The Political Dimension of Dance: Mouffe’s Theory of Agonism and Choreography

Abstract

This book combines performance analysis with contemporary political philosophy to advance new ways of understanding both political performance and the performativity of the politics of the street. Our times are pre-eminently political times and have drawn radical responses from many theatre and performance practitioners. However, a decade of conflict in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the eruption of new social movements around the world, the growth of anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation struggles, the upsurge of protests against the blockades of neoliberalism, and the rising tide of dissent and anger against corporate power, with its exorbitant social costs, have left theatre and performance scholarship confronting something of a dilemma: how to theorize the political antagonisms of our day? Drawing on the resources of ‘post-Marxist’ political thinkers such as Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière, the book explores how new theoretical horizons have been made available for performance analysis.