Insistence

Gilles Deleuze, borrowing from Maurice Blanchot’s distinctive vocabulary in The Space of Literature, offers death as the ultimate example of the event. In this paper, I propose reversing the current of concept-metaphor against a certain performance theory of sovereignty and ask, not what the concept-metaphor death does for the thought of the event, but what the concept-metaphor event does for the thought of death on the hunger strike in order to explore the divide between the space of dying and the space of politics, which are incompatibly distinct and yet inextricably linked. Revealing an irreducible anachrony between two deaths — the passage of time that separates dying as pure potentiality from death as a radically contingent event that comes either too early or too late — I argue that the political efficacy of hunger striking depends less on the consummation of death in the immediacy of an ecstatic moment than on the prolongation of this interval of time by potentially endless repetitive enactments, which imply both finality and incompletion.

Undergraduate Research and the Public Humanities

This article proposes that an unexplored avenue of pedagogy in undergraduate research lies in courses that merge English and the public humanities. These disciplines often have shared goals, including increased interest in the humanities and engagement with local communities, greater accessibility to scholarly materials, more research opportunities for and fewer burdens on instructors, and more frequent occasions for scholars at all levels to participate in knowledge making. Examining a course titled Writing About Public Problems, this article argues that undergraduates are capable of undertaking theoretical, creative, and practical writing and research when paired with empirical data collection on public stakeholders. Additionally, performance theory can facilitate experiential learning and a greater connection in undergraduate public humanities work between academics and the publics with which they seek to communicate.

Carnivalesque, Liminality and Social Drama: Characterising the Anti-Structural Potential of Theyyam

The cultural and ritual performance of Theyyam in Northern Kerala, considered as a reflection of the war cry against the caste system and oppression, conducts subversion of the social hierarchy. The chosen deity by the performer for a transitory symbolisation expresses the collective outrage of the oppressed and exploited people. This research paper enquires about the anti-structural characteristics exhibited by the performance of Theyyam. In the context of Richard Schechner’s performance theory, it attempts to trace the characterisation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, Victor Turner’s liminality and social drama in the transitional performance of Theyyam that mostly relies on interim separation and reintegration. The expression of antipathy to the hierarchy in Bakhtinian carnival, the anti-structural emphasis in Turnarian liminality, and the deconstructive-reconstructive stages in social drama elucidate the symbolic delineation of the performance of Theyyam. The analytical findings of the paper derived from the discussion of the three concepts reveal that the performance of Theyyam is rooted in its anti-structural characteristics. The performer is subject to continuous alteration in the identity that intermediates the idiosyncrasy between the deity and the human being. It symbolises the temporal transition from the oppressed to the equivalent status of the dominator that occurs as part of counter-culture, through status reversal and inversion.

‘Crush! Crush! Crush!’: Towards a Finished Story of Pol Pot’s Trial and Death?

To this day, the trial of Pol Pot in July 1997 in Anlong Veng remains an underexplored topic, possibly because it is seen as a parody of justice organised by a rival Khmer Rouge faction. Images of the event show an old and fragile man who has to be supported by guards to the meeting hall. Drawing on anthropologist Ashley Thompson’s study of the ‘substitute body of the king’, the paper examines the corporeal strategies at play in the trial and in the display and cremation of Pol Pot’s body in April 1998. Using a range of materials (articles in media, pictures, videos, and artworks), it brings into conversation ‘forensic aesthetics’, performance theory, and contemporary visual arts to investigate the role of Pol Pot’s body as a political tool in the troubled context of post-transition Cambodia.

Queer Feelings: Love and Loss in the Letters of Horace Walpole

This essay looks at the letters of Horace Walpole through the lens of the contemporary performance theory of José Muñoz in order to suggest the ways in which Walpole’s feelings in the past reach us with a hope for the future. By looking at touchstones in Horace Walpole’s life, I look for a model of queer relationality that is centuries ahead of its time.

Rogationtide Perambulation as Performative Law

This article draws on performance theory to examine perambulation practices in late medieval and early modern England. Rogation was originally a devotional celebration that also entailed a ritual walking of parish boundaries to define communities as legal and administrative units. Perambulators sometimes seized upon the occasion to draw attention to a culture of obligation that had been neglected. This essay looks at two such moments—the 1381 Revolt of St. Albans, when the commons rose against the abbot in the form of a perambulation, and a 1520–21 property dispute at South Kyme, Lincolnshire at Ashby Heath. In these instances, perambulators used the occasion of the public recognition of property boundaries as an opportunity to stage a complaint in an act of “performative law.” The complainants asserted their rights and liberties by means of a theatrical form that invited participants and spectators to assent in specific legal claims to the land in dispute.

Patricia Herrera. Nuyorican Feminist Performance: From the Café to Hip Hop Theater

Patricia Herrera fills a void in scholarship on the Nuyorican Poets Café. Her focus on women performers ( performeras) and their writing and performance challenges these artists’ marginalization and erasure, while the Nuyorican feminist aesthetic she proposes, as situated within intersectional feminism, underscores the work’s critical intervention in feminist performance theory.

EFFECT OF COGNITIVE CRAFTING ON GRADUATION RATE OF STUDENTS IN FEDERAL UNIVERSITIES, SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA

The study investigated the effect of cognitive crafting on the graduation rate of students in Federal Universities, South East, Nigeria. The study is anchored on Elgar’s Performance Theory of organizations. The survey research method was adopted for the study, making use of structured questionnaire as instruments for data collection. Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Hypotheses were tested using the simple linear regression. The study found that cognitive crafting had significant positive effect on the graduation rate of students in Federal Universities, South East, Nigeria (r 0.803; P < 0.05). It was therefore, concluded that cognitive capabilities which promote students’ graduation rate enhances the overall performance of Universities in South East, Nigeria. The study recommended that Universities should be properly funded to encourage the employment and retention of professionals with cognitive capabilities that would enhance students’ graduation rate and overall performance of the Universities. JEL: B10; A02; C06 <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0770/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>