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Lazarus’s necropolitical afterlife
ever more clearly in the cleavages between rich and poor,
citizens and non-citizens (and those who can be stripped
of citizenship); the culturally, morally, economically valu-
able and the pathological; queer subjects invited into life and
queerly abjected populations marked for death. (Haritaworn
et al. 2014, 2)
As Sunera Thobani points out in her prologue to the ground-
breaking 2014 volume on Queer Necropolitics, however, “it is
wise to remember that sovereignty is not abstract. It has a par-
ticular name, a face, an address, a geographical coordinate. Its
face is white, it remains housed in white bodies, it is located in
Westernity” (Thobani 2014, xvii). From that perspective, Bowie’s
return to Newton in Lazarus can be seen as a concretizing of
sovereignty in that the face, address, and location he gave it rubs
our noses in the contemporary order of things. Given that the
original literary character of Newton presaged the billionaire
CEOs of media-tech empires, Newton’s Manhattan apartment
on Second Avenue is appropriately in the belly of the financial
beast, a heart of darkness 2.0. The entire play is rooted in the
apartment, from the initial visit of Newton’s friend Michael to
Valentine’s finagling of his way in after he has dispatched with
Michael and Ben, precipitating Newton’s end. The apartment is
Newton’s lair in every sense of the word, something Valentine
calls attention to in getting Newton to commit an act of violence
there that horrifies Newton and something the Viennese staging
underscores by littering the stage with exotic animals.
Newton’s desperate final act of violence stands in stark con-
trast to Valentine’s sadistic modus operandi. Not only does Val-
entine pick a fight with Michael before offing him, he also “ag-
gressively holds ELLY against the wall. It looks like he’s going to
strangle her”11 and terrifies Newton when he “suddenly strikes
11 Michael’s fate is left somewhat ambiguous — he is described as “slumped
opposite VALENTINE — dead” but once Valentine starts singing “Love is
Lost,” he “suddenly gets up — his shirt bloody — and leaves the apartment”
(Bowie and Walsh 2017, 20),
Siting Futurity
The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna
- Titel
- Siting Futurity
- Untertitel
- The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna
- Autor
- Susan Ingram
- Verlag
- punctumbooks
- Ort
- New York
- Datum
- 2021
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-1-953035-48-6
- Abmessungen
- 12.6 x 20.2 cm
- Seiten
- 224
- Schlagwörter
- activism, Austria, contemporary art, contemporary theater, protest culture, radicalism, social protest, Vienna
- Kategorie
- Geographie, Land und Leute
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Preface 11
- Introduction 19
- 1. (Re)Forming Vienna’s Culture of Resistance: The Proletenpassions @ #Arena 39
- 2. Converting Kebab and Currency into Community on Planet #Ottakring 57
- 3. Lazarus’s Necropolitical Afterlife at Vienna’s #Volkstheater 81
- 4. Hardly Homemad(e): #Schlingensief’s Container 101
- 5. From Grand Hotels to Tiny Treasures: Wes Anderson and the Ruin Porn Worlds of Yesterday 119
- 6. Capitalism, Schizophrenia, and #Vanlife: The Alpine Edukation of Hans Weingarter 143
- 7. #Hallstatt: Welcome to Jurassic World 161
- Bibliography 189
- Filmography 215