ABSTRACT
This paper explores the arising of overwhelm as an affective space in which might emerge conditions of receptivity to ethical solicitation. It reads J. T. Rogers' 2006 play The Overwhelming, which focuses on the weeks preceding the onset of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in dialogue with Judith Butler's exploration of the dynamics of ethical solicitation and the conditions of receptivity in contexts in which embodied precarity is extreme and the stakes of enacting ethical obligation are high. In so doing, it investigates how or whether the kind of solicitations of which Butler speaks, when enunciated in the context of theatrical performance – either between characters on stage, or between characters and audiences – might elicit response, foster ethical action, and/or re-calibrate understandings of proximity and distance which often serve to determine where ethical obligation lies and how far it extends. The operation of cultural translation in such contexts is a controlling focus.
