Chapter 4 focuses on treatises by Giambattista Dufort, Il Trattato del Ballo Nobile (1728), and Gennaro Magri, Trattato teorico-prattico di ballo (1779). Given the intentionally didactic nature of Dufort’s treatise and its concentration on the minuet, the presentation of the fundamentals, mechanics of the genre, and how to execute the mandatory steps are the primary points for discussion. Magri’s later treatise is a much broader reflection on the contemporary dance environment of Naples (including ample reference to the pantomime and grottesco traditions), and it mirrors the preference for the contradance that emerged in the latter part of the century. Accordingly, Magri concentrates on this more intricate social dance, not only providing the reader with detailed explanations of its content but also devising specific graphic notation paired to original music. This approach provides unprecedented insight into contemporary social dancing and its place within the aristocratic culture of Naples. Given Magri’s career as a primo ballerino in the grottesco tradition, the narrative references ongoing polemics with Charles LePicq (student of Noverre and principal exponent of pantomime style). Finally, Magri’s role at the royal festivities in the capital city and in Caserta is considered.

Manipulation is pervasive in our lives, yet it is not well understood. Specifically, we lack a wide philosophical theory of manipulation. Such a theory will successfully answer two main questions: a question about the precise meaning of “manipulation,” and a question about its moral status. Prior to presenting a novel theory of manipulation in the following chapters, Chapter 1 offers an overview of the state of the art of philosophical thinking on manipulation. The semantic field of manipulation is constructed by three main concepts: rational persuasion, deception, and coercion. Manipulation cannot, however, be understood adequately on the basis of any one of these concepts, and there is no good theory that accounts for manipulation using a combination of them. The chapter reviews the many difficulties left open by notable attempts to provide an account of the concept of manipulation. The criticisms of those attempts raise the deeper suspicion that perhaps manipulation is not to be captured by a definition at all.

This chapter attends to the formal and cultural function of Latinx racial passing in Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) by María Amparo Ruiz de Burton. Critical conversations about the orphan protagonist of the novel, Lola Medina, interrogate her rescue from Indian captivity and the gradual “whitening” of her dyed skin as a form of aspirational assimilation into Anglo-American society. Scholars have also studied the ways in which Lola’s captivity story is informed by the historical precedent and publications surrounding the repatriation of Olive Oatman to white American society after her five-year captivity among the Mohave in the 1850s. This contribution reads Lola’s performance of Latinx racial passing alongside the captivity narrative, newspaper articles, and visual culture from the Oatman case to argue how the idea of “passing” operates in the novel as a form of political critique and a catalyst for modernist, formal innovation. Lola’s narrative of Latinx racial passing not only illuminates an early discourse of Latinx racialization, but also catalyzes a modernist satire of Anglo-American imperialism.

This chapter analyses the auction milieu’s cultural responses to war-induced developments. Within societies deeply entrenched in the mentality of mobilisation and sacrifice, the commercialisation of art stirred moral apprehensions, feelings of possession, and envy, both among the general public and within the art industry. Debates on nouveaux riches and profiteers underscored the construction of antagonist figures during the war, highlighting threats to the market from both external and internal forces. The widespread destruction of heritage also catalysed nationalist feelings, deepening the cultural fragmentation of a formerly integrated trade sphere. By scrutinising the biographies of dealers, examining art’s vulnerability in wartime upheaval, and exploring the interplay between art and finance, this chapter also outlines how the war acted on the tensions characteristic of each market and brought them to a conflagration.

Nelly van Doorn-Harder documents how Muslim women have historically played a crucial role in shaping society. Focusing on Muslim women’s social activism in Indonesia, the chapter highlights five distinct stages leading to the current peak, where women’s activism has shaped important policy outcomes and shifts in attitudes related to the protection of women’s rights and the promotion of human rights in society.

The sixth chapter covers a broader expanse of time, yet provides equally detailed descriptions of the feste, as the tradition returned to the Teatro di San Carlo in 1774. Responding to criticisms of both Carlo di Borbone (now king of Spain) and the Neapolitan Secretary of State Bernardo Tanucci (who provided the Spanish sovereign with detailed complaints about the lifestyles of his son and consort), the feste di ballo returned to the capital city and the royal theater. In the period 1774–86, the feste take on greater significance, not only as an instrumentum regni projecting positive images of sovereignty, but also as a financial bulwark against the significant losses incurred in virtually every opera season (meticulously detailed in memoranda contained in the fondo Archivio Farnesiano). Surviving financial documents, personnel rosters, and ledgers provide important details about the annual feste, ranging from fundamental questions about the physical transformation of the theater into a dance space to the retention of key artistic and managerial personnel. These sources relate closely to and often confirm many of the observations found in the historical accounts of Sara Goudar and Magri’s treatise Trattato teorico-prattico di ballo (1779), among others.

Edited by two Chicana lesbian feminists and formed through commitment to coalitional Third World feminist analysis and practice, This Bridge Called My Back urges us to attend to the conflicts and pleasures that emerge from the radical transformation of the self in relation to others as we struggle for liberation. In the forty years since the anthology’s original publication, we continue to bear witness to the destructive outcomes of neoliberalism and to those who are still consigned to disproportionately bear the brunt of modernity’s violence. We are compelled to address the betrayals of those spaces of solidarity and the use of violence to reclaim difference as an amenity of traditional power. Making domination “make sense” often occurs by recruiting representatives of subordinated populations into normative locations of institutional power. The tokenized investment in women of color as fixed symbols of progressive politics illustrates how even the celebration of racial difference can function as a technology of racist power. I argue that bridge building is also about place making or the radical vision of a space for new social relations and terms of recognition. Radical methodologies for creating art participate in this process of gathering political will to oppose racial power.