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Incorporating Immigrants: Theatrical Aid Work and the Politics of Witnessing in France

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Incorporating Immigrants: Theatrical Aid Work and the Politics of Witnessing in France Incorporating Immigrants: Theatrical Aid Work and the Politics of Witnessing in France by Emine Fisek A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Performance Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Shannon Jackson, Chair Professor Saba Mahmood Professor Shannon Steen Professor Soraya Tlatli Spring 2010 Incorporating Immigrants: Theatrical Aid Work and the Politics of Witnessing in France © 2010 by Emine Fisek Abstract Incorporating Immigrants: Theatrical Aid Work and the Politics of Witnessing in France by Emine Fisek Doctor of Philosophy in Performance Studies and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality University of California, Berkeley Professor Shannon Jackson, Chair There is emerging in France today a particular relationship between theater practice and immigration. Paris-based organizations interested in immigrant rights, from humanitarian groups to juridical aid collectives to arts organizations both large and small, are funding projects that ask participants to formulate their life experiences as public performances, collaborate with professional actors and expand their corporal repertoires. These activities are imagined to endow participants with an opportunity to self-express and a capacity to integrate within a new world. Whether in the context of language classes for immigrant women in underprivileged neighborhoods, or as a practical activity facilitating asylum seekers‟ socio-professional insertion into French life, what I refer to as theatrical aid work is emerging as a practice that can address the vexed question of immigrant rights, integration and experience. Drawing on both ethnographic and historical research, this dissertation examines the relationship between these embodied acts and the “performers” and “publics” they aim to engender. I ask: What is the image of the “integrated immigrant” offered the largely North, West and Sub- Saharan African, Middle Eastern and Eastern European men and women who participate in these projects? How are racial and gender difference constructed during these processes? Bodily discipline has been central to the French state‟s approach towards integration. Similarly, French cultural policies have identified theater-going as a privileged act of citizenship. How then do we asses theatrical aid work against this broader historical, political and cultural backdrop? Finally, what do these practices tell us about the relationship between aesthetics and politics, how are aesthetic practices imagined to cultivate specific kinds of political personhood? As a result, this manuscript balances three lines of inquiry. First, I read the emergence of these vocabularies against historical debates regarding the relationship between bodily norms, philosophies of assimilation and the development of cultural policies as the safeguard of national identity. Second, I investigate the dynamics of the projects and the encounters that result, between the testimonies being staged, the public they address and the notion of “Frenchness” being performed. Third, I explore the ways in which these embodied practices push us to re-think traditional understandings of both political art and immigration policies. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………..……i Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………….....ii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………………….iv Chapter One: Integrating the Body: Theatrical Aid Work and the Immigration Politics of Late 20th Century France……………………………………………………………....1 Chapter Two: From Travailleur Immigré to Immigré: Left Militancy, Cultural Policy and Performance in Historical Perspective………………………………………………28 Chapter Three: Rehearsing the Role of the Integrated Individual: A Focus on the Work of AGO and Cimade……………………………………………………………...56 Chapter Four: Self Narration, Racialization and Spectatorship in the Theatrical Aid Encounter………………………………………………………………………………...80 Chapter Five: Theater Without Borders: Expert Witnessing and Humanitarian Representation…………………………………………………………………………..102 Bibliography………………………..……………………………………………………….…125 i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A few years ago, I was interviewing a Parisian artist who had worked extensively with stories of migration and displacement from immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. As our conversation came to an end, he placed his elbows on the table that separated us and said: “Now, tell me your story.” For reasons I was unable to identify at the time, the question shocked me. I was in the midst of doing the Parisian fieldwork for my dissertation, and was trying to understand what drew artists to the “stories” of others, what potential they felt these stories carried, ethically, politically and aesthetically. With his question, my interlocutor had made me into a character in my own fieldwork, rather than its calm, composed spectator. Yet, something besides this unexpected shift had ruffled my feathers: for the first time I understood the demand that I myself had made of others. I approached humanitarian and social aid workers, theater artists, immigrants to France from various backgrounds and asked them to make time for me, allow me into their homes, workspaces and city haunts, read my long and confusing forms and answer my questions. Not only did my interlocutors respond with generosity and hospitality, they did so despite the fact that they could not quite place me in the world. I have chosen not to name them here, but my debt remains and it is to them that I owe the utmost gratitude for my dissertation. Back in Berkeley, my greatest debt is to the chair of my dissertation committee, Shannon Jackson, whose support has been unwavering, kind and trusting and whose advice has had an uncanny way of revealing its wisdom in layers that unfold over time. I could not have asked for a more caring mentor. My three dissertation committee members have been spirited, thoughtful companions. Shannon Steen has been a wonderful presence throughout my years at Berkeley, starting with Keywords and ending with invaluable feedback that tugged the dissertation into place. Saba Mahmood and Soraya Tlatli showed tremendous patience as my project fluctuated between topics both legible and illegible, listening with care and responding with vigor. Their passion for their own work has opened windows in mine. Earlier on, Samera Esmeir‟s class on the human opened another such window and remains one of my most adored learning experiences at Berkeley. And long before I arrived in California, Allen Kuharski and Ulla Neuerburg-Denzer‟s mentorship at Swarthmore College made me realize I didn‟t want to be anything but a student and really anything but a student of theater. I only hope I am able to do the same for my own students. The financial, social and emotional structures that maintained this project are numerous and span a number of continents. The fieldwork and writing for this dissertation was made possible by the Dean‟s Normative Time Fellowship and the Chancellor‟s Dissertation-Year Fellowship as well as a Center for the Study of Race and Gender Graduate Grant at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Dissertation Research Award from the American Society for Theater Research. While many read and listened to portions of my work along the way, there were a number of contexts where it grew tremendously. Reading my students‟ beautiful work in the 2008-2009 courses “Francophone Worlds, Francophone Performance” and “Performing Human Rights” pushed me to re-think my assumptions about my own writing. At Helen Gilbert‟s 2007 conference on Performance and Asylum at Royal Holloway, I presented the seeds of what became this project, and benefited from the feedback of scholars whose questions directly ii mirrored my own. Juana Maria Rodriguez and the members of the spring 2009 Women, Gender and Sexuality Dissertation Research Seminar gave me the unparalleled opportunity to see my work through their eyes. Their thoughts are now embedded throughout my manuscript. In Istanbul, Faruk Birtek and Arzu Ozturkmen‟s brief, unguarded reactions to my ideas were transformative at key points. And in a world seemingly removed from these, Sevda Bekman gave me the precious chance to join her team in Diyarbakir and experience something akin to theatrical aid work. When I felt miserable, confused and faint from the relentless heat of southeastern Turkey, she reminded me not to care so much about everything. Throughout graduate school, my darling friends have made the fact of having two homes both a gift and a challenge. In Istanbul, Elcin Kitapci, Tracy Kazmirci, Tules Akinci, Ekin Ilyasoglu, Nazli Kaptanoglu and Betty Mizrahi welcomed me with open arms, quickly erasing months of separation and making dissertations seem far-away, insignificant endeavors. From their disparate homes in New York, Boston and London, Ayse Demirel Atakan, Julide Tolek, Beril Tari and Elcin Akcura provided the American and European versions of this warm home-away-from- home. Ardan Arac spent the past five years hopping and skipping all over North America but always managed to come find me in Berkeley, finally becoming a neighbor that I only wish I could hold onto for longer than is left us. The thought that Elizabeth Nolte is living in the home that I had yakked about for so long makes me happier than words can say. She is the first friend who bridged my two worlds. Poulami Roychowdhury
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