Theatre-historiographical patterns in the Global South 1950–1990

Abstract

This chapter proposes broad outlines of a theatre-historiographical approach to the Global South in full consciousness of the hubris involved in sketching out categories that apply potentially to more than 100 nation-states (between 1950 and 1990 the number increased from 60 to 159, with many of the new members belonging to the Global South according to gross domestic product). It draws on historiographic practices developed by the relatively new disciplines of global history and transnational history and applies these methods of writing history to theatre in the post-1945 period. For the most part, the arts have been ignored by global historians, and perhaps for good reason.They would appear to lie outside or at best on the margins of the parameters of the major themes that concern global historians: the emergence and decline of empires, migration, the spread of and rivalry between capitalist and socialist economic models, histories of commodities, currents of internationalism (e.g. the labour movement or women's rights), and modernisation, to name only the most intensively researched.This chapter proposes that theatre was indeed imbricated in some of these global processes and can be usefully studied from such perspectives.The term Global South is marginally better than its predecessors and competitors to designate those nations that belong to the "Third," "developing," and "post-colonial" world. Arif Dirlik traces the term's origins to the 1970s when it was coined to "describe societies that seemed to face difficulties in achieving the economic and political goals of either capitalist or socialist modernity" (2007, 13). The positioning outside the two main political blocs is crucial because as a term it emerged after the end of the Cold War, largely untinged by the criticism levelled at the "Third World," its main predecessor, via the latter's adoption by the radical left. The Global South finally attained currency through the United Nations (UN) initiative "Forging a Global South" (2003) from whence spawned research centres and academic journals. The journal Global South, founded in 2007 and devoted to literature and culture, defines its subject as those parts of the world that have experienced the most political, social, and economic upheaval and have suffered the brunt of the greatest challenges facing the world under