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Alkazi Theatre Archives

A Bibliographic Listing From The Archive

The Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance – Edited by: Shirin M. Rai, Milija Gluhovic, Silvija Jestrovic and Michael Saward

Book: The Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance
Edited by: Shirin M. Rai, Milija Gluhovic, Silvija Jestrovic and Michael Saward
Published by: Oxford University Press, 2021

The book underlines the co-constitutive nature of performance and politics suggesting that it is critical to develop an interdisciplinary approach to understand our complex political world. The book is structured around six themes: performativity and theatricality; identities; sites; scripts; body, voice and gesture; and affect. Organised in these thematic categories the essays like – ‘Colonial Theatricality’ (by Lisa Skwirblies), ‘National Identity’ (by Edgaras Klivis), ‘Immersion’ (by Willmar Sauter), ‘Political Leadership: Saving the Show’ ( by John Uhr) and ‘Performing Gestures at Protests and Other Sites’ (by Bishnupriya Dutt) have employed case studies from across the globe to expand the disciplinary limits of politics and performance and initiate a dialogue between them.

“A second gap that we identify is that a good deal of politics scholarship remains focused on Western political institutions and movements; we need to expand our analyses to bring into focus how performance of politics in different historical and social contexts generates new conceptual and analytical tools to study political performances. Our own situatedness in Western academia is clear; however much we bring our own histories and political interests from India, Serbia, Bosnia and Australia to bear on our writing, we remain framed by the dynamics of Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western hierarchies of knowledge production, identification and circulation. Attempting to reach out and disturb these hierarchies has been difficult and yet perhaps one of the most rewarding aspect of putting this Handbook together.” (Page 11).

Politics and Performance