Yale University doctoral candidate Adrienne Cohen, supervised by Dr. Michael McGovern, will investigate the relationship between expressive culture and political-economic change in post socialist contexts. The researcher proposes a reciprocal relationship between expressive practice and political economy in which political-economic dynamics are expressed through performance and performing artists play a role in calling new social and ethical orders into being.
Research to investigate this proposition will be conducted in Guinea, West Africa, and in the United States. The Guinean socialist state of Sékou Tourés (1958-84), like other socialist states in other parts of the world, subsidized the modernization of expressive culture, particularly dance and percussion, in the service of nationalist politics. When socialism ended with Touré's death, the new regime drastically reduced government arts patronage. Performing artists, abandoned by the state, formed private troupes and began to emigrate in the 1990s, many taking up residence in the United States. This project engages two generations of dancers and percussionists from Guinea: one trained during the socialist period, and the other trained in the post socialist era. Through multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork among artists in Guinea's capital city of Conakry, and among transmigrant artists in California and New York, this study examines post socialist conditions of economic and cultural exchange between Guinea and its diaspora.
Data collection throughout the study will involve a combination of ethnographic methods, including: semi-structured interviews, participant observation, archival media research, migration narratives, and focus groups, in which participants discuss video and audio recordings of relevant performances. The research is important because it will be the first to address the convergence of performing arts, post socialism, and transmigration; it will contribute a new dimension to theories of socialism and its aftermath under conditions of globalization and transnationalism. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.
