Race, Memory, and Spectral Performance

Two plays by Afro-Spanish playwright Silvia Albert Sopale— Blackface y otras vergüenzas and La Moreneta —illustrate José Esteban Muñoz’s concept of “disidentification” by which marginalized artists hijack and reshape dominant cultural texts that exclude minority voices. Sopale’s work reframes archives and artifacts to confront historical racial violence and its contemporary legacies. Her strategic use of blackface alludes to alternative revaluations of Black identity, disidentifying blackface itself.