Performance Network - 16 February 2015 - Truth and Reconciliation Performed

Dr Andrea Grant (Social Anthropology/African Studies, Cambridge)
Dr Ananda Breed (Performing Arts Development, University of East London)
Chairs:
Dr Timothy Jenkins (Anthropology and Religion, Cambridge)
Ariana Phillips (Cultural Musicology, Cambridge)

This seminar discusses how truth and reconciliation have become tense and negotiated notions subject to legal, emotional, artistic, and popular performance in Rwanda and other contexts in Africa and beyond. Performance here is understood as an interdisciplinary concept that touches upon the performativity of legal acts, but also to peoples’ subjective positioning in society through the arts, political rhetoric, and popular expression.

Biographies
Ananda Breed is Reader in the School of Arts & Digital Industries at the University of East London. Breed is the author of Performing the Nation: Genocide, Justice, Reconciliation (Seagull Books, 2014) that analyses performances and performatives related to the gacaca courts in Rwanda, in addition to several publications that address transitional systems of governance and the arts. She has worked as a consultant for IREX and UNICEF in Kyrgyzstan on issues concerning conflict negotiation and conducted workshops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Indonesia, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Palestine, Rwanda and Turkey. Breed is co-director of the Centre for Performing Arts Development (CPAD) at the University of East London and former research fellow of the International Research Centre 'Interweaving Performance Cultures' (2013-2014) at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Andrea Grant is a Research Fellow in Social Anthropology and African Studies at Emmanuel College. Her research focuses on religion and popular culture in Rwanda.
Tim Jenkins is Reader in Anthropology and Religion in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and a Fellow of Jesus College. Recent publications include The Life of Property (2010) and Of Flying Saucers and Social Scientists (2013), the one a study of land inheritance in south-west France, the other concerning the investigation of a flying saucer cult.
Ariana Phillips is a PhD student in cultural musicology at the University of Cambridge. Her current research examines how pieces of music mediate experiences of guilt, forgiveness, and redemption in the contemporary world.