The crafts of governance and diplomacy are spectacular, theatrical, and performative. Performing Statecraft investigates the performances of states, their leaders, and their citizens on an expanded field of the global arts of statecraft to consider the role of performance in the domestic and international affairs of states, and the interventions into global politics by artists, scholars, and activists.
Treating theatre as both an art form and a practice of political actors, this book draws together scholarship on the embodied dimensions of governance, the stagecraft of revolution, arts activism on the world stage, sports performance by heads of state, the performativity of national dress, speechmaking and colonialism, war and medicine, singing diplomats, indigenous sovereignties, and performed nationalisms. It brings the perspective and methods of performance studies to bear on global politics, offering exciting new insights into encounters between states, sovereigns, and people. Whether one is watching a campaign speech, a nightly news broadcast, a sacred dance, or a play about global conflict, these chapters make clear the importance of performance as a tool wielded by amateurs and professionals to articulate the nation in global spaces.
"List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Postdiplomatic Theatre, James R. Ball III (Texas A&M University, USA) 1. (En)Acting the Republic: The 1916 Rising as a Spectacle of Self-Sacrifice for Ireland, Áine Josephine Tyrrell (Kings College London, UK) 2. An ""Indian Princess,"" a King and a Queen, and a President: Diplomatic Performance and Indigenous Sovereignties at the 1939 Royal Visit, Christiana Molldrem Harkulich (Eastern Illinois University, USA) 3. The President’s Yellow Batakari: Performance and the Sartorial in Ghanaian Politics, David Afriyie Donkor (Texas A&M University, USA) 4. Windrush Strikes Back: ""Rivers of Blood,"" Performance, and Guerrilla Diplomacy, Mary Karen Dahl (Florida State University, USA) 5. Organ Failure: Medicalized Torture During the Iraq War, Warren Kluber (Columbia University, USA) 6. Viral Diplomacy: Music, Masks, and Maritime Borders Between China and the Philippines, Adam Kielman (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) 7. The President Makes a Play: Putin and Erdogan’s Sporting Diplomacy, Sean Bartley (Northwestern State University, USA) and Jared Strange (University of Maryland, USA) 8. Statecraft and Revolution: Remaking Bolivar for an Anti-Imperialist Transnational Alliance, Angela Marino (University of California, Berkeley, USA) Afterword: The Future of Dissensus: Performance Postdiplomatic Postdemocracy, Tony Perucci (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) List of Contributors Bibliography Index"
James R. Ball III is Associate Professor in the Department of Performance Studies and Director of the Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts at Texas A&M University, USA. He studies the performance of diplomacy, and is the author of Theater of State: A Dramaturgy of the United Nations (2020). Related work has been published in TDR, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, e-Misférica, and elsewhere.
