Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
6-2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Theatre and Performance
Advisor
Jean Graham-Jones
Committee Members
Peter Eckersall
Erika T. Lin
Subject Categories
Theatre and Performance Studies
Keywords
Absence, Presence, Transmission, Memory, Embodiment, Americas
Abstract
This dissertation explores the relationship between physical/material presence and absence (the latter term understood not as a lack, but as full and creative) in transmission processes within the context of performance in the Americas. The chapters cover the reemergence of Indigenous Charrúa culture and identity in Uruguay through performance and ritual practices; the relationship between body, its disappearance, and its reconstruction as collective community in the work of Brazilian artist Fernanda Magalhães; and themes of surveillance, posthumanism, and digital technologies in the work of Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. This dissertation centers on the Americas because its hemispheric geographies are built upon the disappearances and erasure of its original inhabitants and their worlds. We could say it is a hemisphere constructed out of absences. Moreover, it is the “discovery” of the Americas by the Europeans that brings on the human-centric perspective behind modernity and coloniality that this project wants to contribute to unsettle. The project seeks to dismantle the subject-object relation sitting at the core of modernity and coloniality by recognizing material absence as an agential force.
Three leading research questions guide this dissertation: How does absence create or shape presence? How can the body make (re)appear what is absent? And what happens to relations between presence and absence when matter becomes digital/virtual? Underlying this project is an urgency to understand the implications for the transmission of affect and memory as we move into an increasingly technologically driven world. “Absences that Matter: Performative Transmissions in the Americas” ultimately argues that our sense of purposefulness and meaning is grounded in the entangled relationship between absence and presence.
Recommended Citation
Litvan, Maria, "Absences that Matter: Performative Transmissions in the Americas" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6748
