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Watching Whoopi : the politics and ethics of the ethics of witnessing.

Nationally and internationally, the concept of ‘ethical witnessing’ has been a major preoccupation within Theatre and Performance Studies for some considerable time. Drawing on ideas from a wide range of important thinkers from other disciplines, this article interrogates some of the assumptions that have informed and dominated this debate. In doing so, it offers a far more detailed reading of some of Peggy Phelan’s ideas than has often been accorded to her work, despite its exceptionally influential nature. At the same time it analyses the politics of a show that in the 1985 version had significant impact in terms of the representation and construction of ‘race’ in the US and in 2005 was once again, a ‘political event’ albeit in a different fashion.

A revised version of this article will be published in the forthcoming Performing Trauma edited by Bryoni Trezise and Caroline Wake for Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen, as part of its new 'In Between States' series. This book is currently in press and will be published in 2013.