Towards a Non-Anthropocentric 1 Social Imaginary
Posthuman feminist playwriting of the emerging 'species theatre'
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21687908 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Deena Shazly Elshazly (0000-0002-8515-5276, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 74-81 |
| Publication date | 2024-02-17 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Performance Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1352-8165 • E-ISSN: 1469-9990 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13528165.2024.2423487 |
| OpenAlex | W4407565335 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
Reinventing social imaginaries that are compatible with timely advocations towards inclusion and complementarity marks a special interest for this study. Revisiting the concept of social imaginary through the non-anthropocentric lens, this article propagates the emergence of a new social imaginary bound only for the planet, dismantling spatiotemporal restrictions and entrenching (non)human interconnectivity. The argument in this case is the need for the cultivation and dissemination of a planetary social imaginary in replacement of the malfunctioning global imaginary proposed by Manfred Steger in 2008. Aiming at a new figuration of world relationships, numerous trials towards the containment of drastic global ecological dissolution overriding the world are recorded by the turn of the twenty-first century. Almost unanimously, critics announced the rise of planetarity as the new philosophy. Pursuing performative planetarity, this study investigates two theatrical projects – Carla and Lewis by Shonni Enelow and Sila by Chantal Bilodeau – that show resonant features of posthuman feminist playwriting. The study combines Adrienne Rich’s politics of location, Rosi Braidotti’s relational positioning and Una Chaudhuri’s landscape of catastrophe in order to scrutinize scales of transformative co-existence introduced therein. The article significantly introduces what can be called ‘a dramaturgy of planetary becoming’ which is rooted in developing new sensibilities that deny dichotomous renditions of relations between human beings and other species of the planet. Such a dramaturgy foregrounds theatrical practices that embody relational existence through de-anthropocizing stage re/presentation. As rewriting planetary relations becomes a must in light of the tangible and aggravating impact of global climate change, art and criticism would engender a valid set of criteria to re/evaluate the society promoted in works of art. The study concludes that the more non-anthropocentric practices are retrenched in art and in real life, the faster a pro-planetarian public sphere is initiated
Anthropocentrism · Art · Environmental ethics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Philosophy · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics
| Highly cited | No |
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