Resumen de Traumatic utopias: : Holding hope in Bridgforth’s love conjure/blues
This essay juxtaposes the loaded terms of trauma and utopia to rethink how shared histories of struggle call new collectives into being. Sharon Bridgforth’s love conjure/blues uses traumatic legacies as the raw material for creatively inhabiting concrete utopias in theatre spaces, a performance mode I term “traumatic utopias.” Building on black feminist traditions of self-definition in the face of violence, love conjure/blues centralizes black social life against the grain of a ubiquitous politics of hopelessness. In so doing, Bridgforth’s performance novel turns to the everyday transformation of social realities, innovating artistic form in the process.
