Open Endings: Towards Hope
Throughout this special issue, we – an enlarged “we” of writers and readers – have been challenged to consider how and to what ends a given performance of feeling might move a public to action. But, what action exactly? As the essays here argue, and as recent history cautions, the “same” emotion – mourning, for example – may be mobilized to democratic and anti-democratic ends. So, what forms of performance and action, including theatrical performance and action, are appropriate to projects of social justice and democratic inclusion? Certainly, this special issue offers hopeful glimpses of theatre and performance as sites of public sentiments and as projects of social justice. But, the hopefulness many of the contributors evince about the possibility of connecting public sentiments to social justice does not blind us to the many ways emotion has been, and continues to be, harnessed to state violence. The essays gathered here are not the last word on any of these issues, but are offered as a spark to what we hope will be a more general project of exploring public sentiments, of bringing affect into discussions of social and cultural phenomena, and, perhaps, just perhaps, of forging alternative possibilities, for emotional as for public life.
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