Performing Antagonism: Theatre, Performance & Radical Democracy
- Submitting institution
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The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- TFIS1
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.1057/978-1-349-95100-0
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan UK
- ISBN
- 9781349950997
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
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- Research group(s)
-
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Performing Antagonism: Theatre, Performance & Radical Democracy’, co-edited by Tony Fisher and Eve Katsouraki, is a commissioned 15-chapter peer-reviewed interdisciplinary volume, combining performance analysis with contemporary political philosophy to advance new ways of understanding both political performance and the performativity of the politics of recent social movements, activism and street protests. Fisher and Katsouraki shared equal responsibility for devising the volume, soliciting and commissioning chapters, and editorial curation through close and intensive collaboration with contributors. The central thematic of antagonism, the volume’s unifying thread, was identified through extensive contextualizing research undertaken over a number of years, specifically around the political theory of post-Marxist thinkers such as Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière. Fisher and Katsouraki guided the contributors to maintain a strong focus on political agonistics, in particular, drawing attention to its timeliness regarding questions of how the political antagonisms of our day might be theorized in relation to two principal domains: (1) theatre and performance practices and (2) the performativity of politics. The relevance of this approach derives from renewed interest in political thought in theatre and performance studies over recent years, as well as its argument that performance theory itself contributes to political theory, providing it with new tools for analyzing political action. In particular, Mouffe’s agonistic theory occupies a central place in the volume, which offers one of the most comprehensive engagements in theatre and performance studies with its central thesis: that the political must be defined in relation to the problem of antagonism. Providing a robust theoretical frame for the volume, Fisher’s 9000-word introduction sets out a comprehensive analysis of agonistic political theory, its relation to current thinking in theatre and performance scholarship, and its historical roots, tracing them back to Greek tragedy. Fisher also contributed an 8000-word chapter that extends agonistic thinking to speech act theory.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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