HISTORY
T H E AT E R
Spectatorship in the Age of Surveillance
The Global South
miriam felton - dansk y, jacob gallagher ross & tom sellar , editors
pamila gupta , christopher j . lee , marissa j . moorman & sandhya shukla , editors
a special issue of THEATER
a special issue of R ADICAL HISTORY REVIEW
Histories, Politics, Maps
This special issue of Radical
Contributors to this spe‑
History Review offers a range of
cial issue investigate the
perspectives on the intellectual
ways surveillance and the
formation of the global South.
fields of theater and perfor‑
Spanning time periods and objects
mance inform one another.
of study across the global South,
Considering forms of surveil‑ Will Rawls and Claudia Rankine’s What Remains, We’re Watching, 2017. Photo by Julieta Cervantes. Courtesy of Live Arts Bard.
the essays develop new theoreti‑
lance from government mass
cal frameworks for thinking about
spying to data mining to all-
geography, inequality, and subjec‑
seeing social networks, the
tivity. Contributors investigate the
contributors demonstrate how surveillance has found its way into
construction of gender and racial
our lives, both online and off, and how theater and performance—
formation in the global South and
art forms predicated on heightened experiences of viewing—might help us recognize it. This issue includes scripts, photographs, essays, interviews, and reviews from Live Arts Bard’s 2017 performance biennial We’re Watching, a series of commissioned performances paired with a conference of scholars and artists. The performances focus on the appropriation and integration of surveillance technologies into theater and performance, such as a piece that uses Python code and Twitter data to create perfor‑ mance text, and one that uses an interplay of video projection, movement, and poetry. Drawing on these performances and more, contributors collectively argue that contemporary surveillance is
Penny Siopis, panel from Late and Soon triptych, 2013.
also explore what is politically and theoretically at stake in considering
under-studied places like Guyana, or peripheries like Melanesia. One essay considers how encounters between spaces in the global South, specifically between Lebanon and West Africa, help to refocus atten‑ tion from the preoccupations of northern nations with their former colonies to the frictions of decolonization. Several articles focus on the role of popular culture in regard to the geopolitical formation of the global South, with topics ranging from film to music to the career of Muhammad Ali.
characterized by both anonymous systems of digital control and
Contributors
human behaviors enacted by individuals.
Afro-Asian Networks Research Collective, Phineas Bbaala, Emily Callaci, Aharon
Contributors David Bruin, Annie Dorsen, Shonni Enelow, Miriam Felton-Dansky, Jacob Gallagher-Ross, Caden Manson, John H. Muse, Jemma Nelson, Jennifer Parker-
de Grassi, Pamila Gupta, Mingwei Huang, Sean Jacobs, Maurice Jr. M. LaBelle, Christopher J. Lee, Roseann Liu, Marissa J. Moorman, Michelle Moyd, Ronald C. Po, Savannah Shange, Sandhya Shukla, Pahole Sookkasikon, Quito Swan, Sarah Van Beurden, Sarah E. Vaughn, Jelmer Vos, Keith B. Wagner
Starbuck, Alexandro Segade, Tom Sellar
Pamila Gupta is Associate Professor at Wits Institute for Social and Economic
Miriam Felton-Dansky is Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance at Bard College. Jacob Gallagher-Ross is Assistant Professor of English
Research ( WISER) at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Christopher J. Lee is Associate Professor of History at Lafayette
and drama at the University of Toronto and the author of Theaters of the
College. Marissa J. Moorman is Associate Professor of History at Indiana
Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage. Tom Sellar is
University. Sandhya Shukla is Associate Professor of American Studies and
Professor of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama
English at the University of Virginia.
and the editor of Theater.
T H E AT E R
HISTORY
February 100 pages, 55 illustrations Vol. 48, no. 1
April 227 pages, 16 illustrations Vol. 18, no. 2 (131)
paper, 978‑1‑4780‑0102‑7, $12.00/£9.99
paper, 978‑1‑4780‑0098‑3, $14.00/£11.99
37