Reviewed by:

• Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race by Noémie Ndiaye
• Sarah J. Adams

THIS BOOK TRACES AND EXAMINES the performative praxes used in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europe to create blackness as a racial category in and outside the theater, a process Ndiaye aptly refers to as “racecraft” (17). The monograph offers a sweeping and convincing transnational account that is the result of fundamental and thorough work in British, French, and Spanish archives. Apart from Robert Hornback’s exceptional Racism and Early Blackface Comic Traditions: From the Old World to the New (Palgrave, 2018), such transnational approaches to racist formations and performances in European culture are extremely rare. Ndiaye’s study proves that panoramic research practices are not optional but necessary if we want to grasp how various theatrical signs connected and collaborated. While racecrafting—alluding to both the performative techniques that are used as well as the narrative strains or “scripts of blackness” attached to them—followed slightly other trajectories in England, France, and Spain and responded to specific national needs, they ultimately depended on similar aesthetics and shared the same purpose: hierarchize “difference in service of power” (6).

A theoretically robust chapter 1, drawing on fields of performance studies, critical race theory, and cultural criticism, introduces some of the key premises and concepts of the book. Particularly useful is Ndiaye’s historiographic method of “recording” as a way to navigate archives that are overwhelmingly white and primarily text-based. Referencing music theory, where recording denotes the convergence of two melodic lines that do not undermine but complement each other, she proposes to do research “in the subjunctive mode when lacunar archives curtail the use of the indicative” (24). The introduction’s elaborate methodological framework bears fruit in chapters 2 to 4, which contain deft analyses of a dazzling amount of mystery plays, intermezzos, ballets, commercial pieces, autos, and court masquerades alongside dictionary entries, poems, travel accounts, and legal documents, among many other sources. Scripts of Blackness is not structured according to period, geography, genre, [End Page 183] or the different metaphorical tropes that Ndiaye succeeded to tease out of the archives. Rather, it is fixed onto the three main techniques that theater makers employed to create or craft race in court, theater, and street performances: black-up, blackspeak, and black moves. Focusing on these cosmetic, acoustic, and kinetic dimensions of performative blackness enables Ndiaye to cross the porous borders of different regions and traverse time barriers—with important reminders of how these techniques continue to inform the lives and professional activities of non-white performers today.

Baroque black-up is studied in chapters 1 and 2. The first part of this diptych presents the history of stage blackness in Europe as the gradual secularization and racialization of medieval stage devils, resulting in what Ndiaye calls a “diabolical script of blackness” (35). Africanized devils or demonic Africans were mobilized in French and English culture to negotiate the presence and participation of black individuals in societies that prepared themselves for serious investments in the Atlantic trade. La tragédie françoize d’un More cruel (1613), for instance, in which black-up materialized the kinship between a vengeful African servant in Mallorca and the demons he had called on to murder his master, should be read as a warning for the side effects of French colonial enterprises in the metropole. In Renaissance Spain, a slavery-based society where imperial Jesuit ambitions peaked, diabolical aesthetics waned soon. What the Spanish needed, Ndiaye argues, was a “script of commodity” (72) that dissociated soul from phenotype. This new fiction cleverly accepted black people in the Christian community and simultaneously insisted that their bodies were imagined in objectifying tropes of foodstuff, luxury goods, and animals.

The second part of the diptych on cosmetic racecraft addresses the complex portrayal of black female characters. If earlier scholarship established that Afro-diasporic women were generally absent in early modern European theater, Ndiaye argues that this supposed invisibility can be best described in terms of “obliqueness” (84). French...

 审阅者：

• 
  《黑人的剧本：早期现代表演文化和种族的形成》作者：诺埃米·恩迪亚耶 (Noémie Ndiaye)
•  莎拉·J·亚当斯

本书追溯并审视了十六世纪和十七世纪欧洲在剧院内外将黑人塑造为种族类别的表演实践，恩迪亚耶恰当地将这一过程称为“种族技巧”（17）。该专着提供了全面且令人信服的跨国叙述，这是对英国、法国和西班牙档案进行基础和彻底研究的结果。除了罗伯特·霍恩巴克（Robert Hornback）杰出的《种族主义和早期黑脸喜剧传统：从旧世界到新世界》 （帕尔格雷夫，2018）之外，欧洲文化中针对种族主义形成和表演的这种跨国方法极为罕见。恩迪亚耶的研究证明，如果我们想要了解各种戏剧符号如何相互联系和协作，全景研究实践不是可选的而是必要的。虽然赛车制作——指的是所使用的表演技巧以及附加的叙事张力或“黑人剧本”——在英国、法国和西班牙遵循了稍微不同的轨迹，并响应了特定的国家需求，但它们最终依赖于相似的美学和相同的目的：将“为权力服务的差异”划分等级（6）。

第一章理论扎实，借鉴了表演研究、批判种族理论和文化批评等领域，介绍了本书的一些关键前提和概念。特别有用的是恩迪亚耶的“记录”史学方法，作为浏览绝大多数白人且主要基于文本的档案的方式。参考音乐理论，录音表示两条旋律线的融合，它们不会破坏而是相互补充，她建议“当空白档案减少指示语的使用时，以虚拟语气模式进行研究”（24）。引言的详尽方法论框架在第 2 章到第 4 章中取得了成果，其中包含对大量令人眼花缭乱的神秘戏剧、间奏曲、芭蕾舞、商业作品、汽车和宫廷假面舞会的巧妙分析，以及字典条目、诗歌、旅行记述和法律文件，以及许多其他来源。 《黑人剧本》并不是根据时期、地理、流派、 [结束第 183 页]或恩迪亚耶成功从档案中梳理出来的不同隐喻比喻来构建的。相反，它固定在戏剧制作者在法庭、剧院和街头表演中创造或制作种族的三种主要技术上：黑人、黑话和黑人动作。专注于表演黑人的这些装饰、声学和动力学维度，使恩迪亚耶能够跨越不同地区的多孔边界并跨越时间障碍，并重要地提醒人们这些技术如何继续影响当今非白人表演者的生活和职业活动。

第一章和第二章研究了巴洛克式的黑色。这幅双联画的第一部分介绍了欧洲舞台黑色的历史，中世纪舞台恶魔逐渐世俗化和种族化，导致了恩迪亚耶所说的“黑色的恶魔剧本”（ 35）。在法国和英国文化中，非洲化的魔鬼或恶魔般的非洲人被动员起来，就黑人在社会中的存在和参与进行谈判，为大西洋贸易的大量投资做好准备。例如，《更残酷的法国悲剧》（La tragédie françoize d'un More残忍）（1613）中，黑人具体化了马略卡岛一个复仇心切的非洲仆人和他召唤来谋杀他主人的恶魔之间的亲属关系，这应该被解读为对法国殖民企业在大都市的副作用。在文艺复兴时期的西班牙，一个以奴隶制为基础的社会，帝国耶稣会的野心达到顶峰，恶魔般的美学很快就衰落了。恩迪亚耶认为，西班牙人需要的是一种将灵魂与表型分离的“商品脚本”（72）。这部新小说巧妙地接受了基督教社区中的黑人，同时坚持认为他们的身体是通过食品、奢侈品和动物的物化比喻来想象的。

双联画的第二部分是关于化妆品赛车的，讲述了黑人女性角色的复杂刻画。如果早期的学术研究表明非洲裔散居国外的女性在早期现代欧洲戏剧中普遍缺席，那么恩迪亚耶认为，这种所谓的隐形性可以用“倾斜”来最好地描述（84）。法语...