Spectres of Empire: Performing Postcoloniality in France (provisional title)

This book will tell, for the first time, the hidden history of theatre in France about, and by, people from its former colonies; and the artistic conservatism and institutional restrictions they have surmounted. It celebrates artists who have, from the onset of decolonisation in the 1950s to today, contributed crucially to debates around immigration and nationalism by using theatre’s unique capacity to present on stage how meaning is made from words and images. Their works, often performed by postcolonial subjects themselves, enable audiences to recognize how racialised identities are constructed from language and images, and can be reshaped to foster new ways of understanding our postcolonial world.