Abstract
‘The group rape perpetrated by the conquerors is a metonymic celebration of territorial acquisition’, Spivak writes in her seminal essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ (1988, 303). Fitzpatrick explores the construction of rape and sexual violence within the dramatic text, and the use of normative conceptions of gender and imperial, postcolonial or nationalist narrative structures to naturalize the representation of sexual violence or to use it as a metaphor for defeat and devastation. From Euripides’ Trojan Women to Lynn Nottage’s Ruined to contemporary verbatim performance in Northern Ireland, Fitzpatrick examines the metonymic ‘body of a woman as a battlefield’ (Visniec), and the strategies used by dramatists to represent the devastation of rape in wartime.
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Notes
- 1.
The Guardian newspaper reports that newly opened files from the UN War Crimes Commission dating from 1943 ‘demonstrate that rape and forced prostitution were being prosecuted as war crimes in tribunals as far apart as Greece, the Philippines and Poland in the late 1940s, despite more recent suggestions that this was a legal innovation following the 1990s Bosnian conflict’. Owen Bowcott, ‘Opening of UN files on Holocaust will Rewrite Chapters of History’. The Guardian, 18 April 2017.
The newspaper reports that the archives are held at the Wiener Library in London, and accessible online.
The archive holds over 450,000 digital images of the files, covering the period 1943–1949. See https://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/Collections and http://wiener.soutron.net/Portal/Default/en-GB/RecordView/Index/92681. Last accessed 17 September 2017.
- 2.
I describe these opposing movements as nationalist, but as engaging with different nations. The terms Irish Nationalism or Republicanism refers to a nationalist impulse that seeks the reunification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. This movement is usually referred to locally as nationalist or nationalism, and it covers a gamut of political opinion from constitutional nationalism to armed struggle republicanism as typified by the actions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). British nationalism in Northern Ireland is always referred to as Loyalism or Unionism, meaning that its adherents are loyal to the British Crown, or to the Act of Union that created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Broadly speaking, Irish Nationalism tends to be more left-wing, while Unionism is conservative and some Unionists are sympathetic to the far-right. Both Nationalism and Unionism tend to be socially conservative, with social and cultural attitudes influenced by Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism respectively.
- 3.
In August 1994, the Provisional IRA announced a ‘complete cessation of military operations’. Although the ceasefire was briefly broken in 1996–1997, it was a decisive event in Northern Ireland’s history. In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was signed; it was ratified by the electorates of both parts of Ireland and established local, devolved power-sharing government for Northern Ireland.
- 4.
In 1922 Ireland was split into two jurisdictions. The Free State (now the Irish Republic) occupies twenty-six of the thirty-two counties on the island. Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, occupies the other six counties in the North and North East of the island.
- 5.
Northern Ireland’s current population is about 1.7 million, occupying an area of approximately 13,800 km2.
- 6.
For an exploration of their work, see Lionel Pilkington, ‘Dan Baron Cohen: Resistance to Liberation with Derry Frontline Culture and Education’. TDR 38:4, pp. 17–47. See also Theatre of Self-Determination, ed. Dan Baron Cohen (Derry: Guildhall Press, 2001).
- 7.
Marie Jones is an obvious omission here. However, her work really deserves separate consideration as it ranges from social realism (with Charabanc) to slapstick and from monodrama to the musical. Her work can be described as ‘popular theatre’ and is a remarkably successful example of that genre. For a recent critical examination of her work, see Eugene McNulty and Tom Maguire (eds.), The Theatre of Marie Jones: Telling Stories from the Ground Up (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2015).
- 8.
Unpublished interview with Teya Sepunick, May 2014.
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Fitzpatrick, L. (2018). The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield: Rape and Conflict. In: Rape on the Contemporary Stage. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70845-4_4
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