‘“I’m gonna tap you in the face with this hammer”: Torture and the Ethics of Spectatorship in Dennis Kelly’s Works’

Tools

Finburgh Delijani, Clare. 2024. ‘“I’m gonna tap you in the face with this hammer”: Torture and the Ethics of Spectatorship in Dennis Kelly’s Works’. In: Jacqueline Bolton and Nicholas Holden, eds. Beautiful Doom: The Works of Dennis Kelly on Stage and in Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Book Section] (In Press)

No full text available

Abstract or Description

Detention without charge, severe physical and mental pain and suffering, intimidation, coercion, and other forms of torture set out in the United Nations Convention against Torture, have become justified and normalized since the start of the twenty-first century in order supposedly to guarantee national security and maintain law, order, freedom and democracy. This chapter derives its theoretical premise from Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970), to illustrate how a number of Dennis Kelly’s plays testify to the torture and other human rights abuses taking place not only in totalitarian regimes, but also in states that supposedly uphold civil liberties. The chapter illustrates both how Kelly exposes the torture that habitually takes place in covert locations behind a façade of ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’, and also the ethics implicit in how audiences spectate the abusive degradation of others from the safety of our television screens, or of our theatre seats.

Item Type:

Book Section