Should a feminist dance tango? Some reflections on the experience and politics of passion1

Abstract

Tango, of all popular dances, would seem to be the most extreme embodiment of traditional notions of gender difference. It not only draws on hierarchical differences between the sexes, but also generates a ‘politics of passion’ which transforms Argentineans into the exotic ‘Other’ for consumption by Europeans and North Americans in search of the passion they are missing at home. In this article, I offer a modest provocation in the direction of scholarship that places politics before experience by questioning whether passion can be explained solely through the discourses of feminism or postcolonialism. Instead I will show why we, as critical feminist scholars, need to pay more attention to the experience of passion, whether we are analysing a passion for tango or any other bodily activity that is intensely pleasurable, addictively desired, but also unsettling, disruptive, and – last but not least – politically incorrect.