Giving Sense to the Past

One of the most common assertion about reenactment is that it installs a form of “affective historiography.” Because reenactment engages the body in relating to the past, it adds corporeal, sensorial, emotional, or psychological dimensions to history in ways that books or documents allegedly cannot offer. This tendency, however, to regard reenactment as an alternative to traditional modes of historiography has led to an overemphasis on its immersive effects, at the expense of its epistemological potential. This chapter argues that even while dance reenactment might share with its more popular counterparts the appeal to sensory immediacy, it turns the format into an artistic strategy that exploits, rather than covers up, historical distance, which incites critical reflection on what it means to restage the past in terms of time and affect.