On the Political Nature of Leftovers

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    Abstract

    This essay focuses on the London Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017 and seeks to figure out ways of reflection on this catastrophic event without exploiting it for the sake of an academic argument. I will address situations of (human and academic) un/speakability as well as the politics of grieving in the face of such catastrophes. In doing so, I am approaching the event of Grenfell Tower by investigating chosen critical theories, and the voices of (former) residents and activists, in order to shed some light on the social and political implications triggered by the figure of leftovers, shifting between discoursive contextualizations and personal perceptions. With this, I consider why and how the tower's appalling, overtly visible leftover provokes a re-thinking of biopolitics and agency, while also linking those to theatrical terminologies, namely tragedy, which is rhetorically used to downplay the level of destruction of sociality and, in it, the state's responsibility towards its citizens in the realm of neoliberalism.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)77-85
    Number of pages9
    JournalPerformance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts
    Volume22
    Issue number8
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2017

    Bibliographical note

    Article appears in a Volume backdated to December 2017. Publication first occurred on 16th April 2018.

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