Radical Care

Abstract

In the wake of the loss of a grand narrative for the Left, given the internal contradictions of Marxism, the demise of Communism and the global propagation of Late Capitalism, we concord with Giles (2016: 4) that, ‘ … in a political situation in which care is both exceptionally necessary and exceptionally underprovided, acts of care begin to look politically radical. To care is to act against the grain of social and economic orthodoxy: to advocate care is, in the present moment, to advocate a kind of political rupture’. In parallel with the increasing cynicism that has undermined care and notions of generosity, we seek to locate a persistent countercurrent in the participatory praxis of the so-called Third Theatre, a transnational network of practitioners operating in Europe and Latin America since the 1960s, who have developed a holistic approach to performer training, dramaturgy and participation. We will argue that the work of Third Theatre practitioners is characterised by the practical application of that which Derrida (2000) has termed as unconditional hospitality – an encounter with radical difference; an ethical, creative, even transgressive opening up to the Other, the ‘foreigner’. Thus, we shall draw on specific examples of unconditional hospitality in the work of two Third Theatre groups - Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (Denmark) and Yuyachkani (Peru) - and examine the ways in which this manifests as a performative mode of generosity and generativity. In the case of Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, we will focus on the triannual Festuge festival as an example of generosity and community building. With Yuyachkani, we shall look at how their work is illustrative of a radical form of political theatre which has allowed people across Peru to process the atrocities committed during the Internal Conflict between communist guerillas and the State that rocked the country over a twenty-year period from 1980-2000.