 Tango
and the Political Economy of Passion by Marta E. Savigliano
What is tango?
Dance, music, and lyrics of course, but also a philosophy, a strategy,
a commodity, even a disease. This book explores the politics of
tango, tracing tango's travels from the brothels of Buenos Aires
to the cabarets of Paris and the shak dansu clubs of Tokyo. The
author is an Argentinean political theorist and a dance professor
at the University of California at Riverside. She uses her "tango
tongue" to tell interwoven tales of sexuality, gender, race,
class, and national identity. Along the way she unravels relations
between machismo and colonialism, postmodernism and patriarchy,
exoticism and commodification. In the end she arrives at a discourse
on decolonization as intellectual "unlearning."
"Histories
of the Argentine tango are often polemical. Questions of propriety,
national identity and social position have colored and distorted
the perceptions of both authors and readers. In this tradition,
Marta E. Savigliano, Assistant Professor of dance history at the
University of California, Riverside, explores the history of the
Argentine Tango as a dance form using sex/gender, wealth/class
and color/race categories.
As a woman,
a feminist and a dancer of tango, Savigliano is willing to investigate
aspects of the tango that both attract and disturb many people.
What is different and most provocative in Savigliano's history
of the tango is her exploration of the sex-gender dynamics. Her
description of tango includes its emotional context... -- Review
by Tom Stermitz, Chautauqua Publishing (Read
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