Raising the ghosts of justice
Staging time and the memory of Empire in The Trial of Governor Eyre
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3877932 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jason Allen-Paisant (0000-0002-5705-0522, University of Leeds, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 245-259 |
| Publication date | 2019-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cultural Dynamics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0921-3740 • E-ISSN: 1461-7048 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0921374019847566 |
| OpenAlex | W2909362112 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 7 |
I examine the staging of time, justice and performance in The Trial of Governor Eyre, investigating what this site-specific performance reveals about the experience of time in the context of colonial violence. In doing so, I show that the work's discourse on temporality reflects a vital sense of performativity within an Afro-diasporic context. The work's use of temporality, besides reflecting a cultural adaptation, allows for a remoulding of forms, coupling law and theatre in confronting Eyre's mass executions of 1865. This remoulding of forms (law as theatre, theatre as law) provides a potential for postcolonial witnessing not available when either performance protocol is used on its own. Using Blazevic's and Cale Feldman's concept of 'misperformance', I argue that this play-trial arises out of a Benjaminian sense of historicity, providing an experience of inchoate justice that finds fulfilment in the present. The Trial of Governor Eyre points, more broadly, to a new 'problem-space' in African diaspora political theory, where resistance against colonial structures of oppression is increasingly mounted on the ground of justice itself and through which the legal apparatuses of colonialism become a site of critical memory. Through the play's deployment of ritual and its plastic moulding of time, 1865 is enlisted as a key historical conjuncture for thinking through the cultural disenchantment of race, but also of the formalist, creative resources that can be mobilised for reimagining humanness in the contemporary moment
Aesthetics · Art · Colonialism · Diaspora · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Temporality · Transitional justice · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |