Document Type

Theses, Ph.D

Disciplines

Women's and gender studies, Theatre science, *pedagogy

Publication Details

Thesis submitted for the award of PhD, Technological University Dublin, October 2023.

Abstract

Situated at the intersection of critical pedagogy, radical theatre and political activism, this PhD thesis reflects critically on a series of publications and an interdisciplinary counterhegemonic socially engaged art practice between 2010-20. Mobilising the auto/biographical as a conceptual framework for critical analysis, the thesis addresses questions of systemic inequalities, cultural democracy and social transformation in the UK arts and cultural sector. By examining my lived experience through the analytical lenses of intersectionality and feminist standpoint theory, the thesis foregrounds how interconnecting oppressions of gender and class have contributed to the formation of my creative practice and its pedagogical interventions, constituting a direct critical response to redressing unequal power relations at a structural, disciplinary, hegemonic and personal level. In chapter one I examine how the process of writing this thesis begins to expose the complex and interconnected ways in which structural oppressions of class and gender continue to be disabling for working-class women. Drawing on a series of written publications, it outlines how my lived experience of engagement with the radical social and political movements of the twentieth century, such as feminism and the anti-war movement, led me to create a singular critical praxis and pedagogy. By positioning socially engaged art practice and critical pedagogy within wider struggles for social justice, chapter two examines the unconference ‘Taking Part’ (2010) within the critical ontology of my practice and the possibilities of working across sectors and disciplines to offer creative resistance to the growing inequalities of political austerity that marked this period. Through locating the immersive Participation on Trial within a series of public manifestations of theatre as protest, chapter three reclaims the role of theatre as a place of resistance, examining its contribution to social change by creating spaces for agonistic discourse and dialogue. Taken together, the three chapters interrogate how the cyclical appropriation, dilution and de-politicisation of the language and ethos of socially engaged art practices by dominant powers within the cultural sector and an absence of critical selfawareness and reflexivity has maintained systemic inequality and undermined the possibility of realising cultural democracy.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/dzyh-jf09

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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