[csaa-forum] RUSTOM BHARUCHA: REFLECTIONS ON TERROR AND PERFORMANCE (PUBLIC LECTURE)

[Timothy Laurie]

“The Aftermath: Reflections on Terror and Performance”

Rustom Bharucha
Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Respondent: Joseph Pugliese
Professor at the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies
Maquarie University, Sydney

Free Public Lecture
December 3, 2015 (afternoon session, time tbc)
Copland Theatre (The Spot), the University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus

Co-presented by English & Theatre Studies and Minor Culture (conference for the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia, Nov 30 - Dec 3) at the School of Culture and Communication: http://culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/events/minor-culture-conference


Abstract
Drawing on his recently published book Terror and Performance (Routledge 2014), Rustom Bharucha will probe the modalities and enigmas of the dangerous liaisons between terror and performance. The idea of performance will extend beyond theatre practice to encompass four primary sites of investigation:  ‘September 11’, Islamophobia, Truth and Reconciliation in the larger contexts of post-apartheid South Africa and post-genocide Rwanda, and Non-Violence vis-a-vis the political practice and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.

Using a dialogic mode of inquiry, he will throw out questions relating to the epistemological differences between ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’; the ethical considerations in viewing the act of killing as ‘performance’; the efficacy of the Truth and Reconciliation process beyond the aporias of affect; and the ‘violence’ of non-violence. These issues will be contextualized within a spectrum of practices including suicide bombing, lip-sewing, blood-graffiti, and peace activism in diverse locations of the world.

To what extent can performance counter its complicities within a larger narrative of terror?  Is non-violence viable in an age of terror?  Can justice exist beyond – and against – the law?  These are some of the critical questions that will be raised in the lecture, which attempts to provide a reflective framework on the terror of our times from a non-Eurocentric perspective seeking alternatives to violence and brutality through a renewed understanding of what it means to be human.

Rustom Bharucha is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.  A leading interlocutor in the fields of interculturalism, secularism and oral history, he has written a number of books including Theatre and the World, The Question of Faith, In the Name of the Secular, The Politics of Cultural Practice, Rajasthan: An Oral History, Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin and Terror and Performance.  In recent years, he has worked as a dramaturge for the Tangencya public art project in Durban, South Africa; as Project Director for Arna-Jharna: The Desert Museum of Rajasthan; as Artistic Director of the Inter-Asia Ramayana Festival at the theatre laboratory Adishakti in Pondicherry; and, most recently, as Curator of an international conference on Rethinking Labour and the Creative Economy: Global Performative Perspectives organized by Performance Studies international (PSi) in collaboration with the School of Arts and Aesthetics at JNU.

<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1017373#abstract>
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