Building on recent scholarship, such as, among others, Mahony and Clarke (2012), Grossberg (2010), and Crosthwaite (2011), this paper analyses the phenomenology and causes of the riots in an attempt to make meaning of what Stuart Hall and Doreen Massey (2013: 55) have recently defined a “conjuncture”, “a period when different social, political, economic and ideological contradictions that are at work in society and have given it a specific and distinctive shape come together, producing a crisis of some kind”. Building on the verbatim play The Riots (2011), by the South African novelist and playwright Gillian Slovo, this paper explores also the way in which, although through violent, confused and contradictory means, the London rioters aligned themselves with wider communities of consumption and desire. Looting brought to the fore the inconsistencies and fissures of the ruling neo-liberal paradigm and its model of citizenship based on individualism, competition and consumption, and thriving on crisis.
Challenging dominant discourses of risk and crisis: Verbatim drama and the 2011 British riots / L. De Michelis. ((Intervento presentato al convegno Crisis, Risk, and New Regionalisms in Europe tenutosi a Sesto S. Giovanni nel 2014.
Challenging dominant discourses of risk and crisis: Verbatim drama and the 2011 British riots
L. De MichelisPrimo
2014
Abstract
Building on recent scholarship, such as, among others, Mahony and Clarke (2012), Grossberg (2010), and Crosthwaite (2011), this paper analyses the phenomenology and causes of the riots in an attempt to make meaning of what Stuart Hall and Doreen Massey (2013: 55) have recently defined a “conjuncture”, “a period when different social, political, economic and ideological contradictions that are at work in society and have given it a specific and distinctive shape come together, producing a crisis of some kind”. Building on the verbatim play The Riots (2011), by the South African novelist and playwright Gillian Slovo, this paper explores also the way in which, although through violent, confused and contradictory means, the London rioters aligned themselves with wider communities of consumption and desire. Looting brought to the fore the inconsistencies and fissures of the ruling neo-liberal paradigm and its model of citizenship based on individualism, competition and consumption, and thriving on crisis.Pubblicazioni consigliate
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