以下はキーノート≪基調講演≫key-note-addressから紹介！インドの研究者はまずあの最悪の事件から問題提起した。レイプされ殺される少女や女子学生が続発したインドの奥深い社会の亀裂、ある面、stratificationの表面の裏にものすごい憎悪、憤懣、隠ぺいが絡んでいる。他者に危害を加える存在は己をまた切り裂くような存在そのものの「否定」につながる絶望、怒り、憎悪、嫉妬などが層をなしていることが、伺われる。
単にセクシュアリティーだけの問題でもなく、殺人（快楽殺人、意図的憎悪の発散、隠ぺいによる情動の拡散）が伴う事に、人間の属性にある破壊衝動のようなものが潜んでいるようだ。他者の破壊⇔自己破壊
FIRT/IFTR World Congress, University of Warwick, 2014 8
Performing Protests: Spaces of Stratified Resistance
Keynote
The first anniversary of the traumatic rape incident, which shook the nation (India) and had international reverberations,
was commemorated (16 Dec 2013) with wide-scale performances. It seemed that through performances around the city,
following the trail of the bus which had contoured the city while the brutal crime was committed, the memory of it could be
replaced by a positive wave of change and interventions. Performances and performance art created as an aftermath of the
rape and the public outrage premiered throughout the year, and now joined the three-day commemoration, some in new
versions (Maya Rao’s ‘walk’), and some altogether new performances as well.
Amongst the new performances was ‘Nirbhaya’, created out of a workshop and directed by a South African director, which
premiered at Edinburgh, winning awards and accolades, and travelled to India around the same time.
The performances varied widely in their response to a number of key issues such as violence, protection and surveillance,
the neo-liberal state and its need to exhibit ‘free’ choice in terms of sexuality and around the sudden decision by the Indian
supreme court to strike down the de-criminalization of same sex relationships (on the eve of the anniversary).
Although seen in a positive light the stratification within the performances were evident raising the question as to whether
we see it as an inclusive civil space, where activism and the political, even in a limited capacity, carves a space for itself
(Reinelt) or creating a growing division between the civil and political space (Chatterjee).
I see this as an important moment which combines historical and contemporary anomalies initiating debates around the
colonial and nationalist discourses, the representation of women, civil codes and laws granting privileged immunity to the
male citizen as well as the contradictions of a post globalized world and neo-liberal policies of the Indian state. The rising
political power of the Hindu fundamentalists in the name of nurturing industrial growth gets interwoven with these issues. The
anomaly reflects the condition of a number of post colonial nations, going through a period of transition, and a dramaturgy
of potential activism.
Bishnupriya Dutt
School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Bishnupriya Dutt is Professor of Theatre and Performance
studies, in the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, Delhi India. She played an important
role in setting up the first department of its kind in India
to study the arts. Her research areas include colonial and
post colonial histories of theatre, feminist readings of
Indian Theatre and contemporary performative practices
and popular culture. Her works include Engendering
Performance, Indian Woman Performers in Search of an
Identity, (Sage Delhi 2010), Actress Stories : Binodini and
Amal Allana, (in Aston and Case, eds.: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007), Historicizing Actress Stories : English Actresses
in India (1839-42), (Singh, OUP 2009), Jatra and the
Marginalization of the Mythological theme, (in Chaturvedi,ed.
Rawat, 2008), In Dialogue with Histories: The Dancer and the
Actress, (in Sarkar and Burridge, Routledge 2011), Theatre
and Subaltern Histories, Chekov Adaptations in Post Colonial
India (in Clayton and Meerson, eds. ,Routledge, London,
2012), Unsafe spaces of Theatre and Feminism in India;
Identity Politics Forum, TRI Issue 37.1, March 2012. Along
with colleagues from JNU, she has an ongoing research
collaboration (UGC and UKIERI sponsored) with the School
of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick
on ‘gendered citizenship; manifestations and performance’.
