Coupe, Alexander. 2020. The Gender Politics of Performance in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland: Reckoning with Interdependence. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

Preview	Text (The Gender Politics of Performance in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland: Reckoning with Interdependence) THE_redacted_thesis_CoupeA_2020.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (39MB) | Preview
	Text (The Gender Politics of Performance in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland: Reckoning with Interdependence) THE_thesis_CoupeA_2020.pdf - Accepted Version Permissions: Administrator Access Only Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (39MB)

Abstract or Description

This PhD uncovers a new and emergent current within theatre and performance produced after the Good Friday Agreement consisting of work critically engaged with the reconstruction of gender norms amidst Northern Ireland’s social, political and economic transformation. In an attempt to demarcate the aesthetic parameters of this current, it proposes a re-reading of the Agreement as simultaneously challenging gendered narratives of national identity by insisting upon the internally differentiated and interdependent nature of competing group identities, while embedding conditions of economic precarity that work to inhibit the development of a redistributive politics of gender and class. In a context where theatre and performance has been pressed into underwriting the success of the peace process and gilding the reputation of Northern Ireland as ‘open for business’, a subset of playwrights, live artists, and choreographers have highlighted how this negation of the sectarian past and pursuit of a neoliberal vision of the future breeds new forms of gender-based violence and class inequality. While dramatising this state of political suspension, practitioners have sought also to embody the unfulfilled emancipatory potentialities of the Agreement, teasing out its spirit and promise in new and experimental performance forms. This body of work has moved beyond identity politics to emphasise those fundamental conditions of dependency and vulnerability denied within both patriarchal nationalism and androcentric individualism. By illuminating the critical possibilities that open up when inequalities of gender and class are thought together, and where economic violence is understood alongside sectarianism to be a fundamental feature of contemporary life, the performances discussed here created a space to imagine alternative futures, alternatives in which respect for difference is coupled with efforts to foster sustainable and egalitarian forms of interdependency.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00029209
Keywords:	Northern Ireland, Gender, Theatre and Performance, Neoliberalism, Interdependence, the Troubles
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Theatre and Performance (TAP)
Date:	30 June 2020
Item ID:	29209
Date Deposited:	03 Sep 2020 14:04
Last Modified:	30 Jun 2023 01:26
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/29209

View statistics for this item...

Edit Record (login required)