Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-xq9c7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-16T19:35:12.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From Postmigrant to Posthuman

The Performance of Simone Dede Ayivi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2023

Abstract

A recent trend in Black German theatre engages with fantasy and posthumanism to criticize German racism and nationalism. In Krieg der Hörnchen (War of the Squirrels), Simone Dede Ayivi combines posthumanism and postnationalism, using German fears of invasive gray squirrels taking over the habitat of native red squirrels to reimagine xenophobic and racist debates about migration.

Type
Special Issue on Contemporary German Theatre
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press for Tisch School of the Arts/NYU

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Ayim, May, Katharina, Oguntoye, and Dagmar, Schultz, eds. 1986. Farbe bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte. Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag.Google Scholar
Ayivi, Simone Dede. 2013. Krieg der Hörnchen. Sophiensaele, Berlin. https://vimeo.com/88284934 Google Scholar
Ayivi, Simone Dede. 2017. Queens. Sophiensaele, Berlin. https://vimeo.com/247709319 Google Scholar
Ayivi, Simone Dede. 2018a. “Internationalität ≠ Interkultur: eine Schwarze deutsche Kritik.” In Alliaznen: Kritische Praxis an weissen Institutionen, ed. Elisa Liepsch, Julian Warner, and Matthias Pees, 7483. Bielefeld: Transcript.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayivi, Simone Dede. 2018b. Interview with author. Berlin, 7 December.Google Scholar
Ballhaus Naunynstrasse Theater. 2016. “We Are the Universe.” ballhausnaunynstrasse.de/play/we_are_the_universe/ Google Scholar
Bennhold, Katrin. 2019. “A Fairy-Tale Baddie, the Wolf, Is Back in Germany, and Anti-Migrant Forces Pounce.” New York Times, 23 April. www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/world/europe/germany-wolves-afd-immigration.html Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. (1994) 2004. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brahm, Felix, and Eve, Rosenhaft, eds. 2016. Slavery Hinterland: Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680–1850. Suffolk: Boydell Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breger, Claudia. 2012. An Aesthetics of Narrative Performance: Transnational Theater, Literature, and Film in Contemporary Germany. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Budds, Diana. 2018. “The Origin Story of the ‘Black Panther’ Throne.” Curbed, 20 February. www.curbed.com/2018/2/20/17032838/black-panther-wakanda-throne-peacock-chair Google Scholar
Bühnenwatch. 2011. Accessed 31 January 2019. www.buehnenwatch.com Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, Una. 2017. The Stage Lives of Animals: Zooesis and Performance. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chin, Rita, and Fehrenbach, Heide. 2009. “Introduction: What’s Race Got to Do with It? Postwar German History in Context.” In After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe, ed. Rita, Chin, Heide, Fehrenbach, Geoff, Eley, and Atina, Grossmann, 1–29. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Ciarlo, David. 2011. Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornish, Matt. 2017. Performing Unification: History and Nation in German Theater after 1989. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eggers, Maisha M. 2012. “Schwarzes Wissensarchiv.” In Euer Schweigen schützt Euch nicht: Audre Lorde und die Schwarze Frauenbewegung in Deutschland, ed. Piesche, Peggy, 228–33. Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag.Google Scholar
Ellis, Cristin. 2018. Antebellum Posthuman: Race and Materiality in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. New York: Fordham University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El-Tayeb, Fatima. 2016. Undeutsch: Die Konstruktion des Anderen in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript.Google Scholar
Fehrenbach, Heide. 2005. Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Verlage. 2023. “Olivia Wenzel.” Autor*innen. www.fischerverlage.de/autor/olivia-wenzel-1009108 Google Scholar
Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, Sara, Lennox, and Susanne, Zantop, eds. 1998. The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Göttsche, Dirk. 2012. “Self-Assertion, Intervention and Achievement: Black German Writing in Postcolonial Perspective.” Orbis Litterarum 67, 2:83135. doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0730.2011.01042.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hake, Sabine. 1998. “Mapping the Native Body: On Africa and the Colonial Film in the Third Reich.” In The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy, ed. Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop, 163–88. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Kelting, Lily. 2023. “Sorry Not Sorry: Monster Truck’s Postcolonial Anti-Authenticity Spectacular!TDR 67, 2 (T258):6584.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kössler, Reinhart. 2015. Namibia and Germany: Negotiating the Past. Windhoek: University of Namibia Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noir, Label. n.d. Accessed 31 January 2019. www.labelnoir.net Google Scholar
Landry, Olivia. 2022. “Schwarz tragen: Blackness, Performance, and the Utopian in Contemporary German Theater.” In Minority Discourses in Germany Since 1990, ed. Ela Gezen, Priscilla Layne, and Jonathan Skolnik, 99118. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Langhoff, Shermin, with Irene Bazinger. 2012. “Wozu postmigrantisches Theater?” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15 January. www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buehne-und-konzert/gespraech-mit-shermin-langhoff-wozu-postmigrantisches-theatre-11605050.html Google Scholar
Layne, Priscilla. 2018. White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matzke, Annemarie. 2018. Personal interview with author. Hildesheim, 6 December.Google Scholar
Ndikung, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng, Kaczmarek, Nele, Hillgärtner, Jule, and Braunschweig, Kunstverein. 2021. The Faculty of Sensing: Thinking with, through, and by Anton Wilhelm Amo. Milan: Mousse Publishing.Google Scholar
Olschanski, Reinhard. 2017. “Mehr Spaß beim Hass.” Der Freitag, 15 September. www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/mehr-spass-beim-hass Google Scholar
Otoo, Sharon Dodua. 2012. “Reclaiming Innocence: Unmasking Representations of Whiteness in German Theatre.” In The Little Book of Big Visions: How to be an Artist and Revolutionize the World, ed. Sandrine Micossé-Aikins and Sharon Dodua Otoo, 54–70. Münster: Edition Assemblage.Google Scholar
Piesche, Peggy. 2016. “Towards a Future African Diasporic Theory: Black Collective Narratives Changing the Epistemic Map.” frauen*solidarität 1:2224.Google Scholar
Popoola, Olumide. 2023. “Bio.” Accessed 1 December 2022. www.olumidepopoola.com Google Scholar
Rollhäuser, Lorenz. 2018. “Kolonialismus-Debatte: Die Rückgabe reicht nicht aus.” Deutschlandfunk, 27 December. www.deutschlandfunk.de/kolonialismus-debatte-die-rueckgabe-reicht-nicht-aus-100.html CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romanska, Magda. 2019. “Body: Tadeusz Kantor and the Posthuman Stage.” In Postdramatic Theatre and Form, ed. Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish, and Brandon Woolf, 81–95. London: Methuen Drama.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sieg, Katrin. 2011. “Class of 1989: Who Made Good and Who Dropped Out of German History? Postmigrant Documentary Theater in Berlin.” In The German Wall: Fallout in Europe, ed. Marc Silberman, 165–86. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sieg, Katrin. 2015. “Race, Guilt, and Innocence: Facing Blackfacing in Contemporary German Theatre.” German Studies Review 38, 1:117–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
von Eichendorff, Joseph. 1810. “Abschied.” Trans. David Paley. www.poemswithoutfrontiers.com/Abschied.html Google Scholar
Watkins, Jamele. 2016. “The Drama of Race: Contemporary Afro-German Theater.” PhD diss., University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Cary. 2010. What Is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Zantop, Susanne. 1997. Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar

TDReading

Edwards, Brent Hayes. 2020. “Transplanted Exoticism.” TDR 64, 2 (T246):7578. doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00919 CrossRefGoogle Scholar