Tag: MONOMYTHS Stage 6

USA

Dr. Michelle M. Wright is Professor of African American Studies & Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University, where she teaches courses on Black European literature and cultures as well as gender and sexuality in the African and Black Diasporas. She is the author of two books, Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2004) and Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). In addition to many articles and essays on understanding Black identities through gender, humour, visual arts, technology, and postwar histories, she is the co-editor with Jodi Byrd of Critical Insurgencies, a new book series in collaboration with the Critical Ethnic Studies Association and Northwestern University Press.

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented in partnership with University of Toronto Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies.

MONOMYTHS invites a diverse collection of artists, scholars, and activists to revise Joseph Campbell’s conception of the hero’s journey through performance art, lectures, workshops, and other offerings. This new assemblage of non-linear un-narratives proposes a cultural, political and social feminist re-visioning of the world. The MONOMYTHS perception of the universal journey dispels the notion of the lone patriarchal figure on a conquest to vanquish his demons—both inner and outer—in consideration of community, collectivity, and collaboration.

MONOMYTHS Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies
Physics of Blackness: Understanding Beyond Linear Time
Dr. Michelle M. Wright

FADO picks up the epic MONOMYTHS series at Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies with a talk given by (and a reading group led by) Dr. Michelle M. Wright entitled Physics of Blackness: Understanding Beyond Linear Time.

In this talk, Physics of Blackness: Understanding Beyond Linear Time, Michelle M. Wright shows how our current struggle to be diverse and inclusive in our worldview has more to do with Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravity than most would realize. Blackness, for example, can only be understood accurately by drawing on different understandings of time and space—specifically going beyond linear time and the myth of universal progress. Moving from discussions of 17th century physics to 3rd century Christian religions, to 21st century African travel narratives to Black European postwar histories to Black Caribbean settlement in 18th century Australia, Physics of Blackness goes around the globe through all spaces and times to show us the unexpected ways Blackness reveals and encounters itself.

Conceived and curated by Jess Dobkin and Shannon Cochrane

MONOMYTHS invites a diverse collection of artists, scholars, and activists to revise Joseph Campbell’s conception of the hero’s journey through performance art, lectures, workshops, and other offerings. This new assemblage of non-linear un-narratives proposes a cultural, political and social feminist re-visioning of the world. The MONOMYTHS perception of the universal journey dispels the notion of the lone patriarchal figure on a conquest to vanquish his demons–both inner and outer–in consideration of community, collectivity, and collaboration.

Joseph Campbell’s influential book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) prescribes a common pattern to all of the world’s mythic narratives. According to this fundamental structure, the archetypal hero is challenged to embark on a monumental quest. Over the course of the hero’s journey, trials and obstacles must be overcome until a victory is won and the hero returns home with new knowledge about himself and the world. Campbell’s concept of the monomyth (‘one myth’) is a recognizable motif in both ancient mythology and contemporary culture, including film, music, literature, sports, and advertising. A current trend in popular visual culture replaces the male character with a female one, in spite of the fact that our heroine–from the get-go–would make different choices if the conditions, and conditioning, allowed. While each MONOMYTHS stage stands alone, the work of each presenting artist is interdependent and connected. These independent visions, when stitched together through the audience’s collective presence, form an exquisite corpse of a larger experimental narrative.

The year-long MONOMYTHS project is presented in three sections starting in February 2016 and concluding in February 2017.

Part 1 (February 3–7, 2016)
Stage 1: The Ordinary World/Call to Adventure
Stage 2: Refusal of the Call
Stage 3: Meeting of the Mentor
Stage 4: Crossing the Threshold
Stage 5: Belly of the Whale

Part 2 (May 2016–January 2017)
Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies
Stage 7: Ordeals
Stage 8: Atonement with the Father/State
Stage 9: Apotheosis/Journey to the Inmost Cave

Part 3 (February 15–19, 2017)
Stage 10: The Road Back
Stage 11: Refusal of the Return
Stage 12: Mistress of Two Worlds
Stage 13: Freedom to Live
Stage 14: The Return Home