Carnival, Cultural Identity, and Mustapha Matura's ‘Play Mas’

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-195
Author(s):  
Raimund Schäffner

Carnival has been appropriated in many ways – by cultural critics after Bakhtin, who expanded the pre-Lenten festival to embrace all such inversions of the established order; by elegant maskers imposing their own social status on the celebration; and more recently by popular entertainers, creating the kind of mass event typified by the midsummer carnival at Notting Hill, divorced alike from religious and calendric associations. Here, Raimund Schäffner considers the critique dramatized in Mustapha Matura's Play Mas (1974) of the appropriation of carnival by the dominant political forces of the state in the context of the Trinidadian inheritance of social and racial tensions, colonial and post-colonial – the context also for the dismissal of the event as socially divisive rather than socially critical by such a figure as Derek Walcott. Raimund Schäffner teaches English and post-colonial literature in the English Department at the University of Heidelberg. He is the author of a book on David Edgar and British political drama after 1968, and of articles on David Edgar, Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill, and Doug Lucie.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Liza Putri ◽  
Katherine Clayton

One of the significant points in post-colonial literature is identity issues. The analysis of these identity issues should be focused not only on the colonized character but also the colonialist. It is obvious why post-colonial scholars are concerned with the colonized as they are the victims of colonialism. However, the colonizer must also face complex issues of identity when arriving in the colonial place. The purpose of this article is to examine the identity issues undergone by Joshua, the colonial subject, and by Clive, the colonizer, with reference to Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill in the colonial period. The concept of hybridity by Homi Bhabha can explain the issue of Joshua’s identity since he has “double” portrays of the identity as legacy of colonialism. Bhabha created the terms the “third space” or the “in-between” to describe the condition of the colonized people. Clive as the colonizer used to be a person without particular authority in his own country before arriving to the colonial land. Suddenly, his identity has shifted into someone who has privileges and authority. The colonizer’s identity is not complete without the colonized. The colonized and the colonizer depend on each other. The colonized and the colonizer’s identities will be fragmented if one of them is missing.


Author(s):  
Khagendra Sethi ◽  
Tithi Ray

This article aims at a comparative study of GopinathMohanty with Mulk Raj Anand. The article will analyse and examine the works of both the writers from the perspective of Resistance literature. Both of them have significant contribution to Dalit literature. These two writers are non-dalits. But they have comprehensive understanding on the plight of these miserable sections who are on the margin. They have tried their best to fight for their rights. Along with that they have created for them a distinct cultural identity by dismantling their colonial identity. They have raised voice against the ethical issues like bonded labour, economical exploitation, socio-political exclusion, land displacement and sexual harassment which were immanent in dalit’s life in colonial and post-colonial India.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-383
Author(s):  
Rachel Clements ◽  
Sarah Frankcom

Sarah Frankcom worked at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester between 2000 and 2019, and was the venue’s first sole Artistic Director from 2014. In this interview conducted in summer 2019, she discusses her time at the theatre and what she has learned from leading a major cultural organization and working with it. She reflects on a number of her own productions at this institution, including Hamlet, The Skriker, Our Town, and Death of a Salesman, and discusses the way the theatre world has changed since the beginning of her career as she looks forward to being the director of LAMDA. Rachel Clements lectures on theatre at the University of Manchester. She has published on playwrights Caryl Churchill and Martin Crimp, among others, and has edited Methuen student editions of Lucy Prebble’s Enron and Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange. She is Book Reviews editor of NTQ.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-268
Author(s):  
Eva Urban

Drawing on a close reading of Theodor Adorno's essay, ‘Education after Auschwitz’, in this article Eva Urban develops the argument that an analysis of the reification that reduces human relationships to mere business interactions has been a central concern of modern drama. The article offers an analysis of some of the ways in which this theme continues to be represented, interrogated, and challenged internationally in contemporary political plays and theatre performances across a range of genres and grounded in a variety of dramaturgical principles. It asks how drama, theatre-making, theatre-spectating, and theatre-participating can create dynamics necessary to enable a move from reified consciousness towards the development of critical autonomy and solidarity. A negotiation of the principles of critical consciousness and solidarity is problematic within economic structures that cause social, ethnic, and religious atomization and divisions. Her argument concludes with an outline for a manifesto for political drama and theatre practice to work against reification. Eva Urban is a lecturer and researcher in the English Department and an Associate of the Irish Studies Research Centre, CEI/CRBC, at the University of Rennes 2, France. She recently completed a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. The author of Community Politics and the Peace Process in Contemporary Northern Irish Drama (Peter Lang, 2011), she has also published articles in New Theatre Quarterly, Etudes Irlandaises, Caleidoscopio, and edited book collections.


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