1. Discuss the problems that emerge in the encounter between memory and history in one or two works discussed in this book.
2. How, in our present, do we regard and recall what Susan Sontag (2003) has so powerfully described as the ‘pain of others’? Discuss in relation to one or two works discussed in this book that engage well with this theme.
3. Find a play, performance, or a cultural event representing or memorializing an instance of historical trauma (e.g. the Holocaust, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the AIDS crisis, etc.). Consider aesthetic/representational strategies employed in your chosen work to give shape to remembrance.
4. Discuss the problem of human trafficking as represented in one or two works studied on the module through the lens of history and memory.
5. What might be meant by Derrida’s moral imperative to grant the ghosts of the past ‘a hospitable memory’? Discuss in relation to one or two works discussed in this book.
6. Discuss what it means to bear witness in the context of one or two works discussed in this book.
7. In her essay ‘Trauma and Performance: Lesson from Latin America’, Diana Taylor writes: ‘Acts – from uncontrollable acting out to the therapeutic acting through to the political acting up – signal both the symptom and the “cure.” Acknowledging their relatedness allows us to think of actions or performances that work simultaneously to mitigate the personal and collective effects of trauma even as they make their claim for social justice’ (1676, 2006). Discuss this statement in relation to selected performances discussed in this book.
8. What does an intercultural approach bring to the study of memory in contemporary performance?
9. How, if at all, does the awareness of living in a new geological epoch defined by the actions of human beings affect the objects of memory? Discuss in relation to performances of your choice, which address the issue of climate breakdown.
.
