Editorial Comment: Specters, States, and Solidarities

Abstract

Editorial Comment:Specters, States, and Solidarities Laura Edmondson As Charles Kipng'eno Rono explores in this issue, Kenyan playwright Francis Imbuga's dedications to the deceased serve as portals to what lies beyond the text. In that spirit, I dedicate this issue to the memory of Tom Postlewait, our beloved colleague who passed from this earth last November. Many of us have a "Tom story": mine is that during my undergraduate years at Indiana University, he advised my honors project on US female playwrights. Not only did he point me to pioneering work by playwrights such as Adrienne Kennedy and Cherríe Moraga, but he also pushed me to sharpen my prose through his famously intensive editing style. As I take up my new position as coeditor, I aspire to his legacy of critical generosity. I also wish to acknowledge the influence of Jean Graham-Jones, another tireless editor who worked closely with me to refine my essay on trauma and performance in northern Uganda in what would become my first publication in this journal. I seek to live up to Tom's and Jean's examples in my collaborative exchanges with authors. It is a privilege to witness their intellectual journeys as they come to inhabit fully the power of their ideas. It is also a privilege to learn from their work. The authors included in this issue have introduced me to the specificities of neoliberal violence in Mexico; the potential of Afropessimism, Black feminist theory, and abolition theory to invigorate dramatic criticism; the possibilities of hauntology as a lens for postcolonial drama; and the creative power of Polish fringe theatre during the pandemic. I am grateful to previous editor E.J. Westlake for ensuring that I had such a rich collection of essays already in the pipeline as I transitioned into my role; I appreciate her thoughtful efforts to ensure that I had a soft landing. To borrow another concept from Rono's essay, two specters haunt this collection. The first is that of the COVID-19 pandemic. Granted that only one essay specifically invokes the pandemic; still, I am struck by the fact that almost all of them focus on textual analysis and only occasionally invoke performance. In the shuttering of live performance over the past two years, did we retreat into our texts? I realize, of course, that this question belies the fact that we often work on projects for years before they make their way to a journal; I also recognize that the distinction between page and stage is easily blurred. Still, this pattern bears mentioning in light of the journal's historic emphasis on the interplay of text and performance, broadly defined. The specter of state violence also looms. These plays and performances were created in the shadow of neoliberal Mexico, a carceral United States, a dictatorial Kenya, and an autocratic Poland. As Russia wages a deadly war in Ukraine and as horrific civil wars continue to take thousands of lives in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Yemen, these essays bear fierce witness to the multiple overt and covert ways that states maintain a stranglehold on power. Significantly, they also highlight the ingenuity and courage of playwrights and artists across four continents to expose and critique widespread damage and harm. As tactics of state violence seep across the globe, so too does the creative spirit of protest and solidarity. [End Page xi] In contrast to the spectacular nature of direct violence, neoliberalism tends to manifest itself as a more hidden, "ordinary" violence, which our field continues to theorize as a political and aesthetic force.1 Analola Santana's article "Neoliberal Transactions: Staging Prostitution in the Mexican Nation" expands the conversation through a cogent analysis of how neoliberal violence is performed in Mexican drama; as in so much of the Global South, the damage of late capitalism is exacerbated by the forces of Western imperialism. Specifically, she explores how the Mexican playwrights Luis Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio (more commonly known as LEGOM) and H. Iván Arizmendi Galeno employ a "prostitute imaginary" to critique endemic neglect and systemic corruption. As Santana explains: "In both plays, sex work becomes the means for exposing these 'silent and invisible...