Theatre, Activism, Subjectivity (searching For The Left In A Fragmented World)

Edited by Dutt Bishnupriya; Edited by Jestrovic, Silvija
Short description/annotation:
In modern times of political confusion, when Leftist agendas and struggles often collapse or become appropriated by Right, this book stress the necessity of recovering the Leftist ethos of solidarity, social justice, and care for the commons.
Description:
Through the lens of performance and politics, this collection zooms in on the context-specific dimensions, analogies, and micro-histories of the Left to better understand the larger picture. It proposes a search for the Left not from totalising Leftist ideological positions and partisan politics but from ethical dimensions through smaller-scale Left-leaning struggles; not from the political to the aesthetic, but from the potentiality of art to offer new political imagination and critique; not from the individual subordinated to the collective, but from the dialectics of subjectivity and collectivity. This is not an attempt at a sweeping global overview of Leftist cultures either, but a collection that brings together culture-specific and comparative perspectives. This book searches for fragments of and on the Left, past and present, through which to rethink and patch a fragmented world.
Table of contents:

Forward - Partha Chatterjee
Introduction: Searching for the Left in a Fragmented World - Silvija Jestrovic & Bishnupriya Dutt

Part I: Activism
1 Performing the Constitution as an insurgent document - Nivedita Menon
2 Revolution: Like. Share. Subscribe - Dragan Todorovic
3 The ‘Hunger Artists’: Hunger protests, prisons and insurgent citizenship - Anupama Roy and Ujjwal Kumar Singh
4 Of Quiet Resistance: Shy Radicals, divergent world-making and the poetics of statecraft - Anika Marschall

Part II: Theatre
5 Acting Politically: Making performance in the eye of history - Adrian Kear
6 Theatre of the streets—of the working class: strikes, protests, and democratization of life - Bishnupriya Dutt
7 The Cheviot and its Legacies: Dramaturgies of the Left in Scottish Theatre - Trish Reid
8 Between the Right and the Left: Staging political, emotional and social polarizations on Canadian stage - Yana Meerzon
9 The Indiscreet Charm of Left nostalgia: Reeking redolence in the contemporary - Ameet Parameswaran
10 Staging Revolution: Utpal Dutt’s Kallol (1965) and the Question of ‘Spectacular’ Aesthetics in Calcutta’s Leftist Theatre Practice - Trina Neelina Banerjee
11 Love in the time of revolution: Exploring political theatre of Utpal Dutt - Mallarika Sinha Roy

Part III: Subjectivity
12 Revolutionary intimacies: Friendship, love, and theatre - Silvija Jestrovic
13 The fraught act of speaking for / about the communist women - Urmimala Sarkar Munsi
14 One always fails to speak of the things one loves: Memories of border crossings - Shirin M Rai
15 Why I am still a Socialist - Janelle Reinelt

Review quote:

‘This book is simply terrific, offering astute transnational perspectives on the predicaments confronting contemporary progressive political theatres – an essential resource for those looking for unity in a fragmented world!’
—Professor Tony Fisher, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

‘It is in the domain of culture that we imagine our futures and struggle over our values. On the stage, in our songs, and in the way we move our bodies, we tell each other that this or that need not be the way things should be, and that the other thing, that thing that we imagine and do, is possible. That’s the point of the essays in Theatre, activism, subjectivity. We stand ‘Stage Left’ and cry, Not This. Not This. Never Just This. We Want More. And that is when the real dr