Description
The idea of trauma has become so used in the public sphere as to become almost meaningless in its ubiquity. But this is also to say that we live in a historical moment in which society feels bound to its traumatic experiences. Trauma, it would seem, has become a cultural trope. Furthermore, contemporary trauma theory suggests a performative bent in traumatic suffering itself – the trauma-symptom is, after all, a rehearsal, re-presentation, re-performance of the trauma-event. This is not to trivialise traumatic suffering or detract from the insistence that trauma narratives must adequately, truthfully, be borne witness to so as not to diminish the weight of the original event. On Trauma explores a range of instances in which performance becomes a productive frame through which to address traumata and/or where trauma theory illuminates performance. With papers examining topics from African funeral rituals to witnessing, and ethics to Argentinean scratches, this issue of Performance Research benefits from a cross-cultural dynamic which brings together academic articles on and artistic responses to performance that embodies, negotiates, negates or provokes trauma.
Editorial
Mick Wallis, Patrick Duggan
pp. 1 – 3
Trauma and Performance: Maps, narrative and folds
Patrick Duggan, Mick Wallis
pp. 4 – 17
The Mask Series (1998- ) [artist’s pages]
Victoria Halford
pp. 18 – 19
‘If There’s No Justice …’: Trauma and identity in post-dictatorship Argentina
Diego Benegas
pp. 20 – 30
Whose Memory? Whose Justice?: Personal and political trauma in Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden
James Weaver, Jeanne Colleran
pp. 31 – 42
A Dance of Many Bodies: Moving trauma in Susana Tambutti’s La puñalada
Victoria Fortuna
pp. 43 – 51
Adonis Flores: Paranoia as the cult of emptiness
Elvia Rosa Castro
pp. 52 – 58
The Performance of Violence and the Ethics of Spectatorship
Lisa Fitzpatrick
pp. 59 – 67
Never Again and its Discontents
Laurie Beth Clark
pp. 68 – 79
Folding Trauma: On Alfredo Jaar’s installations and interventions
Michael Levan
pp. 80 – 90
Sta(i)r Falling
Branislava Kuburović
pp. 91 – 101
Intolerable Acts
Anna Harpin
pp. 102 – 111
Trauma, Authenticity and the Limits of Verbatim
Amanda Stuart Fisher
pp. 112 – 122
Mercy Seat [artist’s pages]
Jules Dorey Richmond, David Richmond
pp. 123 – 130
African Funeral Rites: Sites for performing, participating and witnessing of trauma
Victor Ukaegbu
pp. 131 – 141
Acting Out Trauma in the Theatre of Embarrassment: George Tabori’s Shylock Improvisations
Antje Diedrich
pp. 142 – 152
Architecture as Frame for Trauma: Video installations by Paul McCarthy
Anna-Lena Werner
pp. 153 – 163
Trauma and Erasure [artist’s page]
Gwynneth Vanlaven
pp. 164 – 164
Notes on Contributors
pp. 165 – 166
