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Marking "Austerity": Critique, Purpose and Performance

This article introduces Forum Kritika on Performance and Domination, a special issue section of Kritika Kultura 21/22 (kritikakultura.ateneo.net), edited by the author. It develops an argument in the introduction to Forum Kritika on Radical Theater and Ireland (Part II) (2010), for transnational dialogues among cultural workers toward a praxis of performance and interpretation disruptive of state and corporate projects repositioning Global Financial Crisis as Global Financial Opportunity. It sets out to constellate key social, political, cultural and macro-economic co-ordinates of the 'Austerity Project', currently playing out across the western world. This, the article argues, is the location of culture in which artists and intellectuals engaged with performance must now struggle to produce images and narratives of, and proposals for human flourishing to contest Austerity's central trope, 'There Is No Alternative'. Drawing attention to dramaturgical qualities in Austerity's discourses, the essay argues for critical engagement with cities rather than nation states as a way of energising and focusing critical performance contributions to active, progressive models of civil society. Thus, the article sets out the broad parameters of a Performance and Civic Futures research group, launched at Edge Hill University in September 2013.