>LITTERARIA PRAGENSIA 2025 (35) 70
CC BY 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ABSTRACT (en)
The article focuses on the communicative situation of the socio-political double bind that generates politics of impasse. This is located outside the performativity of both agonism and deliberation. The impasse is neither a state of conflict nor of an agreement. Rather, it represents a state of inertia, whereby the amplification of sociopolitical forces causes them to weaken. Two cases of artistic research focusing on the performativity of the double-bind are presented. The Strachy (Fears) project explored the theme of art as a space that openly criticises social power relations, while being simultaneously dominated by the same types of power. The second project, Propojme se včera (Let’s Connect Yesterday), explored social rigidity in the face of a growing global polycrisis, of which society itself is the main instigator. Through artistic research, we explored whether it is possible to reverse communication based on self-destructive implosion and transform it into self-transgressing communication, making the invisible aspects of these social phenomena visible. The aim was not to ‘shoot the problem’ or escape it through art. Instead, we sought a performative reframing of the impasse that would transform the double bind into an affirmative and agonistic participation in social reality, with the potential to bring about social change.
KEYWORDS (en)
separation barriers, wall building, David Hare, Robert Schenkkan, Stacey Gregg, agonistic pluralism, performativity
DOI
https://doi.org/10.14712/2571452X.2025.70.3
SOURCES
Byrne, Jonny, and Cathy Gormley-Heenan. “Beyond the Walls: Dismantling Belfast’s Conflict Architecture.” City 18, no. 4-5 (2014): 447-54.
Carroll, Rory. “Belfast’s Peace Walls: Potent Symbols of Division Are Dwindling – But Slowly.” Guardian, 7 April 2023. Accessed 15 May 2025. https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/07/belfasts-peace-walls-potent-symbols of-division-are-dwindling-but-slowly.
Coupe, Alexander. “Defiantly Mercurial: An Interview with Stacey Gregg.” Honest Ulsterman, 22 February 2021. Accessed 2 May 2025. https://humag.co/features/ defiantly-mercurial.
Coyles, David, Brandon Hamber and Adrian Grant. “Hidden Barriers and Divisive Architecture: The Role of ‘Everyday Space’ in Conflict and Peacebuilding in Belfast.” Journal of Urban Affairs 45, no. 6 (2023): 1057-80.
Crawley, Peter. “DTF Review – Shibboleth: Examining the Walls That Run through Northern Irish Heads.” Irish Times, 8 October 2015. Accessed 2 May 2025. 41 Miller, “Derrida’s Special Theory of Performativity,” 155. 42 Derrida, Specters of Marx, 30-31. 43 Miller, “Derrida’s Special Theory of Performativity,” 152-53. Ondřej Pilný 48 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/dtf-review-shibboleth-examining-the-walls-that-run-through-northern-irish-heads-1.2383813.
Derrida Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Dixon, John, et al. “‘When the walls come tumbling down’: The Role of Intergroup Proximity, Threat, and Contact in Shaping Attitudes towards the Removal on Northern Ireland’s Peace Walls.” British Journal of Social Psychology 59 (2020): 922-944.
Dubnov, Arie M., and Laura Robson. “Introduction: Drawing the Line, Writing Beyond It – Toward a Transnational History of Partitions.” In Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism, edited by Arie M. Dubnov and Laura Robson, 1-27. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019.
Gormley-Heenan, Cathy, Jonny Byrne and Gillian Robinson. “The Berlin Walls of Belfast.” British Politics 8 (2013): 357-382.
Gregg, Stacey. Shibboleth. London: Nick Hern, 2015.
Hammond, Will, and Dan Steward. “Introduction.” In Verbatim, Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre, edited by Will Hammond and Dan Steward, 9-13. London: Oberon Books, 2008.
Hare, David. Berlin/Wall. London: Faber, 2009.
Hare, David. Via Dolorosa & When Shall We Live? London: Faber, 1998.
Hare, David. “Why Fabulate?” In Obedience, Struggle & Revolt: Lectures on Theatre, 64-86. London: Faber, 2005.
McCord, John, et al. “Belfast’s Iron(ic) Curtain: ‘Peace Walls’ and Their Impact on House Prices in the Belfast Housing Market.” Journal of European Real Estate Research 6, no. 3 (2013): 333-58.
Miller, J. Hillis. “Derrida’s Special Theory of Performativity.” In For Derrida, 133- 73. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009.
Mouffe, Chantal. “Democratic Politics and Conflict: An Agonistic Approach.” Política común 9 (2016): n.p. https://doi.org/10.3998/pc.12322227.0009.011.
Nakase, Justine. “Unconscious Casting: Stacey Gregg’s Shibboleth (2015), Walls, and the (En)Gendering of Violence.” In The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716-2016, Volume 2 (1992-2016), edited by David Clare, Fiona McDonagh and Justine Nakase, 195-207. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021.
Northern Ireland Executive Office. Together: Building a United Community Strategy. The Executive Office (Northern Ireland), 2013. Accessed 15 May 2025. https://www. executiveoffice-ni.gov.uk/publications/together-building-unitedcommunity-strategy.
Phelan, Mark. “From Troubles to Post-Conflict Theatre in Northern Ireland.” In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, edited by Nicholas Grene and Chris Morash, 372-88. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Salter, Chris. “Epistemes of Performativity.” Performance Research 25, no. 3 (2020): 8-11.
Schenkkan, Robert. Building the Wall. London: Oberon Books, 2018.
Soden, Dennis, and Alejandro Palma. “Are Walls a National Security Issue? A View from the United States – Mexico Border.” In The Walls between Conflict and Peace, edited by Alberto Gasparini, 146-57. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2017.
Wallace, Clare. “Set Piece, Set Peace? Negative Emotions and the Possibility of Change in Recent Stage Images of the North.” In Stage Irish: Performance, Identity, Cultural Circulation, edited by Paul Fagan, Dieter Fuchs and Tamara Radak, 227-40. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2021.