Translational Eschatology, Death, and the Absence of God in Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

Stefano Muneroni

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.1n.2p.1

Abstract

This essay considers Rajiv Joseph’s play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and investigates how it features the complex processes of translation by portraying a translator working in war-torn Iraq during the American occupation of the country. Through an analysis of Jacques Derrida’s theories of mourning and translation, it illustrates how the playwright connects translation both to eschatological thinking and to the capacity to speak to/for the dead; the play emphasizes death and translation as in-between states where characters explore aspects of their lives they could not access when alive, and develop skills that allow them to ‘translate’ themselves in different linguistic and cultural contexts. Through an analysis of the translator as cultural hero and ‘stand-in’ for God, this essay equates translation with post-secular theological inquiry, and looks at linguistic and cultural translations as acts of faith in which the emergence of the new text is both always in the process of manifesting itself and always predicated on the ashes of the original.

Highlights

The 2011 Broadway production of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo showcased Rajiv Joseph as one of the youngest and most exciting voices in playwriting
The play is based on a true incident that took place at the Baghdad zoo in 2003 when a caged tiger tore off the arm of an American soldier who was trying to feed it (Lahr, 2011, p. 76; Anthony, 2007)
As the Tiger finds itself wandering through a ghostly Baghdad, the animal engages with the surreal landscape created by the American bombs and interacts with Saddam Hussein’s dead son, Uday, two American soldiers, Tom and Kev, an Iraqi prostitute, and Musa, a translator for the American troops who is coping with the difficulties of his job while trying to come to terms with the death of his sister Hadia

Summary

Introduction

The 2011 Broadway production of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo showcased Rajiv Joseph as one of the youngest and most exciting voices in playwriting. After Tom refuses to listen to his delirious rantings, Kev in a moment of maddening despair cuts off his arm to feed it to the Tiger, hoping the animal will stop haunting him After his death, Kev acquires a new sense of self that allows him to understand himself and the world around him better, and to talk to both the living and the dead. This essay looks at how the play engages an eschatological view of the world as it ponders issues such as the meaning of life, the existence of God in the face of horrific violence and injustice, and the reality of the afterlife In his grim representation of decaying humanity, Rajiv Joseph features translation as a frame to address the eschatology of human condition; he showcases translation as a celebration of the death and resurrection of the source language, as transcendental communication across spatial and temporal divides, and as an in-between space of linguistic and cultural negotiation. Studio Theatre, will illustrate particular moments of the play and their resonances with translational processes

Eschatology and Translation

Staging translation and self-translation

Translator as God

Conclusion