ABSTRACT

The long cultural moment that arose in the wake of 9/11 and the conflict in the Middle East has fostered a global wave of surveillance and counterinsurgency. Performance in a Militarized Culture explores the ways in which we experience this new status quo. Addressing the most commonplace of everyday interactions, from mobile phone calls to traffic cameras, this edited collection considers:

  • How militarization appropriates and deploys performance techniques
  • How performing arts practices can confront militarization
  • The long and complex history of militarization
  • How the war on terror has transformed into a values system that prioritizes the military
  • The ways in which performance can be used to secure and maintain power across social strata

Performance in a Militarized Culture draws on performances from North, Central, and South America; Europe; the Middle East; and Asia to chronicle a range of experience: from those who live under a daily threat of terrorism, to others who live with a distant, imagined fear of such danger.

chapter |7 pages

Introduction: in the Absence of the Gun

Performing Militarization

part I|87 pages

Sites of Conflict

chapter 1|19 pages

Mises-en-scène of Militarization

Decommissioning US Military Infrastructure in the Panama Canal Zone

chapter 2|17 pages

Military Aid

The Spatial Performances and Performativity of Contemporary Refugee Camps

chapter 3|19 pages

Sacred Children, Accursed Mothers

Performativities of Necropolitics and Mourning in Neoliberal Turkey

part II|55 pages

Militarized History and Memory

chapter 6|11 pages

How to do Things with Music Criticism

Performances of Victory in German Wagner Reception, 1918–1933

chapter 7|12 pages

“Stop the War in Chicago Please”

Performative Protest and the Limits of Dissensus

chapter 8|14 pages

Choreographies of Militarized Space

US Military Bases, Everyday Life, and Performance in Okinawa, Japan

chapter 9|16 pages

Reviving the Tradition of the Battle Painting

The Militarization of Danish Culture

part III|100 pages

Performing the Soldier

chapter 10|16 pages

Soldier Street Theater

chapter 11|15 pages

No Easy Mission

Zero Dark Thirty and Gendered Heroism in the Post-Heroic Age

chapter 12|18 pages

Going Outside the Wire

Service Members as Documentary Subjects in Black Watch and ReEntry

chapter 13|18 pages

Challenging the Characterizations of Military Service

A Critical Comparison of British and American Counter-Recruitment Efforts

chapter 15|15 pages

Performing Flight

Test Pilots, Commercial Airlines, and the Cold War

part IV|76 pages

The Militarization of the Everyday

chapter 16|14 pages

Picking up the Gun

Spectacular Performances of Firearm Ownership in the Long Civil Rights Movement

chapter 17|19 pages

Failure to Adapt

Affect, Apathy, and Doomed Reenactments in American Theatre’s Militarized Dystopias

chapter 18|16 pages

Weaponized Bureaucracy

Kill-Chains, Drones, and Tethers

chapter 20|13 pages

The Time to Break (Silence)

Disavowing the Affects of Militarization and Death through the Performance of Black Existence

chapter |6 pages

Afterword

Constitutive Performances: Human Rights in a Militarized Culture