CFP: RE-MOVING APARTHEID: Postdramatic and Postnarrative Modes of Coping with Trauma

28, 29 and 30 September 2016

Organized by research centre S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts & Media – UGent)

in collaboration with KULeuven, the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Leeds

Conference Theme: Re-Moving Trauma

Since the 1990s, trauma studies have become a major topic of interest in the humanities and social sciences, as well as in theatre and performance practices. Trauma has become “the signal concept of our time” (Leys 2000: 10); trauma relief “a dominant mode of practice and discourse” (Thompson 2009: 44). Recent debates, however, point out that current dominant trauma theories and mental health care programs are bound by a Western memory regime that seems restrictive in several respects (Summerfield 2005, Stalpaert 2008, Watters 2010, and Craps 2013).

A first void in trauma studies is that it mainly examines the ‘eventfulness’ of trauma and does not deal with the effects of continuous and quotidian violence inflicted on humans. As a result, non-eventful forms of trauma such as sexism, racism, political oppression, colonialism and the daily fear of persecution have been largely neglected in trauma studies. However, as research has indicated, many recurring catastrophic events may be equally traumatizing (Root 1992, Rothberg 2009, Summerfield 2005). This conference considers non-eventful forms of trauma, such as apartheid and racism, as an important object in trauma studies.

Second, the Western memory regime of trauma treatment holds the firm belief that ‘telling one’s story’ is the preferred method that leads to ‘relief’, ‘liberation’ and ‘healing’. As a result of the dominance of the meaning-based and positivist trauma regime, the realities of suffering “are often prevented from being given their embodied character (Thompson 128-129). According to this approach, “constructing a narrative from the pain of the past allows it to be contained or healed” (Thompson 2009: 45). The imperative to cure through narrative recall and storytelling is embedded in the positivistic model of clinical practice, with healing as its ultimate goal (Summerfield 2005, Stalpaert 2008). As a result, mental health care practitioners mainly work in the realm of effect, neglecting the “affective register” (Thompson 2009: 7).

Third, the belief that the human capacity of recognition, description and understanding is an important tool in mastering the traumatic past in order to move on with a life in the present is grounded in a modernist historical regime. In contrast with modernity’s linear conceptualization of time and its belief that the past lies behind us, we adopt Jacques Derrida’s spectral notion of time in the work of mourning. With his notion of the ‘spectral past’, Derrida deconstructed the archeo-teleological concept of history and the linear and chronological alignment of narration with time and space. He pointed at “the persistence of a present past or the return of the dead which the worldwide work of mourning cannot get rid of” (Derrida 1994: 101; see also Bevernage 2012).

The title of the conference, Re-Moving Apartheid, touches upon these issues. The use of re-moving entails an ironic comment on the discourse of ‘relief’, ‘liberation’ and ‘healing’ in the dominant Western trauma regime. A cultural trauma is not easily removed. The suffix re- in the title rather refers to the endless re-living of the traumatic experience. It indicates how a cultural trauma keeps on moving a person in a way that outwits common sense. The re-lived moments of traumatic shock actually point at “the limits faced by knowledge and representation” (Greene 1999: 33). The notion of re-moving hence indicates that there is no time after the cultural trauma of apartheid. As historian Berber Bevernage put it: the notion of a “persisting ‘past’… blurs the strict delineation between past and present and thereby even questions the existence of these temporal dimensions as separate entities” (2012: 5). On yet another level, re-moving apartheid also refers to the ways in which (postdramatic and postnarrative) performances have the potential to move the spectator also – in a Nietzschean sense of the word – beyond common sense. For the spectator to be moved in this sense implies thinking “as an act of extreme emotional intensity” (Safranski 2000: 179-180). It implies dealing with the complexity of the cultural trauma of apartheid and racism, without “overlooking it or looking away” (Le Roy, Stalpaert, Verdoodt 2010: 263).

In that sense, it is our belief that art also has an important transformative role. It plays a significant role in creating non-verbal and embodied transformative encounters in violated and traumatized communities and it can provide a critical perspective on the restrictive Western memory regime at work in several practices of healing and reconciliation.

This three-day conference invites performance scholars, historians, philosophers as well as artists to reflect on how art in general and theatre performances in particular provide a valuable embodied perspective on what has been criticized as a narrative and disembodied dominant Western trauma regime. The main aim is to allocate the transformative power of performances that constitute a postdramatic and postnarrative aesthetic. Special interest goes to studies with a focus on site-specificity, performative objects and corporeality. Via the concrete articulation of the transformative potential of particular performances, we hope to engage in a wider debate on the validation of diverse culturally responses to trauma.

Themes and Topics

Cluster #1: Politics of Truth Commissions – Performances in Response to the TRC

It has been generally acknowledged that truth and reconciliation commissions are an important tool in ‘acting out’ and ‘working through’ cultural traumas. The South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), for example, aimed at working through the cultural trauma of apartheid, seeking reconciliation between South African perpetrators and victims. Victims and survivors came to the Commission to recount their stories of what happened to them or members of their families, while perpetrators of these abuses could obtain amnesty for the crimes committed if they gave full confessions. The TRC therefore played a central role in community healing and functioned as some form of catharsis: the community was supposed to come to terms with overwhelming emotions caused by the traumatic past.

Truth and Reconciliation Committees such as the South African TRC, however, not only want to raise awareness or provide healing. It also desires to implement community change. The cathartic experience in relation to trauma processing in a truth commission has less to do with a purging of emotions. It is rather concerned with “integration” through a “process of reconstruction” (Herman 2001: 181). A TRC is thus considered not only as an official organ calling for testimonies from the past (truth), but also as a judicial body aiming at reconciliation between victims and perpetrators. While truth and reconciliation committees are concrete tools with a positive impact on democracy and human rights – the TRC is considered an important element of rehabilitation in the development towards a post-transitional democracy – we must not forget that they are collective rituals that are constructed along coded actions. Thompson called this the “strategic memory” at work in collective rituals that ‘act out’ and ‘work through’ traumatic events. The self-definition of a community in a collective act of mourning is coded (2009: 97-100). This inclusive discourse is at the same time exclusive; it excludes differential voices that are not in line with the master narrative. Contemporary performances such as Kentridge’s Ubu and the Truth Commission (1997 and 2014), or Chokri Ben Chikha’s The Truth Commission (2013) insist on asking pertinent questions on the coded actions and the master narrative at work in truth and reconciliation commissions.

Contributions to this cluster may include, but are not limited to the following questions:

What is the narrative, disembodied and meaning-based nature of the truth-telling process in the TRC and the Western approach commissioners took in ‘working through’ the cultural trauma of South African apartheid? What are the coded actions at work in other truth and reconciliation committees? What are the conditions of its master narrative? What is the strategic memory at work? What kind of narrative is impressed upon the commemorators, upon the ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ testifying within a preconceived format? What is the structuring device that maintains a group’s homogeneous and coherent identity? How do contemporary performances raise these pertinent questions?

Cluster #2: Performing Trauma: Postdramatic and Postnarrative Modes of Coping with Trauma

Art in general and performance in particular plays an important role in creating non-verbal and embodied transformative encounters in violated and traumatized communities. On the one hand, art is transformative as it functions as a “protective force”, enabling people to cope with suffering. On the other hand, it can also be “an inspirational force” for creating “a better world” (Thompson 2009: 2). Recent theatre and performance studies developed an exponential interest in trauma and conflict and provide a valuable embodied perspective on what has been criticized as a disembodied dominant Western trauma regime underpinned by the assumption of a linear relationship between trauma narration and recovery. Special interest goes to the articulatory potential of postdramatic and postnarrative modes of coping with trauma that move beyond the structures of language, demand attention for gesture, silence, the mutual dialogue as bodily encounter and acknowledges culturally specific modes of suffering, coping and survival.

Contributions to this cluster may include, but are not limited to the following questions:

How do performances in a post-apartheid era relate to a traumatic past? How do they respond to or resonate with formal institutional discourses of healing and recovery? How do theatre practitioners move beyond storytelling in dealing with traumatic experiences? How can performance practices create non-verbal and embodied transformative encounters in violated and traumatized communities, dealing with apartheid, racism and persistent violence, as well as socio-economic and political problems of postcolonial states?

Cluster #3: Performative Objects and Site-Specific Performativity

Recent theatre and performance studies also developed an exponential interest in how ambivalent embodied entities such as masks, puppets or other ‘dead’ performative objects might be a site of critique, resistance or agency in communities coping with cultural traumas.

In the field of theatre studies and design arts (e.g. Niedderer 2004) scholars outlined that performative objects are social mediators (Kennicot 2003, Cleary, 1998: 24; Lehmann 2006: 140; Bell 2001: 18-25). It has been generally acknowledged that masks, puppets and performative objects are culturally particular modes of coping and survival in South Africa (Haedicke 2001: 254; Kruger 2008: 32.) In Performing Democracy, Peter Larlham refers to puppetry art in South Africa as a particular theatre tool “that assists in re-education after the long period of enforced censorship and disinformation” (in Haedicke 2001: 254). Special interest in this conference goes to the transformative power of the performer as a performative object, based on notions such as “the performer as site of resistance” (Bala 2007) and Erika Fischer Lichte’s suggestion “to reflect on the correlations between the concept of the presence of the performer and that of the ecstasy of things” (2008: 100).

Also, the site-specific performativity in performances dealing with trauma is taken into consideration. Resonating with Boehme’s observation that a thing “practically radiates into its environment (…) fills it with tension and possibilities for motion” (1995: 33), the relation between the performer as object, the site-specific performativity, and other subjects/objects is considered as an interesting transformative constellation.

Contributions to this cluster may include, but are not limited to the following questions:

How do masks, puppets, performative objects and performers as performative objects raise awareness, propose alternatives, provide healing and implement community change regarding the cultural trauma of apartheid in post-transitional South Africa, and/or in other areas of conflict? How do they function as tools of critique, resistance and agency with regard to trauma processing? How can object-driven performances create transformative encounters in traumatized communities? How do those performances dialogue with a site-specific performativity?

The 3-day-conference will be held at the Department of Art History, Musicology and Theatre Studies of Ghent University, Belgium, 28 – 30 September 2016.

Keynote lectures and paper presentations will be open to the general public, whilst special working group sessions and workshops are organized for smaller groups of conference participants.

Please note that preference will be given to subjects that have not been previously published. Accepted conference participants are strongly encouraged to submit articles for publication soon after the conference.

Submissions for conference papers should reach us by 15 December 2015.

Please send an abstract (400 words) and a short CV including your institutional and departmental affiliation and contact details to re-movingapartheid@ugent.be

For any questions please contact the conference organizers via re-movingapartheid@ugent.be

www.re-movingapartheid.ugent.be

Organizing Committee

• Christel Stalpaert (Director Research Centre S:PAM: Studies in Performing Arts & Media – Ghent University)
• Lucia De Haene (Research Group Education, Culture & Society – KU Leuven, co-director CCVS – Centre for Children in Vulnerable Situations)
• Marieke Breyne (S:PAM – Ghent University)
• Sofie de Smet (S:PAM – Ghent University – Research Group Education, Culture & Society – KU Leuven)
• Frederik Le Roy (S:PAM – Ghent University and Kask / School of Arts)
• Pieter Vermeulen (S:PAM – Ghent University)

Internal Scientific Committee

• Christel Stalpaert (S:PAM – Ghent University)
• Lucia De Haene (Education, Culture & Society – KU Leuven)
• Marieke Breyne (S:PAM – Ghent University)
• Sofie de Smet (S:PAM Ghent University – & Education, Culture & Society – KU Leuven))
• Frederik Le Roy (S:PAM – Ghent University)
• Berber Bevernage (History Department – Ghent University)
• Stef Craps (Department of Literary Studies – Ghent University)
• Annelies Verdoolaege (Department of Languages and Cultures – Ghent University)
• Ilse Derluyn (Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy & Centre for Children in Vulnerable Situations – Ghent University)
• Katharina Pewny (S:PAM – Ghent University)
• Dirk Van Gogh (Kask – School of Arts)

International Scientific Committee and FWO-NRF Partners

• Marie Kruger (Drama Department – Stellenbosch University)
• Jane Taylor (Drama and Theatre Studies – University of Leeds)
• Petrus Du Preez (Drama Department – Stellenbosch University)
• Amelda Brand (Drama Department – Stellenbosch University)
• Estelle Olivier (Drama Department – Stellenbosch University)