Molecular Identities: Digital archives and decolonial judaism in a laboratory of song

Abstract

This essay revisits the concept of the theatre laboratory as a site for investigating the nexus of identity and technique in practice. Informed by new materialism, critical race and gender studies, and social epistemology, it examines the materialization of racial, religious, and other identities in song-based experimental practice and shows how the act of singing can not only illustrate the complexity of contemporary identity but also effectively generate new ‘molecular’ identifications. Taking jewishness as a paradigmatic category of identity in which race, religion, nation, language, and even gender are historically intertwined, the essay responds to Santiago Slabodsky's call for ‘decolonial’ judaism as an epistemological challenge by framing an attempt to develop new jewish decolonial identity through songwork.