Reviewed by:

• Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain by Nicholas R. Jones
• Emily Weissbourd

THIS MONOGRAPH OFFERS a thought-provoking assessment of an important and understudied collection of early modern Spanish texts. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, dozens of poems, plays, and entremeses featured black characters speaking in an Africanized Castilian called habla de negros. The few critics who have attended to such representations have focused exclusively on the ways such texts inscribe and reify early modern anti-Black prejudice in the service of upholding whiteness. Jones’s book marks a radical departure from this perspective, instead arguing that “[r]egardless of the ideologies espoused by these authors [of habla de negro texts] … their texts do, in fact, render legible the voices and experiences of Black Africans in fundamental ways that demand our attention” (5). This provocative formulation opens up exciting new opportunities for research and criticism of early modern Spanish texts that engage with representations of Blackness.

The introduction begins with a summary of Jones’s critical interventions: first, “to highlight the agentive subject positions of habla de negros speakers” (4); and second, to position Iberian representations of Blackness within a larger tradition of African diaspora, showing how “black populations of early modern Spain actively participated in the formation of a so-called Black Experience” (14). As Jones astutely observes, studies of Blackness in the Hispanic world have largely focused on Spain’s colonies, often overlooking the significance of Black populations within Iberia. His extensive (though by no means exhaustive) list of early modern poems and plays that incorporate habla de negros will be particularly useful for scholars and students who wish to explore this overlooked corpus. The introduction also provides an overview of the broad range of theorists Jones has drawn on to frame his study, an [End Page 161] eclectic list that includes Giorgio Agamben, Pierre Bourdieu, Zora Neale Hurston, and Audre Lorde, among many others.

Chapter 1, “Black Skin Acts: Feasting on Blackness, Staging Linguistic Blackface,” links habla de negros with the history of blackface performance in Spain, focusing on its “cosmetic practices and technology,” “‘Africanized’ dances and sounds,” and “hyperbolic representation of the black mouth” (34). The chapter gathers together useful archival material that details the mechanics of blackface makeup and costuming (44–47). It also persuasively demonstrates one of the key interventions of Jones’s work: that close reading of habla de negros texts can reveal traces of the history of African diaspora as well as racist appropriations of Blackness. He suggests, for example, that a 1693 villancico attributed to José Pérez de Montero, which contains the repeated refrain “Arará, Arará,” can be linked to the Arará people of southwest Benin, who also established a “well-preserved musical and religious legacy in Cuba and throughout the rest of Latin America” (51–52). Through readings of this and other villancicos as well as Africanized dances (e.g., the zarabanda and zarambeque), the chapter puts habla de negros texts in dialogue with both African history and Afro-Hispanic musical traditions in the Caribbean and Latin America. The chapter closes with a reading of Simón Aguado’s Entremés de los negros (1600–02) focused on representations of feasting and the Black mouth. Jones’s polemic reading asserts that despite the skit’s overt racism, “ultimately, Los negros sends a message that there is Black joy in dancing and singing, not just buffoonery and misery at the expense of a White desire and gaze” (77).

Chapter 2, “The Birth of Hispanic Habla de Negros: Signifying for the Black Audience in Rodrigo de Reinosa,” is structured around a close reading of sixteenth-century Cantabrian poet Rodrigo de Reinosa’s scatological habla de negros poem, “Gelofe, Mandinga.” Although previous criticism has described the poem as perpetuating racist stereotypes, Jones begins the chapter by noting that he is “not convinced of such claims” (89). Instead, he argues that the poem engages in a form of “signifying” (akin to that theorized by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) which...

审核人：

• 哈布拉·德·内格罗斯（Habla de Negros）演出：尼古拉斯·R·琼斯（Nicholas R. Jones）在近代西班牙早期的非洲侨民的激进表演
• 艾米丽·魏斯伯德（Emily Weissbourd）

此单字记录法对大量重要且未被充分研究的早期现代西班牙文字进行了发人深省的评估。在16世纪和17世纪的西班牙，数十首诗歌，戏剧和剧本中有黑人人物，这些黑人人物在非洲化的卡斯蒂利亚语中称为habla de negros说话。参加这种表述的少数批评家只专注于这些文本在维护白色方面服务于刻写和强化早期现代反黑人偏见的方式。琼斯（Jones）的书标志着这种观点的根本偏离，而是辩称“ [r]不管这些作者[哈勃拉·德内格罗（habla de negro）所拥护的意识形态文本]……事实上，他们的文本确实以需要我们关注的基本方式使黑人非洲人的声音和经历清晰易懂”（5）。这种具有启发性的表述为研究和批评黑度表征的早期现代西班牙文本开辟了令人兴奋的新机会。

引言首先概述了琼斯的关键干预措施：首先，“强调黑人发言人的主体性立场”（4）；其次，将伊比利亚黑人的代表地位置于非洲侨民的更大传统中，表明“早期现代西班牙的黑人人口如何积极参与所谓的黑人体验的形成”（14）。正如琼斯敏锐地观察到的那样，西班牙裔世界对黑人的研究主要集中在西班牙的殖民地，常常忽视了伊比利亚境内黑人人口的重要性。他的大量（尽管并非详尽无遗）包含哈布拉·德内格罗斯的早期现代诗歌和戏剧的清单对于希望探索这个被忽略的语料库的学者和学生而言，它将特别有用。引言还概述了琼斯在其研究框架中所依据的广泛理论家，[End Page 161]折衷清单包括Giorgio Agamben，Pierre Bourdieu，Zora Neale Hurston和Audre Lorde等。

第1章“黑皮肤行为：宴请黑度，分期语言黑脸”，将habla de negros与西班牙黑脸表演的历史联系起来，重点关注其“美容实践和技术”，“非洲化”的舞蹈和声音，以及“黑嘴的双曲线表示”（34）。本章收集了有用的档案材料，详细介绍了黑脸化妆和化妆的技巧（44-47）。它也有说服力地证明了琼斯作品的主要干预措施之一：仔细阅读哈布拉·德内格罗斯（Habla De Negros）文字可以揭示非洲侨民的历史以及对黑人的种族主义侵占。他建议，例如，可以将归属于何塞·佩雷斯·蒙特罗（JoséPérezde Montero）的1693年恶棍，包括反复出现的“阿拉拉（Arará）”一词，可以与贝宁西南部的阿拉拉（Arará）人民联系起来，他们也建立了“保存完好的音乐和宗教信仰”。古巴和整个拉丁美洲其他国家”（51-52）。通过阅读这种和其他恶棍以及非洲化的舞蹈（例如zarabanda和zarambeque），本章使habla de negros文本与非洲历史以及加勒比海和拉丁美洲的非洲裔西班牙音乐传统对话。本章以阅读西蒙·阿瓜多的《Entrem》作为结尾é小号德洛斯内格罗斯（1600年至1602年），专注于灯红酒绿和黑嘴的表示。琼斯的论辩性读物断言，尽管该小品是明显的种族主义，但“最终，洛斯内格罗斯发出了一个信息，即跳舞和唱歌中充满着黑色的喜悦，而不仅仅是白腹和苦难，这是以白人的欲望和凝视为代价的”（77）。

第2章“西班牙裔哈布拉·德·内格罗斯的诞生：象征着罗德里戈·德·雷诺萨的黑人观众”，围绕着十六世纪坎塔布里亚诗人罗德里戈·德·雷诺萨的诗意化的哈布拉·德·黑格罗斯诗歌“格洛夫，曼丁加”而著述。尽管先前的批评将这首诗描述为永久的种族主义刻板印象，但琼斯在本章开头指出他“不相信这种主张”（89）。相反，他认为这首诗以一种“象征”的形式（类似于小亨利·路易斯·盖茨的理论）……