UC Berkeley

This dissertation studies embodied manifestations of Quiet in multiple mediums of minoritarian performance. I am interested in how the aesthetics of Quiet evade, subvert, ignore, and exceed dominant scripts, simplistic narratives, and reductive spectacle. Minoritarian Quiet seeks alternative ontologies of sustenance, finding ways of being-with that push against teleologically imposed and abstract goals. I argue that Quiet is multifaceted, and I attend specifically to its sonic and kinesthetic manifestations which do not necessarily operate within the frameworks of direct response, outcry, or protest. Quiet can vary widely, including—but not limited to—proprioceptive, kinesthetic responses; elliptical rather than comprehensive narratives; pauses and hesitations in multi- or extra-lingual exchange; taking cover together; and taking rest with and for one another. I consider how the stakes of Quiet lie in its precarity—always on the verge of disappearance, insignificance, subsumption, obfuscation, inaudibility, and invisibility.My study curates a constellation of contemporary artists working in dance, theater, sound, and visual art with attention to how Quiet emerges through bodies in relation to layered contexts and multiple subjectivities. Moreover, each of these performances challenges dominant scripts of resolution, apology, and reconciliation. Such dominant scripts often express remorse from a benevolent state while simultaneously reinforcing existing power dynamics and obfuscating ulterior agendas. I argue that, as a minoritarian aesthetic, Quiet activates an ephemeral commons through resonance and attunement that allows for expansive possibilities of relationality. These relationalities come into being not in spite of but through the incommensurable differences between minoritarians. Quiet resonance and attunement activate an alternative ethics of care while simultaneously enabling an us that refuses. By refusal, I am thinking about refusing hegemonic frameworks of knowing, being, and engaging with.