Full Description
'This work goes where other books fear to tread. It reaches the parts other scholars might imagine in their dreams but would neither have the international reach nor the critical acumen and forensic flourish to deliver.' Alan Read, King's College London
'This book is not only timely. It is overdue - and it is a masterpiece unrivalled by any book I know of.' Erika Fischer-Lichte, Freie Universität Berlin
'The first and only book that focuses on the intersections of performance, terror and terrorism as played out beyond a Euro-American context post-9/11. It is an important work, both substantively and methodologically.' Jenny Hughes, University of Manchester
'A profound and tightly bound sequence of reflections ... a rigorously provocative book.' Stephen Barber, Kingston University London
In this exceptional investigation Rustom Bharucha considers the realities of Islamophobia, the legacies of Truth and Reconciliation, the deadly certitudes of State-controlled security systems and the legitimacy of counter-terror terrorism, drawing on a vast spectrum of human cruelties across the global South. The outcome is a brilliantly argued case for seeing terror as a volatile and mutant phenomenon that is deeply lived, experienced, and performed within the cultures of everyday life.
Contents
Preface i-vii
Introduction: Mapping Terror in the War of Words 1-39
Provocation
Impulse
Doublespeak of 'terrorism'
Risks of misunderstanding
Ambivalences of terror
Holy Terror
Terror through a literary lens
Visual overkill
Performance/performativity/theatre
Dangerous liaisons: terror and performance
1. Genet in Manila: 'September 11' in Retrospect 40-88
I
Pre-Terror
Deadly Innocence
Intentionality
Politics of the 'real'
Event/betrayal: rethinking the political
'September 11': first exposure
II
Discourse
Genres of terror
tragedy
Theatre of Cruelty
The terror of repetition
Deconstructing terror
trauma
autoimmunity
Controversies
Stockhausen's blunder
The politics of empathy
III
Exit the Theatre
2. 'Muslims' in a Time of Terror: Deceptions,
Demonization, and Uncertainties of Evidence 89-130
I
Passing as a Muslim
Constructing 'Muslims'
Phenomenology of passing
Queering the Muslim terrorist: beards and penises
The beautiful terrorist
The Sikh as Muslim
II
Recapitulation
The Indian Muslim as Other
Genocide in Godhra
'Dead certainty': the limits of performativity
Outing the self
3. Countering Terror? The Search for Justice through
Truth and Reconciliation 131-186
I
Mapping the Terrain
Multiple locations, different stakes
The right to intervene
II
Rwanda
The terror of statistics
Realizing the unthinkable: the provocation of gacaca
Gacaca as performance: a theoretical trap?
Dramaturgy of gacaca
The evidence of experience
Performing Rwandanicity
III
South Africa
The 'impossible machine'
The theatricality of hearings
Amnesty in performance
Between performance and justice: an ethical impasse
The 'truth' of story-telling
IV
Key Motifs of Truth and Reconciliation
Performing silence
Forgiveness, or 'living with evil'?
Time and reconciliation
Coda
4. Performing Non-Violence in the Age of Terror 187-231
Enter Gandhi
Gandhi as Truth Commission
Performing the Truth Commission
The performativity of salt
Non-violence: sacrifice or suicide?
Suicide bombing: acts of performance
'Just War': ambivalences and duplicities
Training to die?: the viability of non-violence
The violence of non-violence
Lip-sewing and blood graffiti: the weapons of the weak
Towards justice?
Postscript 232-239
Notes 240-285
Bibliography 286-300
Index
