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This chapter seeks to set-up and investigate a key question at the heart of the inter-relation between politics and aesthetics: the inevitable gap and potential conflict between presence and representation made manifest in the internal contradictions and recurrent tensions of the 'distribution of the sensible' (Rancière 2004: 12). It examines how the practice of 'staging the people' might be considered central to imaging and constituting 'the people' in an increasingly theatricalised social formation and to managing their 'political claim' (Rancière 1999: 87—88). If the theatrical logic of democratic representation is dependent upon the exercise of a political claim to represent 'the people'; coextensively, the performative construct of 'the people' is dependent on the aesthetic logic of representation and its capacity to frame, codify and remediate the presence of people per se. Enacted through representation—recalling Marx's dictum in the Eighteenth Brumaire that 'they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented'—'the people' nonetheless remain different from, and in excess of, any particular representation or mode of representation. As Rancière insists, 'the people' are 'always more or less than the people'; the locus of an 'internal division' and index of the unbridgeable gap between presence and representation that constitutes politics' primary condition and site of operation (1999: 22, 87). This gap, the chapter argues, appears—and re-appears—as a tear in the very fabric of the visible; as a crisis of representation 'in representation' (Frank 2010: 35) that exceeds and undermines the normalising effects of politics as show. It thereby serves to re-open representation as the ground of the political as such, and as the site of its re-appearance within the otherwise bounded theatricality of the representational regime. The argument builds on comparative analysis of two contemporary theatre works explicitly concerned with 'staging the people', performed in Manchester and Salford in the Spring of 2016: Quarantine's Quartet and Rimini Protokoll's 100% Salford. Both works examine how the lived experience of everyday lives might be brought to the stage through an apparent logic of presentation rather than representation: by ordinary people occupying the space of theatrical performance rather than seeing themselves and their lives represented by others (i.e. 'actors' – whether theatrical or political). Following the reading of these (pre-Brexit) works, the chapter seeks to question whether the aesthetic shift towards self-presentation might correlate with a broader critique of the structures of political representation, or whether the frame of representation anticipates, accommodates and appropriates the materiality of presence in advance.

The image of the disaster at sea—the shipwreck staged for the spectator—is a highly conventionalised form of aesthetic encounter with the suffering of others, whose iconic operation serves as a reminder of the inseparability of the event from its mode of representation. The drama of the image, the chapter argues, remains dependent on the visual dramaturgy of the event of representation (its 'theatricality'), and the construction of a spectator position framing the image's withdrawal from the world of pure presentation (its 'authenticity'). The chapter investigates the relationship between the apparent authenticity of the scenes depicted and their reliance on the theatricality of the of the image as the locus of the spectator's political subjectification. It argues that the image functions as a drama staged to enable the construction of world spectatorship as a privileged political standpoint, and demonstrates how this position operates within a racialized representational regime.

From publisher's website: Thinking Through Theatre and Performance presents a bold and innovative approach to the study of theatre and performance. Instead of topics, genres, histories or theories, the book starts with the questions that theatre and performance are uniquely capable of asking: How does theatre function as a place for seeing and hearing? How do not only bodies and voices but also objects and media perform? How do memories, emotions and ideas continue to do their work when the performance is over? And how can theatre and performance intervene in social, political and environmental structures and frameworks? Written by leading international scholars, each chapter of this volume is built around a key performance example, and detailed discussions introduce the methodologies and theories that help us understand how these performances are practices of enquiry into the world. Thinking through Theatre and Performance is essential for those involved in making, enjoying, critiquing and studying theatre, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the questions that theatre and performance ask of themselves and of us.

Thinking Through Theatre and Performance presents a bold and innovative approach to the study of theatre and performance. Instead of topics, genres, histories or theories, the book starts with the questions that theatre and performance are uniquely capable of asking: How does theatre function as a place for seeing and hearing? How do not only bodies and voices but also objects and media perform? How do memories, emotions and ideas continue to do their work when the performance is over? And how can theatre and performance intervene in social, political and environmental structures and frameworks? Written by leading international scholars, each chapter of this volume is built around a key performance example, and detailed discussions introduce the methodologies and theories that help us understand how these performances are practices of enquiry into the world. Thinking through Theatre and Performance is essential for those involved in making, enjoying, critiquing and studying theatre, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the questions that theatre and performance ask of themselves and of us. Edited by Adrian Kear

This essay on Black Smoke Rising (Tim Shaw, 2014), returns to some of the core political and ethical questions concerning the inter-relationship between representation and repetition in the aesthetic experience of images of suffering: What's at stake in looking at images of suffering, and how is the spectator - and the cultural politics of spectatorship - implicated in the image as integral to its construction and operation? What's the relationship between the content of the image, its material tracing of historical presence, and its mode of representation? What's at stake in representation as a making present again of historical trauma and social suffering? Why do we keep on looking, long after the passing of the event represented, as if looking keeps open the wound of suffering through its repetition and circulation in the form of the image? These questions, prompted by Shaw's return to the images of torture emanating from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as resources for further image-making, 10 years after the event, are investigated through a double-handed reading of both Black Smoke Rising as a performative/scenographic event, and a staged return to the author's own writing on the Abu Ghraib image-event, 'The Anxiety of the Image', ten years after its publication in Parallax's special issue 'Visceral Reason' (Vol. 10, No. 1). The essay thereby aims to question the aesthetic-politics of repetition - and the cultural anxiety about repetition - integral to the theatrical temporality of the logic of representation. It examines how the continuous circulation of the iconic image – the image of 'The Hooded Man' most especially -- reinforces the ideologically anticipatory mode of anxiety and explores the extent to which Shaw's aesthetic event re-deploys and re-stages the spectatorial experience of anxiety in a politically critical visual economy.

From publisher's website: The field of performance studies analyses the production and impact of on-stage performance, such as in a theatre or circus, and off-stage performance, such as cultural rituals and political protests. Performance Studies: Key Words, Concepts and Theories introduces students to 34 key topics seen as paramount to the future of performance studies in a series of short, engaging essays by an international team of distinguished scholars. Each essay contributes to the wide-ranging, adventurous and conscientious nature that makes performance studies such an innovative, valuable and exciting field.

In recent years we have witnessed an increasing convergence of work in International Politics and Performance Studies around the troubled, and often troubling, relationship between politics and aesthetics. Whilst examination of political aesthetics, aesthetic politics, and politics of aesthetic practice has been central to research in both disciplines for some time, the emergence of a distinctive 'performative turn' in International Politics and a critical return to the centrality of politics and the concept of 'the political' in Performance Studies highlights the importance of investigating the productivity of bringing the methods and approaches of the two fields of enquiry into dialogue and mutual relation. Exploring a wide range of issues including rioting, youth-driven protests, border security practices and the significance of cultural awareness in war, this text provides an accessible and cutting edge survey of the intersection of international politics and performance examining issues surrounding the politics of appearance, image, event and place; and discusses the development and deployment of innovative critical and creative research methods, from auto-ethnography to site-specific theatre-making, from philosophical aesthetics to the aesthetic thought of new securities scenario-planning. The book's focus throughout is on the materiality of performance practices—on the politics of making, spectating, and participating in a variety of modes as political actors and audiences—whilst also seeking to explicate the performative dynamics of creative and critical thinking. Structured thematically and framed by a detailed introduction and conclusion, the focus is on producing a dialogue between contributors and providing an essential reference point in this developing field. This work is essential reading for students of politics and performance and will be of great interest to students and scholars of IR, performance studies and cultural studies. Edited by Adrian Kear.

From the publisher's website: In recent years we have witnessed an increasing convergence of work in International Politics and Performance Studies around the troubled, and often troubling, relationship between politics and aesthetics. Whilst examination of political aesthetics, aesthetic politics, and politics of aesthetic practice has been central to research in both disciplines for some time, the emergence of a distinctive 'performative turn' in International Politics and a critical return to the centrality of politics and the concept of 'the political' in Performance Studies highlights the importance of investigating the productivity of bringing the methods and approaches of the two fields of enquiry into dialogue and mutual relation.

Beginning from the conviction that appearance matters – and matters as the very 'stuff' and substance of the kind of things we call performance – this issue examines the materiality of appearance as a key component of theatrical and social events. Exploring the role appearance plays in a range of cultural forms – from body art to live TV, shamanic invocation to video installation, magic show to 'non-professional' performance – On Appearance charts the construction, circulation and contestation of some of the imagined possibilities, lived realities, political identifications, and performative opportunities opened up by thinking through the logic of appearance. As well as examining the correlation between modes of appearance and practices of disappearance, and investigating their inscription in the recuperative dynamics of power, On Appearance explicates the ways in which appearance matters in affecting and positively producing the conditions, forms and relations structuring what Jacques Rancière calls 'the distribution of the sensible': the political organisation of sense-making activities within the intelligible framework of the visible. Edited by Adrian Kear.

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on September 1 1997, prompted public demonstrations of grief on an almost unprecented global scale. But, while global media coverage of the events following her death appeared to create an international 'community of mourning', popular reacions in fact reflected the complexities of the princess's public image and the tensions surrounding the popular conception of royalty. Mourning Diana examines the events which followed the death of Diana as a series of cultural-political phenomena, from the immediate aftermath as crowds gathered in public spaces and royal palaces, to the state funeral in Westminister Abbey, examining the performance of grief and the involvement of the global media in the creation of narratives and spectacles relating to the commemoration of her life. Contributors investigate the complex iconic status of Diana, as a public figure able to sustain a host of alternative identifications, and trace the posthumous romanticisation of aspects of her life such as her charity activism and her relationship with Dodi al Fayed. The contributors argue that the events following the death of Diana dramatised a complex set of cultural tensions in which the boundaries dividing nationhood and citizenship, charity and activism, private feeling and public politics, were redrawn. Edited by Adrian Kear.

In recent years we have witnessed an increasing convergence of work in International Politics and Performance Studies around the troubled, and often troubling, relationship between politics and aesthetics. Whilst examination of political aesthetics, aesthetic politics, and politics of aesthetic practice has been central to research in both disciplines for some time, the emergence of a distinctive 'performative turn' in International Politics and a critical return to the centrality of politics and the concept of 'the political' in Performance Studies highlights the importance of investigating t

"In recent years we have witnessed an increasing convergence of work in International Politics and Performance Studies around the troubled and often troubling, relationship between politics and aesthetics. Whilst examination of political aesthetics, aesthetic politics, and politics of aesthetic practice has been central to research in both disciplines for some time, the emergence of a distinctive performative turn in International Politics and a critical return to the centrality of politics and the concept of the political in Performance Studies highlights the importance of investigating the productivity of bringing the methods and approaches of the two fields of enquiry into dialogue and mutual relation. Exploring a wide range of issues including rioting, youth driven protests, border security practices and the significance of cultural awareness in war, this text provides an accessible and cutting edge survey of the intersection of international politics and performance examining issues surrounding the politics of appearance, image, event and place and discusses the development and deployment of innovative critical and creative research methods, from auto ethnography to site specific theatre making, from philosophical aesthetics to the aesthetic thought of new securities scenario planning The book's focus throughout is on the materiality of performance practices on the politics of making, spectating, and participating in a variety of modes as political actors and audiences whilst also seeking to explicate the performative dynamics of creative and critical thinking. Structured thematically and framed by a detailed introduction and conclusion, the focus is on producing a dialogue between contributors and providing an essential reference point in this developing field. This work is essential reading for students of politics and performance and will be of great interest to students and scholars of IR performance studies and cultural studies "--