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Mnemonic sketches: Utopias of mourning in contemporary South African performances of tragedy
This multidisciplinary study locates, at its centre and at the centre of tragedy more broadly, the notion of chorus. My orientation around chorus in this study is based on the one hand, in performance- as in the live moment of present encounter- and on the other hand, in the local context of contemp...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English English |
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Centre for Film and Media Studies
2025
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| _version_ | 1867613228840779776 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Chauke, Lesego Thabang |
| author2 | Fleishman, Mark |
| author_browse | Chauke, Lesego Thabang Fleishman, Mark |
| author_facet | Fleishman, Mark Chauke, Lesego Thabang |
| author_sort | Chauke, Lesego Thabang |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | This multidisciplinary study locates, at its centre and at the centre of tragedy more broadly, the notion of chorus. My orientation around chorus in this study is based on the one hand, in performance- as in the live moment of present encounter- and on the other hand, in the local context of contemporary South Africa. In this feat, I survey a range of case studies that mobilise chorality in notable aesthetic and political ways. Fundamental to my own definition of tragedy is the idea of mourning. Here, mourning is not simply something done by characters in a tragic performance. As we will see in the chapters that follow, mourning becomes an orientation toward and away from history, it comes to name the complex relationship between making history and being in history. I attempt, in chapters one and two, to outline the ways in which tragedy and mourning may be understood as collective structures of experience that shape individual perceptual possibilities. Upon establishing the context in which this study unfolds, which is also the task of the first two chapters, I mobilize even as I agitate, foundational concepts of tragedy in their mimetic and diegetic applications. I then turn my attention toward the notion of utopia, in and beyond performance, in chapter three, arguing for chorus as its own structure of experience that, if allowed to settle its debt to tragedy, can shape individual perceptual possibilities. Chapter four takes on a performance analysis methodology to probe the concept of the archive as a tool for performative and performance historiography. The final chapter turns towards my own performance works produced over the course of the study. Here, I discuss the notion of mimesis as a particular orientation towards history and historiography. The research takes practice- as-research and literary/performance analysis as its primary methodologies. These two approaches are anchored by an ethnographic process which not only seeks out external subjects but calls attention to my own subject position as a researcher engaged in an ethnographic project. Ultimately, my understanding of tragedy finds articulation in the convergence of the three key concepts, namely utopia, mimesis, and the archive, towards a theory of contemporary tragedy anchored in a non-Western framework. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/42132 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | English eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:32:47.627Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | Centre for Film and Media Studies |
| publisherStr | Centre for Film and Media Studies |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/42132 Mnemonic sketches: Utopias of mourning in contemporary South African performances of tragedy Chauke, Lesego Thabang Fleishman, Mark This multidisciplinary study locates, at its centre and at the centre of tragedy more broadly, the notion of chorus. My orientation around chorus in this study is based on the one hand, in performance- as in the live moment of present encounter- and on the other hand, in the local context of contemporary South Africa. In this feat, I survey a range of case studies that mobilise chorality in notable aesthetic and political ways. Fundamental to my own definition of tragedy is the idea of mourning. Here, mourning is not simply something done by characters in a tragic performance. As we will see in the chapters that follow, mourning becomes an orientation toward and away from history, it comes to name the complex relationship between making history and being in history. I attempt, in chapters one and two, to outline the ways in which tragedy and mourning may be understood as collective structures of experience that shape individual perceptual possibilities. Upon establishing the context in which this study unfolds, which is also the task of the first two chapters, I mobilize even as I agitate, foundational concepts of tragedy in their mimetic and diegetic applications. I then turn my attention toward the notion of utopia, in and beyond performance, in chapter three, arguing for chorus as its own structure of experience that, if allowed to settle its debt to tragedy, can shape individual perceptual possibilities. Chapter four takes on a performance analysis methodology to probe the concept of the archive as a tool for performative and performance historiography. The final chapter turns towards my own performance works produced over the course of the study. Here, I discuss the notion of mimesis as a particular orientation towards history and historiography. The research takes practice- as-research and literary/performance analysis as its primary methodologies. These two approaches are anchored by an ethnographic process which not only seeks out external subjects but calls attention to my own subject position as a researcher engaged in an ethnographic project. Ultimately, my understanding of tragedy finds articulation in the convergence of the three key concepts, namely utopia, mimesis, and the archive, towards a theory of contemporary tragedy anchored in a non-Western framework. 2025-11-06T12:43:56Z 2025-11-06T12:43:56Z 2025 2025-11-06T12:41:28Z Thesis / Dissertation Doctoral PhD http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42132 en eng application/pdf Centre for Film and Media Studies Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Chauke, Lesego Thabang Mnemonic sketches: Utopias of mourning in contemporary South African performances of tragedy |
| thesis_degree_str | Doctoral |
| title | Mnemonic sketches: Utopias of mourning in contemporary South African performances of tragedy |
| title_full | Mnemonic sketches: Utopias of mourning in contemporary South African performances of tragedy |
| title_fullStr | Mnemonic sketches: Utopias of mourning in contemporary South African performances of tragedy |
| title_full_unstemmed | Mnemonic sketches: Utopias of mourning in contemporary South African performances of tragedy |
| title_short | Mnemonic sketches: Utopias of mourning in contemporary South African performances of tragedy |
| title_sort | mnemonic sketches utopias of mourning in contemporary south african performances of tragedy |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42132 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT chaukelesegothabang mnemonicsketchesutopiasofmourningincontemporarysouthafricanperformancesoftragedy |