The Garment Workers’ Union’s Pageant of Unity (1940) as manifestation of transnational working-class culture

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10836282
AutoresMałgorzata Drwal (0000-0003-4871-1170, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, autor de correspondencia)
Año2022
Volumen59
Número1
Páginas75-87
Fecha de publicación2022-04-08
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaTydskrif vir letterkunde (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0041-476X • E-ISSN: 2309-9070
EditorialAcademy of Science of South Africa (PUBLISHER • ZA)
DOI10.17159/tl.v59i1.8842
OpenAlexW4225976518
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas12

In this article, I examine the Garment Workers’ Union’s theatre as a manifestation of transnational working-class culture in the 1940s. Analysing Pageant of Unity (1940), a play in which Afrikaans and English alternate to express the equality of Afrikaans- and English-speaking workers in the face of exploitation, I offer an attempt to escape the confines of a national literature as linked to a single language. I demonstrate how the political pageant—a genre typical of socialist propaganda and international trade unionism—was adapted to a South African context. This drama is, therefore, viewed as a product of cultural mobility between Europe, the United States, and South Africa. Assuming the ‘follow the actor’ approach of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, I identify a network of interconnections between the nodes formed by human (drama practitioners and theoreticians, socialist organisers) and nonhuman actors (texts representing socialist drama conventions, in particular agitprop techniques). Tracing the inspirations and adaptations of conventions, I argue that Pageant of Unity most evidently realises the prescriptions outlined by the Russian drama theoretician Vsevolod Meyerhold whose approach influenced Guy Routh, one of the pageant’s creators. Thus, I focus on how this propaganda production utilises certain features of the Soviet avant-garde theatre, which testifies to the transnational character of South African working-class culture

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Drama · Literature · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Working class · African history and culture studies · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Law · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact