31 research outputs found
A rebellious past : history, theatre and the England riots
Alain Badiou has argued that the England riots of 2011, in dialogue with societal upheavals around the world that same year, demonstrated fundamental crises in our governing social, economic and political discourses. Whilst institutional responses to the riots treated them as an aberration, Badiou believes them to be symptomatic of a broader rebirth of âhistoryâ â the coalescing of past and present events into a congruent trajectory with powerful implications for the future. Using Badiouâs argument as a starting point, this article considers two theatrical responses to the riots â Nicholas Kentâs premiere of Gillian Slovoâs The Riots at the Tricycle, and Sean Holmesâ revival of Edward Bondâs Saved at the Lyric Hammersmith. By looking at the ways in which the productions sought to historicise the riots, I unpick both their interpretations of these events, and the contributions they were able to make to the urgent and ongoing discussions that the riots have generated.PostprintPeer reviewe
Rioting and the politics of crisis
This paper draws on selected explanatory accounts of rioting that occurred in England in 2011 for the purpose of illustrating the ways in which scholarly critiques frame quite different senses of what kind of 'crisis' the riots represented. On one side the riots are understood within a 'race and policing' frame placing in a line of continuity with events across time and space and in an on-going crisis of racial subjugation. In direct contrast, another side treats the riots as a crisis of post-politics, in which nihilism has replaced purposive political action. While different types of politics are centred in both approaches, they differ remarkably in relation to racism, with the latter treating race as epiphenomenal. These frames are instances of how critical scholarly understandings draw on events, and it is argued they miss potentially far reaching senses of 'crisis' that can be drawn out of some aspects of rioting
Hyper-compressions: The rise of flash fiction in âpost-transitionalâ South Africa
Blair, P. (2020). Hyper-compressions: The rise of flash fiction in âpost-transitionalâ South Africa', The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 55(1), 38-60. Copyright Š 2018. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.This article begins with a survey of flash fiction in âpost-transitionalâ South Africa, which it relates to the nationâs post-apartheid canon of short stories and short-short stories, to the international rise of flash fiction and âsudden fictionâ, and to the historical particularities of South Africaâs âpost-transitionâ. It then undertakes close readings of three flash fictions republished in the article, each less than 450 words: Tony Eprileâs âThe interpreter for the tribunalâ (2007), which evokes the psychological and ethical complexities, and long-term ramifications, of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Michael Cawood Greenâs âMusic for a new societyâ (2008), a carjacking story that invokes discourses about violent crime and the âânewâ South Africaâ; and Stacy Hardyâs âKisulaâ (2015), which maps the psychogeography of cross-racial sex and transnational identity-formation in an evolving urban environment. The article argues that these exemplary flashes are âhyper-compressionsâ, in that they compress and develop complex themes with a long literary history and a wide contemporary currency. It therefore contends that flash fiction of South Africaâs post-transition should be recognized as having literary-historical significance, not just as an inherently metonymic form that reflects, and alludes to, a broader literary culture, but as a genre in its own right
From Cairo to Tottenham: Big Societies, Neoliberal States, Colonial Utopias
While the August riots are quite readily understood as an outburst provoked by the negligence of the neoliberal state, there has been a widespread failure amongst Western commentators and politicians to understand the extent to which the Egyptian revolution should also be understood as an uprising against neoliberalism. This essay draws on cultural sources, journalism and socio-economic analyses to make the case that Mubarakâs Egypt could be understood in terms of neoliberal forms of the Big Society, especially, that of the gated community. In demonstrating the reliance of the neoliberal state on security policies based on policing, the essay goes on to analyse the riots in such terms. Even as the Egyptian revolution and the riots shared similar sources of frustration, their quite different manifestations are explained in terms of differing structures of feeling, those of dignity and pride. Finally, a postcolonial framework of analysis is brought to bear on the material considered by the essay to show the persistence of the colonial structures of neoliberal capitalism