Presents an understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. This book shows how the repertoire of embodied memory - conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances - offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive.

Walter Mercado, the theatre of mourning surrounding Princess Diana's death, and Brazilian artist Denise Stoklos's Civil Disobedience. Through these studies and meditations on the media's representation of the Twin Towers disaster, New Yorkers' participation in the crisis through memorials and photography, and her own role as a witness to the events of 9/11, Taylor highlights the crucial role of performance in culture.

1. Acts of transfer
2. Scenarios of discovery: Reflections on performance and ethnography
3. Cultural memory and identity: Mestizaje, hybridity, transculturation
4. La raza cosmetica: Walter Mercado performs Latino psychic space
5. False identifications: Minority populations mourn Diana
6. "You are here": H.I.J.O.S. and the DNA of performance
7. Staging traumatic memory: Yuyachkani
8. Denise Stoklos: The politics of decipherability
9. Lost in the field of vision: Witnessing 9/11
10. A hemispheric perspective