Tango And The Political Economy Of Passion

Marta Savigliano

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429976636
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

What is tango? Dance, music, and lyrics of course, but also a philosophy, a strategy, a commodity, even a disease. This book explores the politics of tango, tracing tango's travels from the brothels of Buenos Aires to the cabarets of Paris and the shako dansu clubs of Tokyo. The author is an Argentinean political theorist and a dance professor at the University of California at Riverside. She uses her?tango tongue? to tell interwoven tales of sexuality, gender, race, class, and national identity. Along the way she unravels relations between machismo and colonialism, postmodernism and patriarchy, exoticism and commodification. In the end she arrives at a discourse on decolonization as intellectual?unlearning.?Marta Savigliano's voice is highly personal and political. Her account is at once about the exoticization of tango and about her own fate as a Third World woman intellectual. A few sentences from the preface are indicative: ?Tango is my womb and my tongue, a trench where I can shelter and resist the colonial invitations to '`'universalism, '? a stubborn fatalist mood when technocrats and theorists offer optimistic and seriously revised versions of '`'alternatives' for the Third World, an opportunistic metaphor to talk about myself and my stories as a success' of the civilization-development-colonization of Am ca Latina, and a strategy to figure out through the history of the tango a hooked-up story of people like myself. Tango is my changing, resourceful source of identity. And because I am where I am?outside?tango hurts and comforts me: '`'Tango is a sad thought that can be danced.'?Savigliano employs the tools of ethnography, history, body-movement analysis, and political economy. Well illustrated with drawings and photos dating back to the 1880s, this book is highly readable, entertaining, and provocative. It is sure to be recognized as an important contribution in the fields of cultural studies, performance studies, decolonization, and women-of-color feminism.

1
Introductions

(On the Micropolitics of Introducing)

I took some bad advice. I think I should blame my foot for it; for putting myself in this. (It is always the same big toe crawling imperceptibly into these holes without edges.) Anyway, now I'm stuck. Open the tango-box: "There is a story I want to tell but, every other instant, I'm overgrown by muteness. Because of sadness, because of love, because of powerlessness or absurd omnipotence, because of rage or solitude, because of so much pain, because of life itself and the death of others or even because of that in-between, when boredom tempts me like dryness in the mouth to stand in silence. Every other instant one feels like dying." Close the tango-box. I'll try to tell my story, scattered in pieces. Each piece is a tale with sketchy morals of its own. But there are some points in common, rather, some dots or, better said, some rebellious stains. Alright. Imprecise points of repetition. And every other instant the silence, overgrowing. Wind up the tango-box: "My foot, the wise one, this time said: 'Could you please try to decolonize your sell?'" The tango-box wands down. I wonder, why would you follow me through these pages? I know you did not expect me to address you like this. What kind of introduction is this? I can already sense some restlessness. I lower my voice and answer slowly: i'm ... trying ... to ... decolonize ... myself. I am tempted to apologize, to erase the whole thing and start all over again. Sorry for putting you in the spot, in my point, in the dot, in these stains.

An introduction should go like this:

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the historical account of capitalism by adding a new dimension to the currently well-known Marxist and neo-Marxist depictions of its development. Through these pages I will entertain the thought qua hypothesis that a political economy of Passion has been occurring and that this economy has been juxtaposed and intertwined with the economies usually described on materialist and ideological grounds. A trackable trafficking in emotions and affects has paralleled the processes by which the core countries of the capitalist world system have extracted material goods and labor from, and imposed colonial bureaucratic state apparatuses and ideological devices on, the Third World (periphery).

This imperialist circulation of feelings gave rise to an emotional capital—Passion—accumulated, recoded, and consumed in the form of Exotic Culture: "mysterious," "untamed," "wild," "primitive," "passionate." The emotional/expressive practices of die colonized have been isolated, categorized, and transformed into curious "cultural" patterns of behavior. The catalogue is vast and the specialties proliferate: Entries by "topic" (economy, kinship and marriage, religion, art, customs, etc.) and entries by "continent" (Southeast Asia, North Africa, Iberoamérica, the French Pacific, etc.) carefully follow a systematic logic of representation. Thus, "exotic" objects have been constituted by applying a homogenizing practice of exoticization, a system of exotic representation that commoditized the colonials in order to suit imperial consumption. In other words, peripheral-"exotic" Passion is molded in the shape of the world's core unfulfillable Desire. The colonizer constitutes his own "progressive" identity— Civilized, Enlightened, Democratic, Postmodern—on the basis of this confrontation with exotic, colonized (neo- and post- as well) Others. And the cycle of production, distribution, and consumption, including its "cyclic crises," continues: Exotic Passion, by (imperial) definition, is untamable and inexhaustible. Conversely, to the colonized-exotic-Other, this very allocation of passionateness provides both a locus of identity and a source of contestation vis-à-vis the colonizing-civilized-Desire—the Desire of and for the One.

The Exotic is not an item exclusively for the delight of the imperial West; it is in turn exported, in its new, colonized package—once modern, now postmodernized—to the Rest (including "Western" colonies such as Argentina, those from whom the "raw" emotionality was extracted in the first place). When exported to the (neo) colonies of "origin," practices of autoexoticism develop conflictively as a means of both adjusting to and confronting (neo) colonialism. Through these complex activities of autoexoticization carried out in the periphery's internal political settings, the exotic/exoticized representations end up becoming symbols of national identity. Such is the case of the tango argentino. Gender, class, race, religion, and sexuality as well as programmatic party politics are the main dimensions mobilized in the struggle to build independent yet colonized peripheral national identities: "exotic" in/dependent identities. The national-ness of the peripheral countries is simultaneously the product of the world's core demand for international, legitimate relations and the source of claims to substantive independence and self-determination. "Independent" nationalities are urged by the metropolitan powers when the need for an international market arises, international recognition is extended beyond statehood and bound territoriality to economic, political, and cultural independence. In terms of identity, the Passion of exotic others confirms the shape of the Imperialist One, but it overflows the borders of the one's Desire; conversely, Imperial Desire legitimates the passionateness of the other and naturalizes the Others' rebelliousness. Hence, in a neocolonial framing, the others are "primitive" and "barbarian," condemned to a second-class identity, an "uncivilized," incomplete identity in the process of "development" compared to the bold, superior, fully shaped Identity of the One. Note that the One is never an Other, even from the point of view of colonized others.

The capitalist production and consumption of the Exotic (exotic Passion) does not affect only those directly involved in hierarchical exchanges of cultural and emotional capital Exoticism is an industry that requires distribution and marketing. Emotional capital must circulate, generating an ever-renewed anxiety over exclusion/inclusion. It survives by stirring the blood of up-until-then oblivious bodies, driving them into complicitous acknowledgments of each other. Thus, exoticism is also reproduced and amplified by the exotics among themselves as they practice exotic reciprocities looking through core/Western lenses: "Latinos," "orientals," "blacks," "tropical islanders," "Asians," and others relate to each other in already Western—even when decentered—exoticized terms. Exotic natives and exotic exiles/migrants/travelers meet in the West and at Westernized (neo- and post-) colonial settings, their representations already shaped by the mediation of a Western mirror. The imperialist West shapes the relations between the peripheral Rest into relationships among exotic Others, generating a new series of complex identity negotiations and struggles for relative positioning in the world vis-à-vis the core—now recognizable in its postmodern fragmentation.

The scandalous tour of the tango in the early twentieth century from Argentina and Uruguay to Paris, London, and New York, its final rage in Japan about the time of World War II, its blooming in Buenos Aires in the 1940s while secluded from the territories of the aliados, its sustained hold on followers in Me dellün and on small clicks in Finland and Turkey, and its revival all over Europe via Broadway and South American exiles in the late 1970s and 1980s are examples of the complex occurrences giving life to the world economy of Passion. However, tango—like other popular music and dance forms—is not a mere mirror image of more relevant or decisive economic and political realities or just a reflection of necessary social functions. Tango has deflected its own incorporation into the world political economy of Passion as an exotic raw material and has simultaneously lured itself into co-option by conforming to various tastes regarding music and dance. These episodes, at different times and places, have involved the tango in the intricate process of constructing the argentina national identity—a process that should be traced within the musical/danceable dimension itself as well as at local and global levels of the world political economy. As Line Grenier and Jocelyne Guilbault observe, "The world political economy is not a force imposed from 'above' upon totally deprived individuals and groups. Rather, it is a complex set of institutions, social relationships and economic practices that are socially and historically mediated and that are the object of multiple differentiated actualizations by individuals and groups within their respective environment" (Grenier and Guilbault 1990: 389, paraphrasing Martín-Barbero). Mediating exclusion and inclusion, always attentive to the parameters of identity established by an imperial world political economy yet systematically giving contradictory results, tango seems to attempt an assimilation while fuming an ironic, underground, culturally specific resentment.

(On the Micropolitics of Reintroducing)

How am I doing? Now, that looks better, says my colonizer. My colonized self agrees with relief.

Note (and protest): Tango is not an example; it is the main ingredient in this exercise of decolonization. It is an inviting metaphor that asks theories to dance, corporealized in the specificity of sweaty, sensual, fully efforted bodies.

Reintroductions

In writing this book I have dealt with many conflicting voices: academized and poetic, orderly and chaotic, male-hegemonic and female-subversive, elitist and impoverished, collective and personal, totalizing and specific, deconstructed and reconstructive, white and mestizo, pragmatic and nostalgic, in English and in Spanish ... of the colonizer and of the colonized. These voices are my own internal dispute, but far from being a product of my delirious imagination, they speak to me impersonating different audiences of a mixed colonizer/colonized nature. I have not been able to avoid these conflicts by simply privileging one audience over another, by following my personal preferences, by pretending to address an outworldly homogeneous audience, or by bowing to some contesting power within the academic audience. Is this difficulty due to the nature of the topic I have chosen? Is it because of my positioning as a "Third World" female intellectual? Tango is a strong symbol of Argentinean national identity, a patriarchal and hegemonic representative of my country in that it privileges the popular culture of Buenos Aires over the rest of the provinces and the protagonist role of men over women. Class, racial, and generational issues intertwine with these aspects to further complicate tango's legitimacy to represent Argentina as a people. This controversy over national representation cannot be dealt with in the same ways "at home" and "abroad."

Although national identity is a historical matter of obsessive disputes among argentinos, the nature of the dispute changes dramatically when on non-argentino terrain. This shift is informed by a change of perspective that displaces internal, local contradictions in the presence of external, global threats to Argentinean identity as a whole/nation. Hence, argentinos situated in an international arena adopt tango as a shield against the dissolution of identity. Tango represents a particular sector of argentinos at home, but it assumes national representation abroad. Argentina becomes a nation and tango its symbol when the question of identity is at stake owing to international negotiations that involve issues of representation, legitimacy, and sovereignty (self-determination). Thus, tango shapes and mobilizes Argentine-ness when confronted with imperialist maneuvers and is activated as a national representation as it crosses over lines of identity formation. Tango as a symbol of nationality has no space of its own but holds an unbalanced, tense position teetering between independence and dependency, or—in the terms I use throughout these pages— between the colonized and the colonizer. This unsolved dispute is played out through tango, claimed by the colonized as "authentic," appropriated by the colonizer as "exotic."

Tango's suitability to these manipulative operations resides m its dual malleability as a "popular" and a "cultural" product. "Popular culture," as that which convokes and represents people collectively through commonality, as well as in whose interest these "people" and their "culture" are identified, is a fertile environment for highly politicized contestations. Authorship and ownership of popular culture are inherently hard to establish, and the content itself is incessantly re-created. Disputes over popular culture point precisely at what popular culture is all about: identity, the demarcation of differences carried out through struggles to establish for which "people" and in the name of what "culture" popular culture is practiced. Tango, as popular culture, is thus the battlefield/dance floor and weapon/dance-step in and by which Argentinean identity is continuously redefined. Who the tango dancers are, where they dance, what tango style they perform in front of which tango audience: Such issues deal with gender, race, class, ethnicity, and imperialism, frequently in terms of sexuality, always in terms of power. It is in these dancing terms, tracing detailed specificities concerning the politics of tango moving bodies, that I have tried to understand the constitution of colonized and colonizer identities.

Through tango I have dealt with my own questionings as an Argentinean living transitorily abroad, exposed to an intellectual training that urged me to reshape my own identity. Tangoing to myself, I have tried to resist intellectual colonialism. Following tango's negotiations between the colonizer and the colonized, I recognized my own dealings. Reflecting on the disciplining/promotion to which I was subjecting myself in academia, I saw tango's process of disciplining/promotion in the hands of dance masters and spectacle entrepreneurs. Looking at tango's endless search for origins and authenticity, I came to understand the colonized nature of this attempt. Amazed at tango's colonizing appropriation through exoticism, I found myself transformed into an exotic object: colonized. Even more stunned by tango's achievements at home as a result of playing the exotic game, I put into question my own autoexoticism. And here Í am, with the tango, attempting to decolonize myself.

This is the nature of this text—a text in the world, populated by so many audiences that my fear could only be overcome by my rush to finish: the argentino patriarchal audience, the one that knows and is emotionally invested in tango; the North American academic audience worried about the scholarly relevance of my project; the Third World audience, hungry for anti-imperialist insights; the audiences whose fields and specialties I have transgressed; the audience made up of those who inspired me and whom I have since forgotten; and the factions within each of these audiences, more or less receptive to my concerns, more or less merciless and for contradictory reasons. I have not been able to choose one audience over another—despite all well-intentioned advice—in order to formulate in my mind a homogeneous audience-type to address. For this reason I speak in bursts, splashes, and puddles, opening windows to what I have expected to be major controversial knots engendered by the juxtaposition of tango and decolonization. The open web, that floor full of holes without edges, that underlies the whole "thing" is this controversy of putting together that which I cannot resolve, sunk, as I am, in the conflicts themselves.

In this chapter, the windows are responses to what I expect to be major disagreements regarding my method, my decolonization project, and, related to this, my identification/representation of Argentina as a colony.

In Chapter Two I try to disturb the stereotype of an exclusively sexual/eroticized image of tango by introducing class and race into the erotic game. The context is Argentina in the late nineteenth century, under rapid urbanization, massive migratory movements, and the incorporation into Western imperialism as a neocolony with a latino tinge.

Chapter Three is a depiction of the operation of colonialism through "exoticism," the exoticization of the Other, both Third Worlders and women. I attempt to historicize exoticism and thus to denaturalize the exotic identities attributed to peasants, the urban poor, and foreign Others. I see exoticism also as part of a display of imperial power among nationalities disputing hegemony at the core. The context is Europe, the main contenders France and England; the rise of the United States is merely insinuated since I concentrate on the period ending around World War I. The purpose is to situate tango among other exotic music and dance productions and to understand the specific ways in which the dance disciplining/promotion industry was operating.

Chapter Four is concerned with "autoexoticism." Tango's popularity in the main capitals of the world, and its acceptance, primarily by the foreign elites, as a modern "exotic" product, generated local scandals. I analyze the tango scandal in Argentina in terms of a complex dispute among local sectors over the legitimate representation of the nation. The participation of "respectable" women in an up-until-then immoral dance, due to the Parisian stylization of tango, was a turning point in tango's local history. The tangueras argentinos faced a paradox as they enjoyed the benefits of foreign and local exoticism while they resisted tango's appropriation and exotic disfigurations. Tango histories and studies emerge in this context, as attempts to recover origins and authenticity and thus to define Argentine-ness in anticolonial terms.

Chapter Five depicts the encounter of exotic Others, Japanese and argentinos, through the tango. I give a detailed account of the different currents—the already exoticized tango styles—through which tango arrived in Japan. I analyze the ways in which these competing French, English, and argentino tangos have been appropriated by the Japanese themselves as markers of internal social distinctions. Questions of identity are again at stake as I reflect on the presence of historically established Western parameters of exoticism always mediating between exoticized peripherals. The case of Japan is particularly controversial in this regard, given Japan's own history of imperialism and its current economic position at the core of world power.

Chapter Six is a series of tangos in prose—confessions, protests, laments, and desires—offered as concluding reflections. Third World women intellectuals and tango are drawn i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1 Introductions
• 2 Tango as a Spectacle of Sex, Race, and Class
• 3 Tango and the Colonizing Gaze
• 4 Scandalizing National Identity
• 5 Exotic Encounters
• 6 From Exoticism to Decolonization
• Glossary
• Notes
• Sources Consulted
• About the Book and Author
• Index