School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemHeiner Müller’s Germania 3 Ghosts at Dead Man: atrocity and pain in German history and theatre( 2003)Language that injures and causes pain is embodied in the work of Heiner Müller. In evaluating this type of language, Judith Butler’s enquiry into injurious speech and linguistic vulnerability, applied in a case study of so-called hate-speech, might be usefully applied to theatrical speech:'When we say that an insult strikes like a blow, we imply that our bodies are injured by such speech. And they surely are, but not in the same way as a purely physical injury takes place' (Butler, 1997: 159).Racist, class-based and sexist hate-speech is injurious speech that exposes the linguistic vulnerability of subjects and the power of language to wound like a sword. Applied to Müller’s dramatic texts, I argue that the speeches uttered by various figurations mimic the operations of hate-speech in the social sphere, with the addition that the effects of the speech may also be shown.The question I pose is: Can the discourse of the performance text bear witness to and embody pain as well as demonstrate the violence that is both enacted within and a consequence of speech? I ask with Susan Sontag, What do these imaginary accounts do to the real pain of the victims of war and political struggle and what is the point of their transformation into art given that "the iconography of suffering has a long pedigree" (Sontag, 2003: 40)?
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ItemNo Preview Available"White out: theatre as an agent of border patrol"(Cambridge University Press, 2003)In Australia in 2001, there was a marked escalation of debates about nation, national identity and national borders in tandem with a right-wing turn in national politics. Within the cultural context of debate about national identity, popular theatre became an unwitting ally of neo-conservative forces. Within popular theatre culture, the neo-conservative trend is naturalized as the view of the Anglo-Celtic-European mainstream or core culture that also embraces and depoliticizes feminist debates about home and family. Elizabeth Coleman's 2001 play This Way Up assists in the production of an inward-looking turn in the national imaginary and a renewed emphasis on home and family. The performance dramatizes aspects of what we are to understand as ordinary Australian life which might be interpreted as that which Prime Minister John Howard defends in the name of the National Interest. The cultural imaginary that shapes the production of the popular play is that of the conservative white national imaginary.
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