Performing Antagonism: Theatre, Performance & Radical Democracy

357 Pages·2017·3.06 MB·English

by  Tony Fisher

PERFORMING
ANTAGONISM
THEATRE, PERFORMANCE
& RADICAL DEMOCRACY
EDITED BY
Tony Fisher AND
Eve Katsouraki
Performance Philosophy
Series Editors
Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca
Department of Dance, Film and Theatre
University of Surrey
Guildford, United Kingdom
Alice Lagaay
Zeppelin University
Friedrichshafen, Germany
Freddie Rokem
Faculty of the Arts
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel
Will Daddario
Independent Scholar
Asheville, North Carolina, USA
Performance Philosophy is an emerging interdisciplinary field of thought,
creative practice and scholarship. The newly founded Performance
Philosophy book series comprises monographs and essay collections
addressing the relationship between performance and philosophy within
a broad range of philosophical traditions and performance practices,
including drama, theatre, performance arts, dance, art and music. It also
includes studies of the performative aspects of life and, indeed, philosophy
itself. As such, the series addresses the philosophy of performance as well
as performance-as-philosophy and philosophy-as- performance.
Series Advisory Board: Emmanuel Alloa, Assistant Professor in
Philosophy, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland; Lydia Goehr, Professor
of Philosophy, Columbia University, USA; James R. Hamilton, Professor
of Philosophy, Kansas State University, USA; Bojana Kunst, Professor of
Choreography and Performance, Institute for Applied Theatre Studies,
Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany; Nikolaus Müller-Schöll,
Professor of Theatre Studies, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main,
Germany; Martin Puchner, Professor of Drama and of English and
Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA; Alan Read, Professor
of Theatre, King’s College London, UK
http://www.performancephilosophy.org/books/
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14558
Tony Fisher • Eve Katsouraki
Editors
Performing
Antagonism
Theatre, Performance & Radical Democracy
Editors
Tony Fisher Eve Katsouraki
Royal Central School of Speech University of East London
and Drama London, United Kingdom
London, United Kingdom
Performance Philosophy
ISBN 978-1-349-95099-7 ISBN 978-1-349-95100-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95100-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962764
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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A
cknowledgments
The idea for this book began in 2010, in the midst of the turbulence of the
student protests in London following the arrival of the Tory-led Coalition
government and the imposition of a new fee regime; a few months later,
the Jasmine Revolution had seized the headlines, and shortly after the
occupation of Wall Street had begun in Zuccotti Park. In the six years that
have since elapsed, much has changed and nothing has changed. Austerity
regimes have intensified across European countries, with Greece experi-
encing one of the most profound economic recessions in its recent history.
Moreover, the threat of global economic depression—that spectre of 2007
that still continues to haunt us—far from disappearing looms over our
collective horizon, a consequence of the ghastly refusal on the part of the
world’s elite to draw any lessons from the recent past. For this reason, we
believe the essays assembled in this volume testify to a continued sense of
urgency in the face of ongoing crisis, but perhaps also they bear witness
to a sense of hopefulness, regarding what those events rendered possible:
the work of imagining an alternative to the status quo. And so for their
commitment to this shared project, we are profoundly grateful to all of
our contributors. We are also grateful to the Theatre and Performance
Research Association’s Theatre, Performance and Philosophy Working
Group (TaPRA), which we co-convened (2011–15), for enduring a num-
ber of our presentations on the topic of antagonism and performance, as
well as those who attended our presentation, along with our collaborator
Broderick Chow, at the London Theatre Seminar, where this book was
first conceived. Thanks are due to the series editors for their diligence, sup-
port and excellent advice—Laura Cull, Alice Lagaay and Freddie Rokem.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would also like to thank Maria Delgado and Gilli Bush-Bailey for their
words of encouragement and feedback on the project. The onerous task
of indexing was alleviated with the help of Adelina Ong, and with the sup-
port of the Research Office at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama,
for which we are also thankful. Thanks to the University of East London
and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama for providing us with
teaching relief at various stages for completing this book. Lastly, we would
like to recognise with deep appreciation the roles played by Paula Kennedy,
who first encouraged us to pursue this book as a viable and worthwhile
project; Jenny McCall who—taking over from Paula—ensured seamless
continuity of support, and April James and the editorial team at Palgrave
who helped finally steer the book to its eventual completion.
c
ontents
1 Introduction: Performance and the Tragic Politics
of the Agōn 1
Tony Fisher
2 Tragedy’s Philosophy 25
Simon Critchley
3 Tragedy: Maternity, Natality, Theatricality 43
Olga Taxidou
4 Parterre: Olympic Wrestling, National Identities,
and the Theatre of Agonism 61
Broderick D.V. Chow
5 ‘An Actor, But in Life’: Spectatorial Consciousness
and Materialist Theatre: Some Notes Apropos Althusser 81
Peter M. Boenisch
6 Is This What Democracy Looks Like? The Politics
of Representation and the Representation of Politics 101
Theron Schmidt
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 Performing Protest: Occupation, Antagonism
and Radical Democracy 131
Pollyanna Ruiz
8 A Life Not Worth Living: On the Economy of 
Vulnerability and Powerlessness in Political Suicide 149
Eve Katsouraki
9 Collective Horizons: Rethinking the Performative
and Political: (Im)Possibilities of Being Together 171
Gigi Argyropoulou
10 On the Performance of ‘Dissensual Speech’ 187
Tony Fisher
11 Remote Spectating: Drone Images and the Spectacular
Image of Revolt 209
Fred Dalmasso
12 Antagonising the Limits of Critique 231
Rachel Cockburn
13 The Political Dimension of Dance: Mouffe’s Theory
of Agonism and Choreography 251
Goran Petrović Lotina
14 The Art of Unsolicited Participation 273
Sruti Bala
15 Epilogue: The ‘Trojan Horse’—Or, from Antagonism
to the Politics of Resilience 289
Eve Katsouraki
CONTENTS ix
Bibliography 313
Index 335