Formal Departures (2)debbie tucker green

“[A] wide range of political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups”http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/

Identity politics is important for the political articulation of minority or oppressed groups, but it may generate an obstructive distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’

“There is plenty of concrete evidence to suggest that even the most privileged do not as yet inhabit a world in which violence, injustices and inequalities are no longer carried out in the name of identity categories” (Aston and Harris 3)

Identity Politics

First Wave: 19th to early 20th century; fight for women’s rights in education, marriage and politics: suffragists and suffragettes

Second Wave: mid to late 20th century, particularly 1960s and 1970s; development of feminist theory

Third Wave: from 1990s onwards... post-feminism?

Feminist ‘Waves’

Liberal or Bourgeois Feminism aims at attaining gender equality with an emphasis on individual achievement and without necessarily advocating changes in social structures

Radical Feminism claims that so-called female qualities (nurturing, emotionality) are superior to so-called male qualities (aggression, competitiveness, individualism) and advocates absolute ‘sisterhood’ [see also Cultural Feminism]

Socialist or Materialist Feminism links gender inequality with other kinds of injustices, related to class, race and/or culture, and advocates fundamental social changes in order to address these multiple sources of oppression

Feminist Strands

Elin Diamond: ‘The Violence of “We”’“The collective ‘we’ generated by the [feminist] movement tended to be exclusive rather than inclusive” in terms of...

class (middle), sexuality (hetero), ‘race’ (white)

Contemporary Feminism

Anti-essentialism (Judith Butler): Gender and sex are social constructions. Gender is ‘performative’, created through repeated behaviour

However, a ‘strategic essentialism’ may be necessary (Gayatri Spivak)

Critical Feminist Theory Nancy Fraser: no recognition without redistribution

(deconstruction + socialism) Seyla Benhabib: ‘interactive universalism’ (ethics

of care + ethics of justice)

Contemporary Feminism

“One of the sharpest accusations Conservatives fire at the Left concerns the supposed contradiction between love for all humanity and caring for people you actually know (as Burke puts it, the apparent mutual exclusiveness of love of ‘kind’ and ‘kindred’). [...] It seems to me clear that both forms of love are limited and insufficient. The first has blighted the socialist experiment, the second challenges the moral pretensions of the enterprise culture”.(qtd. in Painter 119)

As David Edgar puts it...

dirty butterfly (Soho, 2003)

born bad (Hampstead, 2003)

stoning mary (Royal Court, 2005)

trade (RSC and Soho, 2005-6)

generations (Young Vic, 2007)

random (Royal Court, 2008)

truth and reconciliation (Royal Court, 2011)

nut (NT, 2013)

debbie tucker green (b. ?)

So what happened to the womanist bitches?

...The feminist bitches?

...The professional bitches.

What happened to them?

What about the burn their bra bitches?

The black bitches

the rootsical bitches

the white the brown bitches

the right-on bitches

what about them?

What happened to the mainstream bitches?

The rebel bitches

the underground bitches

what about – how bout –

the bitches that support other bitches?

Bitches that aint but got nuthin better to do

bitches that gotta conscienceunderclass bitchesoverclass bitchespolitical bitches – what about – how

bout – what happened to them?

The bitches that love to march?The bitches that love to studyThe music lovin bitchesThe shebeen queen bitchesThe bitches that love to fightThe bitches that love a debateThe bitches that love to curse?

Mary’s Speech

Aston, Elaine. ‘Debbie Tucker Green’. The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights. Ed. Middeke, Martin, Peter P. Schnierer and Aleks Sierz. London: Methuen, 2011. 183-202.

Aston, Elaine and Geraldine Harris. ‘Feminist Futures and the Possibilities of “We”?’ Feminist Futures? Theatre, Performance, Theory. Ed. E. Aston and G. Harris. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 1-16.

Diamond, Elin. ‘The Violence of “We”: Politicizing Identification’. Critical Theory and Performance. Revised Edition. Ed. Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 2007. 403-412.

Canaday, Margot. ‘Promising Alliances: The Critical Feminist Theory of Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib’. Feminist Review 74 (2003): 50-69.

Fragkou, Marissia and Lynette Goddard. ‘Acting In/Action: Staging Human Rights in debbie tucker green’s Royal Court Plays’. Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground. Ed. Vicky Angelaki. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Goddard, Lynette. Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Bibliography