Editorial Comment: Specters, States, and Solidarities

ABSTRACT

Granted that only one essay specifically invokes the pandemic;still, I am struck by the fact that almost all of them focus on textual analysis and only occasionally invoke performance. [...]to the spectacular nature of direct violence, neoliberalism tends to manifest itself as a more hidden, "ordinary" violence, which our field continues to theorize as a political and aesthetic force.1 Analola Santana's article "Neoliberal Transactions Staging Prostitution in the Mexican Nation" expands the conversation through a cogent analysis of how neoliberal violence is performed in Mexican drama;as in so much of the Global South, the damage of late capitalism is exacerbated by the forces of Western imperialism. Yet, as Sullivan also demonstrates, Suzanne's ferocious commitment to writing speaks to Kennedy's own determination to find a way to "be free of air," even "while finding no other source of breath and life." [...]he considers how plays such as American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown enact conservative ideas of reform, or what he calls reformance, which reiterate "a structure of repetition in which some change, or difference, is proposed and/or implemented without transforming the foundational structure."