Medvedeva Weber, Emilia;
(2025)
Performance, theatricality and the spatial politics of protest and power: Tactics of blocking, opening and circulating in the UK from the 1990s to the present.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis examines the convergences of performance, theatricality and space as they pertain to political campaigns and events in the United Kingdom from the 1990s to today. The project asks if attending to the performed and embodied behaviours of both authority and of counterhegemonic groups can contribute to critical understandings of the processes and practices that socially construct space. The empirical implications of bringing theories of performance and theatricality into conversation with geographical scholarship are explored by employing qualitative research methods to examine three campaigns and events: the Liverpool dockers’ lockout of 1995-1998 and the collaborations it generated, the local community’s struggle with the British Army over border crossings between Northern Ireland and Ireland 1990-1994, and contemporary air and military shows. In each chapter I read the political events in question through a different term related to performance and theatricality: temporality, stage, company, play, act, role and re-enact. In so doing, I attend to how both the tactics of resistance used by protestors and the strategies of law and rule used by repressive forces function through performance and theatricality to effect their aims. Arguing further that even when this is not explicitly the case, our understanding of such repertoires is nonetheless broadened when examined via the lenses of performance and theatricality deployed here as analytic categories.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Performance, theatricality and the spatial politics of protest and power: Tactics of blocking, opening and circulating in the UK from the 1990s to the present |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10214009 |
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