Unsettling space : contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre / Joanne Tompkins

By:

Tompkins, Joanne

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Studies in international performancePublication details: Basingstoke : Palgrave MacMillan, cop. 2006Description: xii, 204 p.; 22 cmISBN:

9781403985620

Subject(s):

Contents:

Conté: Introduction: Spatial coordinates -- 1. Mapping Australian space in theatre -- 2. Monuments -- 3. Contamination -- 4. The borders of identity -- Haunted pasts and methektic futures

Summary: "Unsettling Space combines a study of Australian theatre since 1979 with the spatial politics that structure Australian cultural identity. Proposing a highly original theoretical framework for analyzing drama (not just in Australia, but across the world), this fascinating study examines the anxieties that emerge from contested spatiality. Theatre draws attention to 'unsettlement' in Australia, the disruptive process by which 'settlement' took place. Unsettlement emerges in recurring anxieties regarding the difficulties in settling the landscape, Aboriginal dispossession, and/or fears of invasion. Rather than reading theatre chronologically or geographically, Unsettling Space focuses on monuments, contamination and borders. Staged monuments have the potential to destabilise a culture's symbolic memory by exploring absence and loss, in addition to their role as placeholders for sanctioned history. Including chapters on 'contamination' (in the form of asylum seekers in Australian detention centres, or theatrical investigations of nuclear fallout in Maralinga) and an exploration of how 'identity spaces' are established and reworked in theatre to productively reinterpret history and politics, Joanne Tompkins' study uses the Australian context as a basis for constructing analytical frames which can be usefully applied to other countries and cultures" -- Contracoberta

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Home library	Call number	Copy number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Llibre	Biblioteca Barcelona	Biblioteca Barcelona BCN Lliure Accés	792(9) TOM (Browse shelf(Opens below))	1	Available		1900070830

Bibliografia. Índex

"Unsettling Space combines a study of Australian theatre since 1979 with the spatial politics that structure Australian cultural identity. Proposing a highly original theoretical framework for analyzing drama (not just in Australia, but across the world), this fascinating study examines the anxieties that emerge from contested spatiality. Theatre draws attention to 'unsettlement' in Australia, the disruptive process by which 'settlement' took place. Unsettlement emerges in recurring anxieties regarding the difficulties in settling the landscape, Aboriginal dispossession, and/or fears of invasion. Rather than reading theatre chronologically or geographically, Unsettling Space focuses on monuments, contamination and borders. Staged monuments have the potential to destabilise a culture's symbolic memory by exploring absence and loss, in addition to their role as placeholders for sanctioned history. Including chapters on 'contamination' (in the form of asylum seekers in Australian detention centres, or theatrical investigations of nuclear fallout in Maralinga) and an exploration of how 'identity spaces' are established and reworked in theatre to productively reinterpret history and politics, Joanne Tompkins' study uses the Australian context as a basis for constructing analytical frames which can be usefully applied to other countries and cultures" -- Contracoberta

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