Abstract
In 1999, nine years after Nelson Mandela's release, the Johannesburg-based, formerly Marxist Junction Avenue Theatre Company premiered its first post-apartheid play, Love, Crime and Johannesburg – a rewriting of Brecht's Threepenny Opera. This article asks to what use the South African group puts Brecht's play and theatrical method, in the postcolonial and neo-liberal moment of the 1990s and 2000s. What does the play suggest about historical and contemporary relations between crime and capitalism, crime and apartheid, and capitalism and apartheid? Does it seek to emancipate itself from the Marxian view that capitalism and crime are aspects of one and the same condition that can be overcome only as a whole? What remains of the Brechtian conviction that theatre can be realistic only to the extent that it contributes practically to solving the problems it represents? I argue that the play exposes the discourse of “lawlessness” that has replaced “reconciliation” as the near-universal currency for articulating South Africa's post-liberation predicament. The play also foregrounds the accelerating displacement of the biogeography of apartheid by the post-urban topography of spectacular capitalism. Both tendencies efface history, concealing structures of domination that continue to shape the city and the country. While the play does not “estrange” or explain these structures, it points to a global economic dispensation that prevents the twin legacies of imperialism and apartheid from being redressed. In doing so, it may also accentuate its own incapacity to envision itself as part of a solution to the problem it analyses.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.