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Editorial Comment: The Global South?
Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2021-01-06 , DOI: 10.1353/tj.2020.0096
E.J. Westlake

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Editorial Comment:The Global South?
  • E.J. Westlake

Originally, I had envisioned that this issue would take up the concept of the Global South, to showcase a sample of current scholarship centered on theatre and performance in the Global South, but also to interrogate the term and its widespread use. I was thrilled to have a few very fine submissions to consider, including the four excellent essays that made their way through the peer-review process and are included here. I consider myself lucky that both established and emerging scholars labored to make their work available to us. I thought it was interesting that we ended up with four authors that all anchor their work in Africa, but I was excited by the prospect that they all addressed the use of the "Global South" as a point of reference.

What I did not consider (or did not consider well, or did not give near enough thought to) was the fact that all four essays chosen to appear in a special issue on "The Global South" are by white scholars based in institutions in the United States. As the issue entered production, Laura Edmondson, whose essay begins this issue, gently brought this to my attention. She and Kellen Hoxworth graciously agreed to help me think through the implications of a Global South issue with such lack of representation from Global South–based scholars. This expression of concern led to a helpful and generative exchange with Laura, Kellen, and the leadership of ASTR's Performance in/from the Global South Working Group.1 They shared their uneasiness with how Africa was serving as the lone representative of the Global South. They called attention to their thriving community of scholars "who work in our rapidly expanding field and who have consistently and brilliantly redefined the terrain of the Global South as much more than simply 'the non-Western,'" to quote from our email exchange. I am grateful for these conversations, which have helped to shape and inform my framing of this issue.

On the one hand, editors have limited control over submissions. We send out calls, we approach people at conferences, we network with colleagues, and we rely upon referrals. We get the essays we get (and the submissions to Theatre Journal have dropped off dramatically with the proliferation of academic journals), and we hope we have enough essays to make a full issue. We hope we can find reviewers. We hope the authors have time to rework material after we ask for revisions. Several essays we hoped to include in special issues are held up by one or more of these factors and are included in later general issues. But the real problem is much deeper and more systemic.

In 2006, a conversation about globalization and the lack of voices from outside the United States appeared in the "Editor's Forum" in Theatre Survey. Scholars from the University of California system published a letter reporting on the findings from a "research group on international performance and culture dedicated to developing a [End Page vii] variety of scholarly approaches to global performance."2 They examined three journal issues published over the previous year on transnational performance, and noted that "[a]ll but one scholar writing in the three journals are located in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom." Particularly relevant to the problem of this issue of Theatre Journal was the question this group of scholars posed regarding this power differential in creating a lopsided flow of discourse:

By what means can we disrupt the asymmetrical flow of scholarly discourse where writers located in those places have not only disproportionate access to publication venues but also disproportionate influence in determining the topics, questions, and theories that are deemed "relevant" and "excellent" in the peer-review process that leads to publication?

It is striking that we are still asking these questions, and I am left wondering if we have gained any ground in addressing them. The research group suggested that "the 'other' is among us," in that we cannot collapse this discussion into tidy binaries, both because so many scholars migrate and work within different global contexts, but also because of our...



中文翻译:

社论评论:全球南方?

代替摘要,这里是内容的简要摘录:

  • 社论评论:全球南方?
  • EJ韦斯特莱克

最初,我曾设想过这个问题将采用“全球南方”的概念,以展示当前奖学金的样本,该奖学金以“全球南方”中的戏剧和表演为中心,同时也要探讨该术语及其广泛使用。我很高兴能考虑一些非常好的论文,包括在同行评审过程中一路走来的四篇优秀论文,都包含在这里。我认为自己很幸运,既有知名人士也有新兴学者都在努力向我们提供他们的作品。我认为很有趣的是,我们最终得到了四位作者,他们全都将他们的工作定在非洲,但我为他们都以使用“全球南方”作为参考的前景感到兴奋。

我没有考虑(或考虑得不好,或考虑不周全)的事实是,所有四篇论文被选出刊登在《全球南方》的特刊上,都是由驻扎在该机构的白人学者组成的。美国。当问题进入生产阶段时,Laura Edmondson(其文章开始于此问题)的话题轻轻地引起了我的注意。她和凯伦·霍克斯沃思(Kellen Hoxworth)慷慨地同意,在缺乏全球南方学者的代表性的情况下,帮助我思考全球南方问题的影响。这种关注的表达导致了与劳拉·凯伦(Laura,Kellen)的有益和富有创见的交流,以及ASTR绩效在全球南方工作组中的领导。1个他们与非洲如何担当全球南方的唯一代表一样感到不安。他们呼吁在其蓬勃发展的学者社区关注“他们在我们迅速扩展的领域中工作,并且一贯而辉煌地将全球南方的地域重新定义为不仅仅是简单的“非西方”,”在我们的电子邮件交流中引用。我很感谢这些对话,这些对话有助于塑造并告知我这个问题的框架。

一方面,编辑者对提交的控制有限。我们发出呼叫,在会议上与人打交道,与同事建立联系,并依靠转介。我们收到了自己的论文(随着《学术期刊》的激增,《戏剧杂志》的投稿数量急剧下降),我们希望我们有足够的论文来发表完整的论文。希望我们能找到评论者。我们希望作者在我们要求修订后有时间重新整理材料。我们希望包含在特殊问题中的几篇文章受到这些因素中的一个或多个因素的影响,并被包含在以后的一般性问题中。但是,真正的问题要深得多,也要系统得多。

2006年,在《剧院调查》的“编辑者论坛”中出现了有关全球化和美国以外人士声音不足的对话。来自加州大学系统的学者从已发布的调查结果的一封信报告“致力于发展国际业绩和文化研究组[尾页VII]各种学术接近全球的表现。” 2他们研究了上一年发表的关于跨国业绩的三本期刊,并指出“这三本期刊中只有一位学者的著作位于美国,加拿大或英国。” 与本期《戏剧杂志》的问题特别相关 这是一群学者提出的关于在权力分配不均方面产生这种力量差异的问题:

通过何种方式,我们可以打破学术话语的不对称流动,即位于那些地方的作家不仅访问出版场所的比例不成比例,而且在确定被认为是“相关”和“优秀”的主题,问题和理论时也具有不成比例的影响力。导致发表的同行评审过程?

令人惊讶的是,我们仍在问这些问题,我想知道我们是否在解决这些问题上有任何基础。该研究小组建议,“另一个”就在我们中间,因为我们不能将这一讨论分解为整洁的二进制文件,这不仅是因为有如此多的学者在不同的全球环境中迁移和工作,而且还因为我们...

更新日期:2021-03-16
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