Overview

Angora Matta is a bilingual (Spanish/English) and interdisciplinary work that adopts performative writing to reflect on the transnational politics of culture. Part I is an introduction co-authored by a tango-opera librettist and a central character in her libretto, offering two contending versions of how this book came into being. Part II is the libretto for the tango-opera Angora Matta, a critical view of Argentina's contemporary history conceived as a surreal and tragic thriller. Part III contains feminist scholarly essays written by three other characters who appear in the libretto: Elvira Diaz is a dance ethnographer disenchanted with her profession; Manuela Malva is a biting foreign-film critic invested in de-mystifying exotic renderings of the Argentine tango world; Angora Matta, the assassin for hire, closes the book with philosophico-poetic preoccupations about her profession. An innovative blend of scholarship and art, Angora Matta is both critique of and antidote to the representational practices of ethnography that have fetishized ""other"" cultures by isolating them from contemporary history and the global flow of international politics.

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9780819565990

Table of Contents

Reviews

Anthropology is richer for Savigliano having gotten away with this kaleidoscopic presentation of tanguidad. Like night and day, this nocturnal ethnography differs from conventional studies. Readers should take the book, run along, and let themselves be gripped by its intelligence and passion. - Johannes Fabian, University of Amsterdam; Savigliano presents an extremely provocative and potentially influential strategy for dealing with the ethical problems associated with ethnography. - Susan McClary, author of Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality

""Anthropology is richer for Savigliano having gotten away with this kaleidoscopic presentation of tanguidad. Like night and day, this ""nocturnal"" ethnography differs from conventional studies. Readers should take the book, run along, and let themselves be gripped by its intelligence and passion."" - Johannes Fabian, University of Amsterdam; ""Savigliano presents an extremely provocative and potentially influential strategy for dealing with the ethical problems associated with ethnography."" - Susan McClary, author of Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality

Author Information

Marta Elena Savigliano is the author of Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (1995), which received the Congress of Research on Dance Award for Outstanding Book 1993-1996. She is an anthropologist and political theorist, and Professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts & Culture.

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