Performance art from Ireland and perpetrator trauma

Abstract

Representations of perpetrator identity and experience within the arts are increasingly explored across genocide, conflict, law, memory, trauma, and cultural studies. Within this terrain, the bourgeoning area of perpetrator trauma is emerging as an important point of focus. Given the extent of historical and ongoing oppression and brutalities across all societies, the trauma that perpetrators can experience as a consequence of being directly and indirectly involved in violence is significant.

This thesis investigates how perpetrator trauma is addressed within performance art from Ireland, with a focus on performance artworks responding to a range of contemporary and historical situations of atrocity, such as the Northern Ireland Troubles, institutional child sexual abuses, forced migration, and gender based violence. In doing so, it explores how a space for engaging with the trauma of perpetrators is created within the embodied experiences of making and witnessing performance art. A deep reflexivity on the part of the researcher underpins an exploration of how the affective experiences of performance art can mobilise the body as a site of ethical openness for others, including others that are difficult to bring into view and engage with. As part of the research, a series of live performance artworks were created and presented within various contexts. In addition, work by several key practitioners based on or from the Island of Ireland is examined, supported by an in depth interview with each. As such, understandings generated within this research emerge largely through the researcher’s own experience of both making and witnessing performance art.

Perpetrator trauma related performance art is contextualised within perpetrator studies, performance studies, trauma studies, ethics, and research on various forms of atrocity. The inquiry particularly aligns with existing research on perpetrator trauma representation within the arts in suggesting that acknowledgement of perpetrator trauma can help to illuminate the complexity of atrocity and the range of actors involved. More specifically, it proposes that an acknowledgement of perpetrator suffering constitutes a recognition that even the most reviled perpetrators are fellow human beings and can, therefore, be understood as operating within complex contexts of atrocity alongside a spectrum of other directly and indirectly implicated actors. Other key points of focus that arise and are addressed include populist perpetrator narratives; collective and generational trauma; reconciling outrage with productive responses to atrocity; the temporality of trauma representation within performance art; spaces of productive ambiguity; the embodied nature of trauma symptoms; ethical openness to perpetrators; embodied memory; embodied witnessing within performance art.

A fundamental question within the research is how the imperative to listen to and stand in solidarity with victims is maintained when addressing the perpetrator trauma that threatens to resurface through2generational suffering and cycles of violence. In response, this thesis examines how perpetrator trauma related performance art can turn questions of implication back to oneself, as an artist or audience member. In doing so, it explores how this unsettling experience can impel one to be more vigilant and responsible in the face of one’s own proximities to the ongoing and future violation of others.

Date of Award	Aug 2022
Original language	English
Supervisor	Cherie Driver (Supervisor) & Robert Connolly (Supervisor)