  151 Bibliography  167 Index  175