Introduction: Canadian Performances/global Redefinitions/ Introduction: Theatre Canadian et Redefinitions Planetaires

From last decades of twentieth century to present, new structures of globalization have increasingly characterized our world. From an economic point of view, influence of such institutional and regulatory structures as NAFTA and IMF has deeply affected relationships between countries on various continents. From a cultural perspective, internet and social media have contributed to quick knowledge dissemination across national boundaries and both a growing similarity among developed nations and an increasing sense of disenfranchisement in developing nations. As a fraught issue, globalization has generated new forms of critical discourse in various fields, including literature and theatre studies. While its advocates praise it for its ability to develop new connections between different world cultures, its detractors underscore its tendency to favour cultural sameness on a global scale. As Dan Rebellato reminds us, phenomenon of globalization can be understood in many ways. Already heralded by Karl Marx in nineteenth century as an inevitable process leading to productive dialogues between nations, globalization gained special significance towards end of twentieth century (Rebellato 14). Broadly speaking, globalization now designates manifold political, cultural, and economic exchanges between world's contemporary nation-states. This process stands in marked constrast to insularities of nineteenth century nationalisms (4-12). More specifically, Rebellato regards globalization as the rise of global capitalism operating under neoliberal policy conditions, by which he means non-protectionist economic conditions typical of late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (12). Similarly, in this special issue, globalization is understood as a phenomenon closely linked with these recent phases of capitalism. The articles collected here foreground ways in which Canadian artists engaged in theatre and performance negotiate cross-cultural advantages and homogenizing pitfalls of such globalization. In 1827, Goethe already envisioned a concept he called Weltliteratur, a form of global literature transcending national boundaries. This notion, David Damrosch argues, foreshadowed our global modernity. In his What Is World Literature?, he redefines Goethe's Weltliteratur as a mode of circulation and of reading, which points to a network of literary works across nations (5). Damrosch's concept of refraction suggests that borrowed works of literature tell as much about host as about source culture (283). Refraction thus counterbalances homogenizing impact of globalization. Similarly, postcolonial scholar Gayatri Spivak critiques universalizing tendencies of globalization, setting it in opposition to her concept of planetarity, which emphasizes fruitful encounters with alterity (73). In a 2010 essay, Mariano Siskind likewise contrasts globalization to a renewed version of cosmopolitanism, embracing both local and global, as a way of truly engaging with literary production of other cultures. These notions of globalization naturally invite comparative studies of different cultures throughout world, both from literary and performance perspectives. Globalization has led to a welter of recent publications in fields of comparative literature and postcolonial studies, focusing mainly on prose and poetry. This yearning for an extended form of cosmopolitanism also characterizes theoretical studies of theatre and globalization. In theatre studies, globalization is related to issues of cross-cultural exhange, transnational influences, multiculturalism, and intercultural performance practices. As such, it has led to a number of significant publications, although perhaps to fewer than have appeared in comparative literature and postcolonial studies--a lacuna that this issue aspires to remedy, at least in Canadian context. In their important works, Dan Rebellato and Ric Knowles acknowledge that while globalization can potentially lead to meaningful interactions between cultures, it can also reveal forms of Eurocentric appropriations. …

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