Women in masquerade and performance

hat is the difference between masquerade and performance, especially as those terms are used in today's academic discourse?

For many scholars the terms are interchangeable, as it is thought that in constructing an identity, including a sexual one, we all masquerade-and, thus, perform-every day.

The overriding problematic uniting questions about women's masquerade and performance, and distinguishing them from male masquerade, is that female performers do not conceal their identity. There is no secrecy Another issue that merits consideration, especially when considering examples from the Caribbean, involves a reconsideration of the concept and use of the term masquerade. Are all performances masquerades?

In my own work I have categorized female performance as follows: Performing as a costumed dancer in public processions Performing self as a member of a specific gender and/or ethnically based set (as in the Jamaican Set Girls discussed below) Performing as an initiated priestess (performing self) Performing as a member of a royal, courtly entourage (sometimes this is performing self) Performing the gods: in theater/festivals in possession The examples below are offered as an interrogation of these constructs.

I have written about the (sexy) female Carnival dancer (see Fig. 5, p. 22), whose presence in street processions always ignites both ecstasy and debate (Bettelheim 1994:17S212). Can she be considered a masquerader? Much contemporary performance theory would insist yes.

Given the cultural conditions which not only repress woman's sexuality but also prohibit her from being sexual, because being sexual is always defined in terms of the patriarchy, this female performer uses her sexuality as an active agent. In the face of attempts to control them, these women have constructed a self-(re)positioning of the female body in a performative mode.

Desa Philippi (1987) reminds us that during the eastern Nigerian "Women's War" of 1929, Igbo women mocked and dislocated colonial representations of them by countering their culturally prescribed positions with bodily symbolism and genital display. Caroline Ifeka-Moller (in Ardener 1975:135-36) has also written about the 1929 Women's War: "Without a formal political voice, and socialized by male control into a dependent relationship with men...women used their bodies to assert.. their right to fair treatment by the (male) administration...." As Sidney Kasfir points out, "this particular form of female militancy is socially embedded all over West...