<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>In the article, Rabih Mroué’s performance-lecture <italic>So Little Time</italic> (2017) is discussed as an example of counterfactual mobilization for the purposes of political critique in contemporary art and theatre. I scrutinize Mroué’s references to the modern history of Lebanon and—drawing upon a cultural analysis of this performance—discuss the artist’s rendering of the instrumentalization of Lebanese collective memory by competing factions in the country’s political scene. Drawing upon existing readings of Rabih Mroué’s oeuvre offered by Charles Esche and Shela Sheikh, I posit that the artist reveals the arbitrary quality of the representations of the past through defamiliarization (<italic>ostranenie</italic>), and that his method bears an affinity to Jacques Derrida’s notions of deconstruction and decolonization.</p></abstract>

In the article, Rabih Mroué’s performance-lecture So Little Time (2017) is discussed as an example of counterfactual mobilization for the purposes of political critique in contemporary art and theatre. I scrutinize Mroué’s references to the modern history of Lebanon and—drawing upon a cultural analysis of this performance—discuss the artist’s rendering of the instrumentalization of Lebanese collective memory by competing factions in the country’s political scene. Drawing upon existing readings of Rabih Mroué’s oeuvre offered by Charles Esche and Shela Sheikh, I posit that the artist reveals the arbitrary quality of the representations of the past through defamiliarization (ostranenie), and that his method bears an affinity to Jacques Derrida’s notions of deconstruction and decolonization.

History as an April Fool’s Joke. Defamiliarising Collective Memory in Rabih Mroué’s <italic>So Little Time</italic>

Art History & Criticism

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

History as an April Fool’s Joke. Defamiliarising Collective Memory in Rabih Mroué’s 

In the article, Rabih Mroué’s performance-lecture So Little Time (2017) is discussed as an example of counterfactual mobilization for the purposes of political...

History as an April Fool’s Joke. Defamiliarising Collective Memory in Rabih Mroué’s So Little Time

Published Online: Dec 14, 2018

Page range: 40 - 50

Received: May 09, 2018

Accepted: Oct 17, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/mik-2018-0004

Keywords
defamiliarization, postcoloniality, memory, decolonisation, deconstruction, Rabih Mroué

© 2018 Arkadiusz Półtorak, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

History as an April Fool’s Joke. Defamiliarising Collective Memory in Rabih Mroué’s So Little Time

Published Online: Dec 14, 2018

Page range: 40 - 50

Received: May 09, 2018

Accepted: Oct 17, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/mik-2018-0004

Keywordsdefamiliarization, postcoloniality, memory, decolonisation, deconstruction, Rabih Mroué

© 2018 Arkadiusz Półtorak, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
defamiliarization, postcoloniality, memory, decolonisation, deconstruction, Rabih Mroué