CLASH OF THE BARBARIANS: THE REPRESENTATION OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH AND ARABIC LANGUAGE PLAYS ABOUT IRAQ AMIR A. AL-AZRAKI A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIESIN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM FN THEATRE YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO, CANADA AUGUST 2011 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-80526-8 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-80526-8 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantias de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada iv Abstract The history of Iraq, especially since the establishment of the modern nation in 1920, has been a conspicuously violent one. The yoking together of Sunni, Shia and Kurds under an imported monarchy was a recipe for civil conflict, as was the corruption, authoritarianism and British backing of the monarchy itself. A succession of revolutions and coups d'etat, each bloodier than the last, culminated in the ruthless dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, ushering in brutal repression, torture, a devastating war with Iran, the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam's overthrow in the invasion of 2003, and the carnage and destruction that has followed. Given such a history, it is not surprising that Iraqi playwrights would find themselves drawn to reflect the trauma of these decades in their plays. The aim of this study is to analyze and appraise the ways in which the endemic political violence of recent decades in Iraq has been represented in drama, both by Iraqi playwrights writing in Arabic, and by English-language playwrights, mainly in the UK and the US, where the issues surrounding the justification and conduct of the 2003 invasion have generated intense political debate. How do Iraqi and non-Iraqi playwrights differ in their representations of political violence, in terms both of critical perspective and of dramatic strategy? For analytical convenience, political violence has been subdivided into three categories: resistance violence against tyranny and foreign occupation; revolutionary violence; and the violence of terror, whether by the state or by sectarian elements within society. While the culminating focus has been on drama since 2003, the study has sought to situate the contemporary output in a tradition of Iraqi drama V going back nearly a century. It has also endeavoured to locate the perspectives and dramatic strategies adopted by Iraqi playwrights within the larger frame of modern political drama generally, in Arabic, English and beyond. Methodologically the study makes use of leftist revolutionary ideas put forward mainly by Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon and Mahatma Gandhi to analyze the representation of violence in selected plays written by several Arab and English language playwrights. In addition to the theories of Marx, Fanon and Gandhi, it utilizes Diana Taylor's and Michel Foucault's theorization of torture and the body. Patterson's book, Strategies of Political Theatre, was useful in discussing the function of political theatre in the Iraqi war context. I apply Patterson's dichotomy of the "reflectionists" vs. the "interventionists" to see how the plays in question adhere to one or the other category. The questions pursued by this study are: how, and how effectively, have generations of Iraq-Arabic playwrights, and recent playwrights working in English, tackled this material? From what perspectives, and with what dramatic strategies and modes of representation, have they managed to put it on stage? And how adequately have they done so, in terms both of political insight and analysis, and of artistic achievement? It is concluded that English language and Arabic-Iraqi drama have so far succeeded only to a limited extent in presenting an accurate and comprehensive representation of the political violence in Iraq. VI DEDICATION To My Mother I long for my mother's bread my mother's coffee and my mother's caress... and each day childhood grows bigger in me on another day's chest, and I adore my life for if I die my mother's tears would shame me! So if I return one day, mother, make me into a shroud that shades your long eyelashes, and cover my bones with grass your pure heels had baptized, and tighten my bind... with a lock of your hair... or with a thread waving from the hem of your dress, I might become a god then, a god, I might... if I touch the deep floor of your heart! And if I return, use me as fuel for your brick oven... hang me on the roof, like your laundry line, I can no longer stand without the prayers of your days, I have aged, so bring back the stars of childhood to me, and I will join the little birds on the path of return... to the nest of your waiting! {Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah) VII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Christopher Innes for his support, astute guidance and sound advice. I am also immensely grateful to Professor Robert Fothergill and Professor Don Rubin for their invaluable contributions, editing and encouragement. A special thank to Mr. Edward Bond for his critical and insightful thoughts which have widened the horizons of my study. Finally, I extend my gratitude to my parents, Layla and A. Zahra, and to Dr. Abdul Kareem Abood and Mr. Mohamed al-Zubaidi whose suggestions were quite useful. viii Table of Contents Chapter One: Political Violence, Theatre, and Drama 1 Chapter Two: Political Violence in Contemporary Drama 37 Chapter Three: Political Violence and the Political Theatre in Iraq 77 Chapter Four: The Violence of the War in the Plays about Iraq 103 Chapter Five: State Terrorism and Islamic Terrorism in the Plays about Iraq 146 Chapter Six: Conclusions 174 Appendix A: Summary Overview of Modern Iraq History 187 Appendix B: Questionnaire Forms and Responses 192 Bibliography 213 1 I. Introduction: Political Violence, Theatre, and Drama When embarking on a study of the representation of political violence in drama, it is essential first of all to establish some agreed-upon terms and frames of reference, and some reasonably stable understanding of the object of study. Political violence as a subject for dramatic representation can be seen as a special category of what is called "political drama" more generally. Political drama can be understood to include such ingredients as the clash of political philosophies and strategies in concrete situations, the struggle for political power through democratic or extra-democratic means, the maneuverings, triumphs and defeats of parties, groups and classes in pursuit of their political goals, and the ceaseless weighing of ends and means in that pursuit. As a field of human activity and commitment, politics, broadly defined, has furnished material for a huge number of plays, engaging audiences in the recurring variations of personal and political dilemmas. Some of these plays can be seen to have the overt aim of changing or reinforcing the spectators' understanding and political alignment; others present the spectacle of human behavior in the political realm in an ostensibly neutral way. The dramatic representation of political violence addresses more specifically the call to violent action, armed struggle, the readiness to fight and to kill, in the pursuit or defence of political ends. It can to a considerable extent be analyzed in the tenns and categories, and with the methodological tools, employed in the study of political drama in general. However, the dramatization of the issues raised by the adoption of violence as a political means and, even more acutely, the representation on stage of that violence, raises its own set of critical issues. A study of the subject calls for the identification of 2 categories of political violence, the modes and purposes of its representation, and the implicit or explicit judgment of it. To be even more specific, this study will principally investigate the representation of political violence in plays written about Iraq since 2003 by Iraqi-Arabic and English language playwrights. It will tackle the question: how do the Iraqi-Arabic and English language dramatists differ in depicting and dramatizing political violence in the plays about Iraq.