Thinking Intimate Geopolitics Creatively: Choreographing Spaces of Performance, Testimony, and Law

Abstract

Testimony has featured as a defining framework for post-Apartheid South Africa in traditional courts of law and under the guise of Truth and Reconciliation. Yet South Africa’s effort to transition to postviolence must be read as partial, with rates of gender-based violence amongst some of the highest in the world. The article traces the convergence between performance and testimony. It examines creative efforts to respond to South Africa’s cult of masculinity, which positions women as “fair game,” and judicial ambivalence to perpetrators of violence. I turn to the testimonial-come-documentary dance Slavery to examine the critical and creative possibilities of dance performance to testify to the absent presence of this national crisis, rhetorically probe dancers, and audiences alike to find opportunities for its contestation, whilst questioning how and even if the arts are best placed to respond to judicial failings. The article introduces three distinct dance spatialities—esthetic, ethical and political space—through which offstage enactments of gender-based violence are upstaged and contested. Nonetheless, these are presented as deeply contentious spaces, in which new silences and violences of the body can be enabled, and where performance risks operating as a “third assailant.” The article calls for greater critical conceptual attention to thinking intimate geopolitics through creative performance.

证词在传统的5个法院中，打着真相与和解的幌子，成为种族隔离后南非的一个决定性框架. 然而，南非向后暴力过渡的努力必须被理解为片面的，基于性别的暴力的发生率是世界上最高的. 本文追溯了表演和见证之间的趋同. 它审查了为应对南非对男子气概的崇拜而作出创造性努力，将妇女视为“公平的游戏“，并针对暴力肇事者的司法矛盾. 我转向见证来纪录片舞蹈奴隶制，以探讨舞蹈表演的关键和创造性可能性，以证明这场国家危机的不存在，修辞探索舞者，和观众一样，寻找机会其争议，同时质疑艺术如何，甚至如果艺术最适合回应司法失误. 本文介绍了三种截然不同的舞蹈空间——环境空间、伦理空间和政治空间——通过这些空间，性别暴力的舞台外立法被提出来并引起争论. 然而，这些被呈现为极具争议的空间，在这种空间中，可以启用新的沉默和身体的暴力，以及性能作为“第三个攻击者“的危险. 这篇文章呼吁在概念上更多地关注通过创造性表现来思考亲密的地缘政治.

El testimonio ha asumido el rol de marco definitorio en los tribunales tradicionales y bajo el disfraz de Verdad y Reconciliación en la Sudáfrica del pos-Apartheid. No obstante, el esfuerzo de Sudáfrica en pro de la trnsición hacia la posviolencia debe leerse como parcial, registrando tasas de violencia basadas en género entre las más altas del mundo. El artículo traza la convergencia entre representación y testimonio. Examina los esfuerzos creativos para responder por el culto a la masculinidad de Sudáfrica, posicionando las mujeres en una surte de “juego equitativo” y ambivalencia judicial para los perpetradores de violencia. Me oriento hacia el baile Esclavitud de carácter testimonial y documental para examinar las posibilidades críticas y creativas de la danza representacional para atestiguar sobre la falta de presencia en esta crisis nacional de bailarines retóricamente dotados y audiencias parecidas por encontrar oportunidades para su contestación, aunque cuestionando el cómo e incluso si las artes están en mejor condición para responder a yerros judiciales. El artículo presenta tres diferentes espacialidades del baile ––espacio estético, ético y político–– a través de las cuales representaciones tras bambalinas de violencia basada en género son puestas en escena y disputadas. Sin embargo, estas son presentadas como espacios profundamente debatidos, en los que nuevos silencios y violencias del cuerpo se pueden activar, y donde la representación corre el riesgo de operar como “un tercer agresor”. El artículo reclama una atención conceptual crítica más grande para pensar la geopolítica íntima a través de la representación creativa.

Key Words:

• dance
• esthetics
• gender-based violence
• intimate geopolitics
• legal geographies
• testimony

关键词:

• 舞蹈
• 美容
• 基于性别的暴力
• 亲密的地缘政治
• 法律地理
• 证词

Palabras clave:

• baile
• estética
• geografías legales
• geopolítica íntima
• testimonio
• violencia basada en género

Acknowledgments

The research presented in this article benefited from the support of an ESRC 1+3 Studentship. The author wishes to thank Professor Cresswell and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which have helped improve the arguments of this article. I am particularly grateful to Associate Professor Alex Vasudevan and Professor Sarah Hall for their on-going advice and support. A special thanks to Dance For All, Bruno Wani and the Bridging Students of 2012–2013 for allowing me to be part of their incredible journey.

Notes

1. These are deeply entangled performance techniques that trade on truthfulness and a witnessing relationship that transfers responsibility onto the audience. Whilst documentary theater (re)assesses local/national histories and investigates important events past and present, testimonial theater focuses on individual voices and personal experiences of injustice and suffering (see Pavis 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/I021981/1].

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Veal

CHARLOTTE VEAL is a geographer and Research Fellow in Landscape in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research investigates the cultural and political geographies of performance and practice.