1st Edition
Performing the Cold War in the Postcolonial World Theatre, Film, Literature and Things
This volume explores how the Cultural Cold War played out in Africa and Asia in the context of decolonization. Both the United States and the Soviet Union as well as East European states undertook significant efforts to influence cultural life in the newly independent, postcolonial world.
The different forms of influence are the subject of this book. The contributions are grouped around four topic headings. "Networks and Institutions" looks at the various ways Western-style theatre became institutionalized in the decolonial world, especially Africa. "Cultural Diplomacy" focuses on the activities of the Soviet Union in India in the late 1950s and 1960s in the very different arenas of book publishing and the circus. "Artists and Agency" explores how West African filmmakers (Ousmane Sembène and Abderrahmane Sissako) and European authors (Brecht and Ibsen) were harnessed for different kinds of Cold War strategies. Finally, "Cultures of Things" investigates how everyday objects such as books and iconic theatre buildings became suffused with affect, nostalgia, and ideology.
This book will be of interest for students of the Cold War, postcolonial studies, theatre, film, and literature.
Chapters 1, 4, 8, and 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Funded by the European Research Council Project "Developing Theatre".
1. Introduction
Christopher B. Balme
2. Aesthetic World-Systems: Mythologies of Modernism and Realism
Monica Popescu
Part I: Networks and Institutions
3. Cold War Mobilities: Eastern European Theatre Going Global
Viviana Iacob
4. Theatre for Influence: American Cultural and Philanthropic Missions in West Africa During the Early Cold War
Gideon Ime Morison
Part II : Cultural Diplomacy
5. "Propaganda Was Almost Nil"?: Soviet Books and Publishing in India in the 1960s
Severyan Dyakonov
6. Indo-Soviet Circus Exchanges During the Cold War: State Propaganda or a People’s Art Form?
Aastha Gandhi
Part III: Artists and Agency
7. Narratives of Education and Migration: From La Noire de… (1966) to Octobre (1993)
Gesine Drews-Sylla
8. Brecht as a Tool for Cultural Development: East German ITI Events for Theatre Artists from the "Third World"
Rebecca Sturm
9. "Clean Tablets to Write Upon": Ibsen’s Brand in Riga and Moscow in the 1970s
Vita Matiss
Part IV: Cultures of Things
10. Soviet Books, Geopolitical Imagination and Eclectic Solidarities in India
Sudha Rajagopalan
11. National Theatres in Africa Between Modular Modernity and Cultural Heritage
Christopher B. Balme
Biography
Christopher B. Balme is professor of Theatre Studies and a director of the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global:disconnect at LMU Munich, Munich, Germany.
