Theatre Making “Space for the Unassimilable”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v36i1.153118Keywords:
democracy, dramaturgy, dissensus, holocaust, Julia Aug, post-Soviet, pre-war, translation, yiddishAbstract
Addressing the cultural politics of what Mihaela Mihai calls “mnemonic care”, this paper considers three questions concerning Jewish identity and testimonial justice that are posed in a recent play (including in its very title) by the Estonian-Russian theatre maker Julia Aug, Mum, is our cat also a Jew? The contrasting claims of and for official and unofficial national histories – both during and after the Soviet period – are explored here in terms of Mihai’s invitation for us to consider how such memory politics “make space for the unassimilable”.
References
Alenius, Kari. 2007. “The Birth of Cultural Autonomy in Estonia: How, Why, and for Whom?” Journal of Baltic Studies 38.4, 445-62.
Alenius, Kari. 2021. “The Birth of Minority Legislation in the Newly Independent Finland and Estonia (1918-1920): a Comparative Analysis.” Revista Româna de Studii Baltice si Nordice/ The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies 13.2, 61-84.
Balibar, Étienne. 2004. We, People of Europe? Translated by James Swenson. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bayer, Lili. 2024. “Europe Must Get Ready for Looming War, Donald Tusk warns.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/29/europe-must-get-ready-for-looming-war-donald-tusk-warns (12.11.24).
Forensic Architecture. 2024. Mariupol Drama Theater: Spatial Archive. https://theater.spatialtech.info/en (12.11.24).
Fricker, Miranda. 2009. Epistemic Injustice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foy, Henry. 2024. “Wider War in Europe ‘No Longer a Fantasy’, Warns EU’s Top Diplomat.”
https://www.ft.com/content/0c0482f3-ee5f-42f8-9469-7f82c4ad4c17 (12.11.24).
Gurin-Loov, Evgenia. 1994. Suur Häving: Eesti juutide katastroof 1941/ The Holocaust of the Estonian Jews, 1941. Tallinn: Estonian Jewish Community.
Kattago, Siobhan. 2010. “Memory, Pluralism, and the Agony of Politics.” Journal of Baltic Studies 41.3, 383-94.
Lotman, Yuri. 2020 (1998). “The Language of Theatre.” Translated by Benjamin Paloff. In Yuri Lotman, Culture and Communication: Signs in Flux. Edited by Andreas Schoenle. Boston: Academic Studies Press.
Martin, Carol. 2012. Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mihai, Mihaela. 2022. Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care: the Art of Complicity and Resistance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Naylor, Aliide. 2023. The Shadow in the East: Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front. London: Bloomsbury.
Onken, Eva-Clarita. 2010. “Memory and Democratic Pluralism in the Baltic States – Rethinking the Relationship.” Journal of Baltic Studies 41.3, 277-94.
Parming, Tönu. 1979. “The Jewish Community and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Estonia, 1918-1940.” Journal of Baltic Studies 10.3, 241-62.
Peiker, Piret. 2020 [2018]. “Estonian Nationalism Through the Post-Colonial Lens.” In Epp Annus (ed.). Coloniality, Nationality, Modernity, London: Routledge.
Rancière, Jacques. 2006 [2000]. The Politics of Aesthetics. Translated by Gabriel Rockhill. London: Continuum.
Rothberg, Michael. 2019. The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ther, Philipp. 2023. How the West Lost the Peace. Translated by Jessica Spengler. Cambridge: Polity.
Tlostanova, Madina. 2018. What Does it Mean to be Post-Soviet? Durham: Duke University Press.
Tlostanova, Madina. 2019. “Delinking from Victimhood and Other Rivalries.” International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies 2.1, 92-6.
Tronti, Mario. 2023. “Politics at Sunset: Theses on Benjamin.” Translated by Robert Hurley. E-flux Journal 139. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/139/559025/politics-at-sunset-theses-on-benjamin/ (12.11.24).
Weiss-Wendt, Anton. 1998. “The Soviet Occupation of Estonia in 1940-41 and the Jews.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12.2, 308-25.
Weiss-Wendt, Anton. 2017a. “Studying the Holocaust in Estonia: Has the Topic Been Exhausted?” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 31.3, 271-5.
Weiss-Wendt, Anton. 2017b. On the Margins: Essays on the History of Jews in Estonia. Budapest: Central European University.
Weiss-Wendt, Anton. 2022. Putin’s Russia and the Falsification of History. London: Bloomsbury.
Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wulf, Meike. 2020. Shadowlands: Memory and History in Post-Soviet Estonia. New York: Berghahn.
Zabuzhko, Oksana. 2012 [2009]. The Museum of Abandoned Secrets. Translated by Nina Shevchuk-Murray. Las Vegas: AmazonCrossing.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The copyright belongs to the authors and Nordic Theatre Studies. Users can use, reuse and build upon the material published in the journal but only for non-commercial purposes. Users are allowed to link to the files, download the files, distribute the files on a local network (preferably by links), upload the files to local repositories if their institutions require them to do so, but not republish the files without proper agreements with the journal and the author.
