CELEBRATING PROTEST AND PERFORMING RESISTANCE: POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS IN SELECT PLAYS OF DARIO FO THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF Doctor of Philosophy IN ENGLISH BY FARHAN AHMAD UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF PROF. MOHAMMAD RIZWAN KHAN DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH (INDIA) 2018 Department of English Professor Mohammad Rizwan Khan Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh-202002, India Office: 0571 270092-22 Email: [email protected] Certificate This is to certify that the thesis entitled “Celebrating Protest and Performing Resistance: Political and Cultural Constructs in Select Plays of Dario Fo” submitted by Farhan Ahmad in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Ph.D. in English has been completed under my supervision. This is the result of his independent efforts. Prof. Mohammad Rizwan Khan (Supervisor) ANNEXURE-I CANDIDATE’S DECLARATION I, Mr. Farhan Ahmad, Department of English, certify that the work embodied in this Ph.D. thesis is my own bonafide work carried out by me under the supervision of Prof. Mohammad Rizwan Khan at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. The matter embodied in this Ph.D. thesis has not been submitted for the award of any other degree. I declare that I have faithfully acknowledged, given credit to and referred to the research workers wherever their works have been cited in the text and the body of the thesis. I further certify that I have not wilfully lifted up some other’s work, para, text, data, result, etc., reported in the journals, books, magazines, reports, dissertations, thesis, etc., or available at web-sites and included them in this Ph.D. thesis and cited as my own work. Date: Farhan Ahmad ………………………………………………………………………………………….. CERTIFICATE FROM THE SUPERVISOR This is to certify that the above statement made by the candidate is correct to the best of my knowledge. Signature of the Supervisor……………………….. Prof. Mohammad Rizwan Khan Department of English Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh-202002 (Signature of the Chairperson) ii ANNEXURE-II COURSE/COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION/PRE- SUBMISSION SEMINAR COMPLETION CERTIFICATE This is to certify that Mr. Farhan Ahmad, Department of English, has satisfactorily completed the course work/comprehensive examination and pre- submission seminar requirement which is part of his Ph.D. programme. This is the minimum standards and produce for the award of Ph.D. degree under UGC Regulation, 2009. Date : (Signature of the Chairperson) iii ANNEXURE-ΙΙΙ COPYRIGHT TRANSFER CERTIFICATE Title of the Thesis: CELEBRATING PROTEST AND PERFORMING RESISTANCE: POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS IN SELECT PLAYS OF DARIO FO Candidate’s Name: Farhan Ahmad COPYRIGHT TRANSFER The undersigned hereby assigns to the Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh copyright that may exist in and for the above thesis submitted for the award of the Ph.D. degree. Signature of the candidate Note: However, the author may reproduce or authorize others to reproduce material extracted verbatim from the thesis or derivative of the thesis for author’s personal use provide that the source and the University’s copyright notice are indicated. iv Acknowledgements In the name of Allah, the Most Benevolent, the Most Merciful. To Whom I owe my first and foremost thank for His showers of blessings on me. I would like to express my utmost gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. M. Rizwan Khan (Department of English, AMU, Aligarh) for his devotion, guidance, and intellectual inputs which helped me to accomplish this project. I thank him for his keenness, persistent motivation, and affirmative responses whenever asked for any assistance. I express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Vibha Sharma (Associate Professor, Department of English, AMU, Aligarh) who helped me in formulating the topic. I owe a sense of gratitude to Mr. Jacopo Fo, the son of Dario Fo, who in spite of his busy schedule managed time to reply my emails and assisted me to get one of the important texts related to this research. I am obliged to Ms. Mariateresa Pizza, Direttrice Responsabile, Museo Archivio Laboratorio MusALab Franca Rame Dario Fo, Italy, for offering me one major primary text on the topic. My heartfelt appreciation to Ms. Julia Filippo, an Italian actor, for providing me invaluable information about Italian acting traditions. I would also like to thank the Librarian and staff members of Maulana Azad Library, AMU, Aligarh, Seminar Library, Department of English, AMU, Aligarh and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, for providing me access to relevant research materials. My indebtedness also goes to my seniors and friends such as Dr. Waliul Alam, Dr. Sharjeel Chaudhary, Dr. Mohd Asjad Hussain, Dr. Jalaluddin, Shamsudheen MK, Faizan Ahmad, Sadaquat Ali, Israr Ansari, Md Azad, Md Khursheed Alam, Abraham Varghese, Areeba Zainab, Ahmad Kord, Mohd Amir, Mohd Sharib, Umair Alam, Abdullah, Ashaduzzaman Khan, Ibrahim SK and Peer Mohd Ashraf for their consistent encouragement and support. I must acknowledge Sohaib, Shehnoor, and Waheed who aided me in proof- reading before the thesis took the final shape. vii Last but not the least, I am indebted to my family who supported all my endeavours wholeheartedly. Their love, support, and sacrifices boosted me up in the completion of this work. (Farhan Ahmad) viii Abstract Background and Rationale: The socio-political and historical developments in post-World War II Italy are marked by constant strife for cultural and ideological control which has influenced every domain of Italian life. Intellectual activity cannot be excluded from this struggle for power. In fact, it has been wielded as a tool to organize and to perpetuate the cultural hegemony of different social groups. It is in this context Dario Fo needs to be read and analysed. Fo is an explosive satirist, an iconoclast and an invincible critic of contemporary Italian establishment with acute social sensibility and searing political commitment who according to Swedish Academy, “Emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden”. To counter the cultural hegemony of the Italian upper-class he insists on the development of a proletarian culture by retrieving performance traditions of itinerant performers of the Middle Ages and Harlequin of the Commedia dell’ Arte. The rapier wit and sombreness of his performances have dual functions of entertaining and instructing audiences on prevalent social discrepancies. Provoking people’s conscience and to raise their consciousness is the overriding concern of Fo contextualised in the working class struggle for hegemony. The theatrical activity of Fo is indispensably aligned to the revolutionary struggle of the Italian masses against the social, political and ecclesiastical powers. The expediency of his dramatic art can be judged by the role it plays in the political agitation and education of the marginalized community. His theatre is a tribute to all those who have a peripheral existence. The revolutionary structure of Fo’s plays is inspired by the militant working class movement and the pressing demand for social, political and historical change. He was well aware of the fact that revolution can be achieved only when peoples’ minds are transformed. Political awareness, therefore, remains all-important to his agitational, indecent and raucous performances. They contribute to the social, psychological and intellectual emancipation of the suppressed class. This thesis, therefore, intends to explore the subversive polemics of Dario Fo linked to the political and cultural struggle of the Italian working class against the 1 hierarchal system. Anatomy of these discourses like, his concern for the oppressed and his critique of the institutional power becomes very necessary in order to understand his theatre which functions as the revolutionary vanguard of the proletarian struggle for power. So, Fo’s engagement with theatre is not simply an artistic activity rather, a social praxis embedded within broader socio-political, cultural and historical contexts. It is only within this framework one can appreciate the dialectics of oppression, revolution, and liberation interspersed in his plays. The present study will be done with the help of the analysis of Fo’s select plays which are seen not merely as dramatic texts but as organisations of his critical commentaries on important issues of politics and culture, expressed through theatrical means. This selection accommodates two different theatrical expressions of Fo analysed in two different chapters. They include his ‘Giullarate’ (Monologues) and his ‘Satirical Farces’ which have been employed as two different mediums of protest. These plays will be analysed from the theoretical perspective of Gramscian hegemony which provides a theoretical framework to conceptualise hegemony in relation to the political struggle of the Italian masses. Moreover, this approach would enable the researcher to lay bare the revolutionary vein of Fo’s plays. Although a considerable amount of researches have been produced on various issues in Fo’s work, there remain crucial questions that needed to be explored. What are the processes that turn Fo’s theatre into a Political Theatre? How his theatre is integrated with the political and cultural struggle of the Italian proletariat? What has motivated him to choose popular modes of performance? How his theatre becomes an arena of public protest and resistance? How has he wielded theatre as a tool of political and cultural