Performing Trauma in Central Africa Shadows of Empire [Hardcover]

What are the stakes of performance in a time of war? How is artistic expression prone to manipulation by the state and international humanitarian organizations? From the standpoint of empire, Laura Edmondson explores cultural production that responds to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the twenty-year civil war in northern Uganda, and regional conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She examines memorial ceremonies, plays, indigenous performance, NGO media campaigns, and contemporary dance to reveal how artists and cultural workers challenge state and humanitarian narratives in the shadow of empire and how empire, in turn, infiltrates creative capacities. Carefully contextualizing these narratives within the charged political terrain of the Great Lakes Region, Edmondson deepens our understanding of the role of creative expression and cultural agency in conflict and postconflict zones.

Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
Introduction
1. Competitive Memory in the Great Lakes: Touring Genocide
2. Marketing Trauma and the Theatre of War in Northern Uganda
3. Trauma, Inc. in Postgenocide Rwanda
4. Repetition, Rupture, and Ruined: Narratives from the Congo
5. Gifted by Trauma: The Branding of Post-Conflict Northern Uganda
6. Confessions of a Failed Theatre Activist
Afterword: Faustin Linyekula and the Labors of Hope
Bibliography
Index

Passionate and brilliantly argued,Performing Trauma in Central Africailluminates the complicities, paradoxes, and problematics at the intersection of humanitarian activism and the performance of trauma. While performance studies has at times succumbed to a na?ve faith in the transformative power of performance in zones of conflict, Edmondson illuminates how the affective labor of such endeavors can be so potently marshaled for such problematic ends.

Laura Edmondson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Theater at Dartmouth College, where she ilCÐ