On Ignoring Risk

Abstract

This paper explores the political impact of protest actions that explicitly make use of performance practices in their execution, and takes the activist work of Margaretta D’Arcy as the central object of analysis. Concentrating on D’Arcy’s protest actions at Shannon Airport and her subsequent trial(s), the paper examines the ways in which Ireland’s ‘Guantanamo Granny’ tries to engage the Irish state in a ‘meaningful’ public debate about its ‘complicity’ in the global ‘war on terror’, despite a stated position of neutrality. This debate, the essay argues, is facilitated in part by D’Arcy’s capacity to turn the legal and disciplinary systems of the state back on themselves, so to speak. The contention is that by ‘ignoring’ risk, both physical and legal, and leveraging a lifetime’s experience and understanding of theatre and performance as a mechanism of protest, D’Arcy’s performative activist actions render the state ‘ridiculous’ socially, politically and legally.