Terror and Performance - Bharucha, Rustom

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Résumé :
In this exceptional investigation, Rustom Bharucha offers a compelling, non-Eurocentric perspective on the dangerous liaisons between terror and performance. Questioning the equation of 'terror' with 'terrorism,' this bold text offers alternative epistemologies and narratives of terror. It draws on a vast spectrum of human cruelties - relating to war, genocide, apartheid, communal and ethnic violence - in India, the Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa and Palestine, among other parts of the global South....

Biographie:
Rustom Bharucha is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. He is a writer, director, dramaturg and cultural critic, as well as the author of several books, including Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture (Routledge, 1993).

Sommaire:

Preface i-vii

Introduction: Mapping Terror in the War of Words 1-39

Provocation

Impulse

Doublespeak of `terrorism?

Risks of misunderstanding

Ambivalences of terror

Holy Terror

Terror through a literary lens

Visual overkill

Performance/performativity/theatre

Dangerous liaisons: terror and performance

1. Genet in Manila: `September 11? in Retrospect 40-88

I

Pre-Terror

Deadly Innocence

Intentionality

Politics of the `real?

Event/betrayal: rethinking the political

`September 11?: first exposure

II

Discourse

Genres of terror

1. tragedy
2. Theatre of Cruelty

The terror of repetition

Deconstructing terror

1. trauma
2. autoimmunity

Controversies

1. Stockhausen?s blunder
2. The politics of empathy

III

Exit the Theatre

2. `Muslims? in a Time of Terror: Deceptions,

Demonization, and Uncertainties of Evidence 89-130

I

Passing as a Muslim

Constructing `Muslims?

Phenomenology of passing

Queering the Muslim terrorist: beards and penises

The beautiful terrorist

The Sikh as Muslim

II

Recapitulation

The Indian Muslim as Other

Genocide in Godhra

`Dead certainty?: the limits of performativity

Outing the self

3. Countering Terror? The Search for Justice through

Truth and Reconciliation 131-186

I

Mapping the Terrain

Multiple locations, different stakes

The right to intervene

II

Rwanda

The terror of statistics

Realizing the unthinkable: the provocation of gacaca

Gacaca as performance: a theoretical trap?

Dramaturgy of gacaca

The evidence of experience

Performing Rwandanicity

III

South Africa

The `impossible machine?

The theatricality of hearings

Amnesty in performance

Between performance and justice: an ethical impasse

The `truth? of story-telling

IV

Key Motifs of Truth and Reconciliation

Performing silence

Forgiveness, or `living with evil??

Time and reconciliation

Coda

4. Performing Non-Violence in the Age of Terror 187-231

Enter Gandhi

Gandhi as Truth Commission

Performing the Truth Commission

The performativity of salt

Non-violence: sacrifice or suicide?

Suicide bombing: acts of performance

`Just War?: ambivalences and duplicities

Training to die?: the viability of non-violence

The violence of non-violence

Lip-sewing and blood graffiti: the weapons of the weak

Towards justice?

Postscript 232-239

Notes 240-285

Bibliography 286-300

Index