{"title":"From Plinth to Stage: Protest Theater as Historiographic Activism in The Fall","authors":"Susanna Sacks","doi":"10.1632/S0030812922000967","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay examines theater's role in recording public history, positing a performance-sensitive approach to historiography against the singularity of both monuments and canons. The recent removal of monuments has drawn renewed attention to the problem of singular public histories. I argue for a polyvocal, repertory model of public history as theorized through the collectively written 2016 play The Fall, which records the events of the 2015–16 student protests in South Africa. The essay begins by contextualizing the play in the longer history of workshop theater and educational inequality in South Africa before specifically examining its approach to public history. Such performance-sensitive historiography enacts anticolonial epistemologies by replacing the singular representation of monumentalism with copresence amid contested histories.","PeriodicalId":47559,"journal":{"name":"PMLA-PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA","volume":"16 1","pages":"68 - 82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"PMLA-PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1632/S0030812922000967","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Abstract This essay examines theater's role in recording public history, positing a performance-sensitive approach to historiography against the singularity of both monuments and canons. The recent removal of monuments has drawn renewed attention to the problem of singular public histories. I argue for a polyvocal, repertory model of public history as theorized through the collectively written 2016 play The Fall, which records the events of the 2015–16 student protests in South Africa. The essay begins by contextualizing the play in the longer history of workshop theater and educational inequality in South Africa before specifically examining its approach to public history. Such performance-sensitive historiography enacts anticolonial epistemologies by replacing the singular representation of monumentalism with copresence amid contested histories.
期刊介绍：
PMLA is the journal of the Modern Language Association of America. Since 1884, PMLA has published members" essays judged to be of interest to scholars and teachers of language and literature. Four issues each year (January, March, May, and October) present essays on language and literature, and the November issue is the program for the association"s annual convention. (Up until 2009, there was also an issue in September, the Directory, containing a listing of the association"s members, a directory of departmental administrators, and other professional information. Beginning in 2010, that issue will be discontinued and its contents moved to the MLA Web site.)
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