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Acts of Liberation
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Acts of Liberation

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2021) | Viewed by 26000
Abstract deadline should be 31 October 2020.

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Rand Hazou

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of English and Media Studies, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
Interests: theatre and social justice; prison theatre; applied theatre; Arab and Palestinian theatre; decolonial theatre

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

On the 15th of June in Albuquerque, New Mexico, protestors attempted to pull down a statue of the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate. Oñate is controversial figure who is celebrated as the founding father of the Spanish colony in New Mexico despite being convicted by the Spanish crown for crimes against the Native American inhabitants of the Acoma Pueblo. During the demonstration to tear down the statue, an activist shouted ‘This is an act of decolonisation! This is an act of liberation!’ (Mars and Alcorn, 2020). Similar ‘acts of liberation’ have been staged around the globe in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter protests, with demonstrators tearing down monuments, contesting narratives of shared history, and challenging perceived white and Eurocentric commemorative practices. Taking inspiration from the urgent cry of a black lives matter activist, this is a call for papers that engages with recent ideas, theory, and practices of liberation.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been accompanied by a renewed interest in Black feminist thinkers such as Angela Davis (2003) and bell hooks (1981), black scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois, writers such as James Baldwin (1963), and the philosophy of self-determination as expressed in Stokely and Hamilton’s Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967).

This Special Issue seeks to advance the practice and theory of liberation that builds on a diverse and interdisciplinary body of literature, ranging from the psychology of liberation as expressed in the writings of Erich Fromm (1942) to the pedagogy of liberation as articulated by Paulo Freire (1972). Contributions in the field also include the liberation psychology of Frantz Fanon (1967), who articulated the liberation of the colonial mind as a key site for the struggle for freedom, as well as the liberation philosophy of Enrique Dussel (1985), which provides a critique of modernity and oppressive rationalisation.

The current political upheavals draw attention to the need to explore with renewed critical vigour decolonial approaches to practice, theory, and teaching. Decoloniality proposes that the "coloniality of power" (Quijano, 2000) did not end with colonialism, and that the modern capitalist world-system imposes a racial/ethnic classification of people as a basis for global exploitative and extractive power-structures. According to Walter Mignolo, decoloniality involves “delinking” from Eurocentric categories of thought to “change the terms and not just the content of the conversation” (2007, 459). For Nelson Maldonado-Torres, decoloniality involves the production of “counter-discourses, counter-knowledges, counter-creative acts” aimed at breaking down “hierarchies of difference that dehumanise subjects and communities and that destroy nature” (2016,10).

This Special Issue of the Humanities journal will consider the emancipatory role of culture and the role of the arts in humanising subjects and communities impacted by colonial hierarchies of difference.

This call for papers invites submissions from decolonial and indigenous scholars, practitioners, and activists involved in the production of counter-knowledges and counter-creative acts that challenge the privileging of Western- and European-centric ways of being and knowing.

We hope that authors will engage with conceptions of liberation as explored through the arts and cultural production in general and in the fields of theatre and performance specifically. Contributions are invited that consider the embodied and performative aspects of liberation and how liberation acts, is acted on, or is acted out.

Submission:

Please send an abstract of 300 words and short bio by 31 October 2020 to: [email protected]

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 30 November 2020. Full papers are due 31 March 2021.

Davis, Angela. 2003. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press.

Dussel, Enrique, 1985. Philosophy of Liberation. Trans. Aquila Martinez and Christine Morkovsky, Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

Freire, Paulo. 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. by Myra Bergman Ramos, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Fromm, Erich. 1942. The Fear of Freedom. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Fanon, Frantz. 1967. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. by Constance Farrington, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

hooks, bell. 1981. Ain't I a woman: Black women and feminism. Boston: South End Press.

Maldonado-Torre, Nelson. 2016. ‘Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality’, Frantz Fanon Foundation and website of the Caribbean Studies Association, October 26. 10. Available online: www.fondation-frantzfanon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/maldonado-torres_outline_of_ten_theses-10.23.16.pdf.

Mars, Roman and Alcorn, Stan. 2020. ‘Return of Oñate’s Foot’, 99% Invisible, Episode 404, 30 June. Available online: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/return-of-onates-foot/

Mignolo, Walter. 2017. ‘Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-Coloniality’, Cultural Studies 21.2–3: 459–514.

Quijano, Anibal. 2000. "Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America." Nepentla: Views from the South. 1.3: 533–580.

Dr. Rand Hazou
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • theatre and liberation
  • decolonial theatre and performing arts
  • arts and humanization.

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 2103 KiB  
Article
Performance as Intersectional Resistance: Power, Polyphony and Processes of Abolition
by Omid Tofighian, Rachael Swain, Dalisa Pigram, Bhenji Ra, Chandler Connell, Emmanuel James Brown, Feras Shaheen, Issa El Assaad, Luke Currie-Richardson, Miranda Wheen, Czack (Ses) Bero and Zachary Lopez
Humanities 2022, 11(1), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11010028 - 17 Feb 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3089
Abstract
Australia’s brutal carceral-border regime is a colonial system of intertwining systems of oppression that combine the prison-industrial complex and the border-industrial complex. It is a violent and multidimensional regime that includes an expanding prison industry and onshore and offshore immigration detention centres; locations [...] Read more.
Australia’s brutal carceral-border regime is a colonial system of intertwining systems of oppression that combine the prison-industrial complex and the border-industrial complex. It is a violent and multidimensional regime that includes an expanding prison industry and onshore and offshore immigration detention centres; locations of cruelty, and violent sites for staging contemporary politics and coloniality. This article shares insights into the making of a radical intersectional dance theatre work titled Jurrungu Ngan-ga by Marrugeku, Australia’s leading Indigenous and intercultural dance theatre company. The production, created between 2019–2021, brings together collaborations through and across Indigenous Australian, Kurdish, Iranian, Palestinian, Filipino, Filipinx, and Anglo settler performance, activism and knowledge production. The artistic, political and intellectual dimensions of the show reinforce each other to interrogate Australia’s brutal carceral regime and the concept of the border itself. The article is presented in a polyphonic structure of expanded interviews with the cast and descriptions of the resulting live performance. It identifies radical ways that intersectional and trans-disciplinary performances can, as an ‘act of liberation’, be applied to make visible, embody, address, and help dismantle systems of oppression, control and subjugation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Acts of Liberation)
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16 pages, 1246 KiB  
Article
Unshackling the Body, Mind, and Spirit: Reflections on Liberation and Creative Exchange between San Quentin and Auckland Prisons
by Rand Hazou and Reginold Daniels
Humanities 2022, 11(1), 7; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11010007 - 12 Jan 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3059
Abstract
This article explores a creative project entitled Performing Liberation which sought to empower communities with direct experience of incarceration to create and share creative work as part of transnational dialogue. One of the aims of the project was to facilitate creative dialogue and [...] Read more.
This article explores a creative project entitled Performing Liberation which sought to empower communities with direct experience of incarceration to create and share creative work as part of transnational dialogue. One of the aims of the project was to facilitate creative dialogue and exchange between two incarcerated communities: prisoners at Auckland Prison and prisoners at San Quentin Prison in San Francisco. Written using autoethnographic methods, this co-authored article explores our recollections of key moments in a creative workshop at Auckland Prison in an attempt to explain its impact on stimulating the creativity of the participants. We begin by describing the context of incarceration in the US and New Zealand and suggest that these seemingly divergent locations are connected by mass incarceration. We also provide an overview of the creative contexts at San Quentin and Auckland Prison on which the Performing Liberation project developed. After describing key moments in the workshop, the article interrogates the creative space that it produced in relation to the notion of liberation, as a useful concept to interrogate various forms of oppression, and as a practice that is concerned with unshackling the body, mind, and spirit. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Acts of Liberation)
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12 pages, 2123 KiB  
Article
Dramatising Solidarity and Unification in Divided Palestine: The Chorus and the Ghost in Kamel EL-Basha’s Following the Footsteps of Hamlet (2013)
by Ziad Abushalha
Humanities 2022, 11(1), 3; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11010003 - 22 Dec 2021
Viewed by 3518
Abstract
This essay explores how Kamel EL-Basha’s theatre production Following the Footsteps of Hamlet (2013) preaches unity and resistance in a post-2006 divided Palestine. After giving a brief historical account of the causes of the internal Palestinian political divisions that distract Palestinians from achieving [...] Read more.
This essay explores how Kamel EL-Basha’s theatre production Following the Footsteps of Hamlet (2013) preaches unity and resistance in a post-2006 divided Palestine. After giving a brief historical account of the causes of the internal Palestinian political divisions that distract Palestinians from achieving liberation, the article traces how El-Basha uses theatrical devices such as the chorus and the ghost to materialise a sense of unification in the theatrical space. The analysis draws on other international theatrical practices like Einar Schleef’s (1980) ‘Choric Theatre’ and cites critical works such as Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872) to locate El-Basha’s theatrical practice in a broader context regarding the significance of the chorus in dramatising unity. The essay also traces how the performance of traditional Palestinian songs, ululation, dances like dabke and other rituals in the play, help foster Palestinian identity and shape their sumud (steadfastness) in facing the occupation. Finally, the essay focuses on the role of the ghost in evoking nostalgia in the audience for the days of unity and collective resistance promoted by the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before his death. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Acts of Liberation)
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14 pages, 331 KiB  
Article
Unschooling and Indigenous Education
by Noah Romero and Sandra Yellowhorse
Humanities 2021, 10(4), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10040125 - 6 Dec 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4892
Abstract
This article draws from autoethnography and historical analysis to examine how racialized people pursue educational justice, consent, inclusion, and enjoyment through non-hegemonic learning. A historical analysis of U.S. colonial education systems imposed upon Diné and Philippine peoples grounds a comparative study on two [...] Read more.
This article draws from autoethnography and historical analysis to examine how racialized people pursue educational justice, consent, inclusion, and enjoyment through non-hegemonic learning. A historical analysis of U.S. colonial education systems imposed upon Diné and Philippine peoples grounds a comparative study on two forms of anti-colonial pedagogy: Indigenous education and critical unschooling. These two lines of inquiry underpin autoethnographic analyses of our own experiences in non-hegemonic learning to offer direct insights into the process of experiential, and decolonial growth intimated in relational learning environments. Indigenous education and critical unschooling literature both affirm the notion that all learners are always already educators and students, regardless of their age, ability, or status. This notion reorients the processes and aspirations of education toward an understanding that everyone holds valuable knowledge and is inherently sovereign. These relational values link together to form systems of circular knowledge exchange that honour the gifts of all learners and create learning environments where every contribution is framed as vital to the whole of the community. This study shows that because these principles resonate in multiple sites of colonial contact across Philippine and Diné knowledge systems, through Indigenous education and critical unschooling, and in our own lived experiences, it is important to examine these resonant frequencies together as a syncretic whole and to consider how they can inform further subversions of hegemonic educational frameworks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Acts of Liberation)
14 pages, 1362 KiB  
Article
Performing the Bounds of Responsibility
by Karen Berger
Humanities 2021, 10(4), 112; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10040112 - 15 Oct 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2626
Abstract
This paper investigates border-making dynamics in the two political arenas where my subjectivity is most acutely implicated across time—the Jewish Holocaust (as an intergenerational victim) and the Aboriginal genocide (as an unwitting beneficiary). Albeit that there are many differences between the drivers of [...] Read more.
This paper investigates border-making dynamics in the two political arenas where my subjectivity is most acutely implicated across time—the Jewish Holocaust (as an intergenerational victim) and the Aboriginal genocide (as an unwitting beneficiary). Albeit that there are many differences between the drivers of antisemitism and racism against Indigenous Australians, I investigate both of these racist structures through the lens of border-thinking as theorised by Walter Mignolo as a method of decolonisation (2006). The article has been formatted as an example of discursive border-crossing by juxtaposing theoretical ideas (particularly inspired by Zygmunt Bauman and Deborah Bird Rose) with interjections from my personal journal. I explore my own performative storytelling as a means for me to take responsibility to question power structures, acknowledge injustice, and to enact the potential for ethical dialogue between myself and others. This responsibility gestures to the possibility of border crossing as an ‘act of liberation’ that resides in the acknowledgement of historical injustices and their continued impact on both the beneficiaries and the victims of coloniality in the present. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Acts of Liberation)
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13 pages, 283 KiB  
Article
Clamo Ergo Sum: Establishing a Fundamental Right to Protest from Christian Theologies of Liberation
by Marc V. Rugani
Humanities 2021, 10(3), 102; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10030102 - 13 Sep 2021
Viewed by 1604
Abstract
The prevailing particular historical narratives that established the modern rights system greatly affect the participation, tenor, and limits of rights discourse today, too often ignoring or suppressing voices of those suffering or silenced. This essay is a contribution to the subversion of those [...] Read more.
The prevailing particular historical narratives that established the modern rights system greatly affect the participation, tenor, and limits of rights discourse today, too often ignoring or suppressing voices of those suffering or silenced. This essay is a contribution to the subversion of those histories, adverting to inconsistencies, in particular histories of modern rights, the need to amplify the voices of those suffering on the margins of that history, and the dangerous consequences if we fail to do so. By applying Enrique Dussel’s political philosophy and Gustavo Gutiérrez’s theology of liberation significant contributions can be made toward affirming a fundamental right to protest. The right to protest articulates a right co-foundational with the rights to life, liberty, and property, and this right is well grounded in a Christian account of the dignity of the human person. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Acts of Liberation)
17 pages, 282 KiB  
Article
Prison Theatre and an Embodied Aesthetics of Liberation: Exploring the Potentials and Limits
by Sarah Woodland
Humanities 2021, 10(3), 101; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10030101 - 9 Sep 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5122
Abstract
Prison theatre practitioners and scholars often describe the sense of imaginative freedom or “escape” that theatre and drama can facilitate for incarcerated actors, in contrast to the strict regimes of the institution. Despite this, the concept of freedom or liberation is rarely interrogated, [...] Read more.
Prison theatre practitioners and scholars often describe the sense of imaginative freedom or “escape” that theatre and drama can facilitate for incarcerated actors, in contrast to the strict regimes of the institution. Despite this, the concept of freedom or liberation is rarely interrogated, being presented instead as a given—a natural by-product of creative practice. Drawing from John Dewey’s (1934) pragmatist aesthetics and the liberatory pedagogies of Bell Hooks (2000) and Paulo Freire (1996), I propose an embodied aesthetics of liberation in prison theatre that adds depth and complexity to claims for freedom through creativity. Reflecting on over twenty years of prison theatre practice and research, I propose that the initial “acts of escape” performed through engaging the imagination are merely the first threshold toward more meaningful forms of freedom. I frame these as the following three intersecting domains: “Acts of unbinding”, which represents the personal liberation afforded by experiences with theatre in prison; “acts of love”, which expresses how the theatre ensemble might represent a “beloved community” (hooks); and “acts of liberation”, which articulates how these experiences of self-and-world creation may ripple out to impact audiences and communities. An aesthetics of liberation in prison theatre can, therefore, be conceived as an embodied movement towards personal and social renewal; an approach that deepens our understanding of its oft-cited humanising potential, and its limits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Acts of Liberation)
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