4 ‘Are you sick, yet? / Are you disgusted, yet?’
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Clare Finburgh Delijani
Abstract
Detention without charge, severe physical and mental pain, and suffering, intimidation, coercion, and other forms of torture set out in the United Nations Convention against Torture have become justified and normalised since the start of the twenty-first century, supposedly in order to guarantee national security and maintain law, order, freedom, and democracy. This chapter derives its theoretical premise from Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970) to illustrate how a number of Dennis Kelly’s plays testify to the torture and other human rights abuses taking place not only in totalitarian regimes but also in states that supposedly uphold civil liberties. The chapter illustrates both how Kelly exposes the torture that habitually takes place in covert locations behind a façade of ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’, and the ethics implicit in how audiences spectate the abusive degradation of others from the safety of our television screens, or of our theatre seats.
Abstract
Detention without charge, severe physical and mental pain, and suffering, intimidation, coercion, and other forms of torture set out in the United Nations Convention against Torture have become justified and normalised since the start of the twenty-first century, supposedly in order to guarantee national security and maintain law, order, freedom, and democracy. This chapter derives its theoretical premise from Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970) to illustrate how a number of Dennis Kelly’s plays testify to the torture and other human rights abuses taking place not only in totalitarian regimes but also in states that supposedly uphold civil liberties. The chapter illustrates both how Kelly exposes the torture that habitually takes place in covert locations behind a façade of ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’, and the ethics implicit in how audiences spectate the abusive degradation of others from the safety of our television screens, or of our theatre seats.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of illustrations vii
- Notes on contributors viii
- A foreword xii
- Introduction 1
- I Incubation 19
- 1 DNA in the classroom 21
- 2 Suspended in time and place 39
- 3 ‘I’ll teach you a thing or two’ 55
- II Antibodies 71
- 4 ‘Are you sick, yet? / Are you disgusted, yet?’ 73
- 5 Utopia 90
- 6 Beautiful doom 105
- 7 Subjectivity in Dennis Kelly’s early drama 118
- III False positives 135
- 8 ‘I just want it to be your words’ 137
- 9 ‘What is the difference between made up and real?’ 152
- 10 ‘What else isn’t true?’, or, Dennis Kelly’s expressionism 170
- 11 Atopia 184
- IV Variants 201
- 12 ‘Now look, are you going to tell me a story or not?’ 203
- 13 Dennis Kelly’s The Gods Weep at the Royal Shakespeare Company 217
- 14 Performing stories, engaging audiences 233
- Conclusion 251
- Index 264
- Plates 267
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of illustrations vii
- Notes on contributors viii
- A foreword xii
- Introduction 1
- I Incubation 19
- 1 DNA in the classroom 21
- 2 Suspended in time and place 39
- 3 ‘I’ll teach you a thing or two’ 55
- II Antibodies 71
- 4 ‘Are you sick, yet? / Are you disgusted, yet?’ 73
- 5 Utopia 90
- 6 Beautiful doom 105
- 7 Subjectivity in Dennis Kelly’s early drama 118
- III False positives 135
- 8 ‘I just want it to be your words’ 137
- 9 ‘What is the difference between made up and real?’ 152
- 10 ‘What else isn’t true?’, or, Dennis Kelly’s expressionism 170
- 11 Atopia 184
- IV Variants 201
- 12 ‘Now look, are you going to tell me a story or not?’ 203
- 13 Dennis Kelly’s The Gods Weep at the Royal Shakespeare Company 217
- 14 Performing stories, engaging audiences 233
- Conclusion 251
- Index 264
- Plates 267
