Against order(s): Dictatorship, absurdism and the plays of sony labou tansi

Against order(s): Dictatorship, absurdism and the plays of sony labou tansi

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Document Type

Contribution to Book

Department

Theatre Arts

Book Title

Performing (for) Survival: Theatre, Crisis, Extremity

Editor(s)

Patrick Duggan & Lisa Peschel

Description

Congolese playwright, director and novelist Sony Labou Tansi created a large body of work during his most prolific period, the late 1970s to mid-1990s, while living through a series of political coups and authoritarian governments.1 For two decades, Tansi’s plays, novels and essays offered an array of diverse forms of resistance to dictatorship. Alternately celebrated for his international success,2 harassed by state authorities,3 and posthumously accused of ethnic factionalism,4 Tansi’s career is a searing example of an artist writing through authoritarian conditions and political upheavals. Educated under a repressive colonial system, Tansi witnessed independence and the establishment of a Marxist state, participated in political efforts that brought about the creation of a new constitution and the emergence of an ostensibly multiparty democratic system in 1992, and suffered from the state of violence and chaos into which the Congo was plunged after the parliamentary elections of 1993 were contested and the nation entered a prolonged period of civil strife that eventually escalated into civil war. At the end of his life Tansi suffered personally for his political activities when his passport was revoked; the medical treatment he sought for himself and his wife in France for their AIDS-related illness was fatally delayed and they both died upon their return to the Congo in 1995 (Thomas 2002: 57; Kirkup 1995: n.p.).

Find in WorldCat

https://worldcat.org/title/915056966

ISBN

978-1-137-45426-3

DOI

10.1057/9781137454270_7

Publication Date

1-5-2016

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

City

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire

First Page

121

Last Page

140

Keywords

Parliamentary Election, Orthographic Similarity, Civil Strife, African Literature, Colonial Education

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | History | Other Theatre and Performance Studies | Playwriting | Political Science | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Theatre and Performance Studies | Theatre History

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Against order(s): Dictatorship, absurdism and the plays of sony labou tansi
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