Eroticism in the “Cold Climate” of Northern Ireland in Christina Reid’s The Belle of the Belfast City

Closely based on the dramatist’s personal experience, Christina Reid’s The Belle of the Belfast City offers a commentary on the life of the Protestant working class in the capital of Northern Ireland in the 1980s from a woman’s perspective. It shows the way eroticism is successfully used by the female characters as a source of emancipation as well as a means not only to secure their strong position in the private domain of the household, but also to challenge the patriarchal structures that prevail in the Irish public sphere. The analysis of the play proposed in this essay focuses on the contrast between the presentation of its male and female characters. I will demonstrate that, while the former group desperately cling to the idea of preserving the social status quo, the latter display a more progressive outlook on the social and sexual politics of the country. In particular, I will investigate how the tensions between the representatives of the two sexes reveal themselves in the corporal sphere. I will argue that, as opposed to the erotically-inhibited and physically-inarticulate male characters, the female dramatis personae take advantage of being more connected to their bodies and use their physicality in an erotic fashion to subvert the rules of the patriarchal system and its strict moral code that limits their social roles to those of respectful mothers, obedient sisters or virtuous wives

Defying Maintenance Mimesis: The Case of Somewhere over the Balcony by Charabanc Theatre Company

Making reference to Luce Irigaray’s definitions of mimesis and mimicry, and the ways in which these concepts respectively reinforce and challenge the phallogocentric order, this article investigates the representation of the Troubles in the play Somewhere over the Balcony by Charabanc—a pioneering all-female theatre company which operated in Belfast in the 1980s and early 1990s. The article discusses the achievement of the company in the local context and offers a reading of Somewhere over the Balcony, Charabanc’s 1987 play which depicts the lives of underprivileged working-class Catholic women in the infamous Divis Flats in Belfast. Showing the protagonists’ struggle with the everyday reality of sectarianism in Northern Ireland, it celebrates female creativity and jouissance. The article argues that the characters challenge the masculinist order by means of mimicry. Irigaray defines this strategy as a deliberate assumption of prescribed female roles, which involves a playful attitude to “mimesis imposed”—in other words, to the programmed repetition of socially sanctioned patterns (This Sex 76). Mimicry, as well as other productive strategies help the female characters in the play to transform the balconies of their flats into an area of creativity and empowerment, which challenges binary thinking about the division into private and public space. Such a geopolitical reading of the play corresponds to the artistic agenda of the company, communicated by its very name. It also sheds light on Charabanc’s attempt to create a more inclusive and varied cultural space that would reach beyond gender, sectarian, and class divides in Northern Ireland

Niepełnosprawny Hamlet. Kilka słów o rewolucji, która już się zaczęła

Artykuł przedstawia postać niepełnosprawnego Hamleta jako punkt wyjścia do rozważań na temat ograniczonego dostępu osób o nietypowych ciałach do profesji aktorskiej. Przyjmując perspektywę współczesnych kulturowych studiów o niepełnosprawności, analizuje, w jaki sposób artyści z Wielkiej Brytanii i Stanów Zjednoczonych kwestionują zasadność tego rodzaju wykluczenia oraz krytykują popularną strategię obsadzania ról niepełnosprawnych postaci przez aktorów bez niepełnosprawności. Odwołując się do stosunkowo niedawnych wypowiedzi polskich praktyków teatru i filmu, autorka przygląda się również zaczątkom nowego podejścia do aktorów i aktorek niewpisujących się w cielesną „normę”, które powoli zaczyna rozwijać się na polskim gruncie

Irish “Nasty Nineties” and the (Re)Introduction of the Dancing Body onto the Irish Stage

Prompted by the swift economic growth and the equally rapid decline of the authority of the local Catholic Church, the 1990s witnessed a significant change in the Irish attitude towards national culture and morality. One of the fields which best illustrates these transformations is dance, whose new face can be seen as symbolically representing the Irish transition from a country still bearing the stigma of de Valera’s ethical and cultural policies to a more liberal and open-minded European nation. The 1990s are the times of abolishing the taboos imposed years earlier on the Irish body perceived as an object of distrust that needs to be kept under constant surveillance to serve the nationalist cause as an epitome of proper moral conduct. With this in mind, the paper aims to discuss both the nature of the most crucial aspects of the revolution in the Irish dance in the 1990s and the effect this has exerted on the condition of the Irish stage. This will provide substantial background for the discussion of selected recent works of such playwrights as Brian Friel, Vincent Woods or Tom Kilroy, which make extensive use of dance, showing their contribution to challenging the literary, word-based character ofIrish drama and theatre

From the idea of progress to the technology of extermination. The exhibition "Progress and hygiene" and other cultural references to the Nazi extermination of people with disabilities

The article starts with a general reflection on the extermination technology developed by the German Nazis to effect mass murder of psychiatric patients. It discusses the references to these often neglected and largely forgotten historical facts that are conspicuous in the exhibition Progress and Hygiene and other cultural texts. The author analyzes the manner in which the exhibition reminds its viewers of these events and exposes the forms of operation of various Foucauldian technologies that enable control over individuals and societies

O poszukiwaniu galaktyki niepełnosprawności. Narracje autobiograficzne Marii Reiman

The article examines how Maria Reimann’s autoethnographic book Nie przywitam się z państwem na ulicy: szkic o doświadczeniu niepełnosprawności (I Won’t Greet You in the Street: A Sketch about the Experience of Disability, 2019) addresses and problematizes such essential concepts for contemporary disability studies as: disability identity, coming out as disabled and, most importantly, disability community. It focuses on the way in which the book seeks to reconcile the seemingly contradictory and conflicting ideas about disability. It also argues that by deconstructing the disabled/non-disabled dichotomy, Reimann reinvents the idea of disability community, imagining it as a galaxy of individuals who can only find a sense of connection by recognizing the uniqueness and distinctiveness of another’s bodily and social experiences