Playing children : displacement and the performance of childhood
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Playing Children investigates shifting conceptions of childhood and nation-statehood amidst the backdrop of the escalating global refugee situation. Focusing on plays and films from four contested regions and their diasporic counterparts -- the Pashtun Belt, Syria, India-Pakistan, and Israel-Palestine -- I chart how cultural producers across disparate conditions figure the displaced child towards and against dominant national imaginaries. A relational approach allows me to trace South-South solidarities, even as they unfold in countries like the United States and United Kingdom. Chapter One considers the complex network of actors, affects, and aspirations involved in both the creation and reception of Malala Yousafzai's multiple personas to argue that Malala is best read as a consummate performer. Chapter Two posits that Syrian refugee children are sympathetic to distant Euro-American spectators to the extent they can be conscripted into an "adoptive gaze." In Chapter Three, the repeated trope of a child accidentally crossing the India-Pakistan border reveals an ambivalence around ethno-national identity in the subcontinent that dates to the 1947 Partition. Chapter Four argues that the very notion of childhood becomes entirely discursive and disembodied in the region variably called Israel and Palestine. Ultimately, I find that displaced children exceed the statist, recognition-based frameworks within which both childhood and nation-state belonging are defined, thereby revealing the limits of the concepts themselves. Categories of performance, childhood, and the nation-state constrain while they come apart at the seams; like a child outgrowing their clothes, any imagination of the world as divided by national boundaries, by 'their' children and 'ours, ' no longer fits.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Meera, Suhaila |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Al-Saber, Samer |
| Thesis advisor | Al-Saber, Samer |
| Thesis advisor | Iyer, Usha, 1974- |
| Thesis advisor | Menon, Jisha, 1972- |
| Degree committee member | Iyer, Usha, 1974- |
| Degree committee member | Menon, Jisha, 1972- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Theater and Performance Studies |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Suhaila Meera. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Theater and Performance Studies. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/fd084qk9824 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Suhaila Meera
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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