Pantomime is a theatrical form that has come to rule our everyday lives as terror. In the early years of the 21st century, a dissembling political demonology has sometimes placed otherwise merely lyrical musicians in a volatile predicament. The discussion here is of Fun-da-Mental's Aki Nawaz portrayed as a 'suicide rapper', Asian Dub Foundation striking poses from the street in support of youth in Paris and Algiers, and M.I.A., born free fighting immigration crackdown with atrocity video. Along the way, bus bombs, comedy circuits, critical theory, Arabian Nights, Bradley Wiggins, Dinarzade, Karl Marx, Paris boulevards, Molotov, Mao, the Eiffel Tower, reserve armies, lists, Richard Wagner, Samina Malik, Slavoj Žižek, Freudian slips, red-heads, Guantanamo. The book offers some sharp critiques of our contemporary complacency, and the failures of theory as more than ten years of war on terror turns anxiety at home and drone-strike assassinations abroad into a normal everyday. This pantomime is a terror story told over and over to distract from the workings of a despotic power. The need for an adequate (winning) counter-narrative was never more clear. ,

In a moment of intense uncertainty surrounding the means, ends, and limits of (countering) terrorism, this study approaches the recent theatres of war through theatrical stagings of terror. Theatre on Terror: Subject Positions in British Drama charts the terrain of contemporary subjectivities both ‘at home’ and ‘on the front line’. Beyond examining the construction and contestation of subject positions in domestic and (sub)urban settings, the book follows border-crossing figures to the shifting battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. What emerges through the analysis of twenty-one plays is not a dichotomy but a dialectics of ‘home’ and ‘front’, where fluid, uncontainable subjects are constantly pushing the contours of conflict. Revising the critical consensus that post-9/11 drama primarily engages with ‘the real’, Ariane de Waal argues that these plays navigate the complexities of the discourse – rather than the historical or social realities – of war and terrorism. British ‘theatre on terror’ negotiates, inflects, and participates in the discursive circulation of stories, idioms, controversies, testimonies, and pieces of (mis)information in the face of global insecurities.

Terror and the Postcolonial is a major comparative study of terrorism and its representations in postcolonial theory, literature, and culture. A ground-breaking study addressing and theorizing the relationship between postcolonial studies, colonial history, and terrorism through a series of contemporary and historical case studies from various postcolonial contexts Critically analyzes the figuration of terrorism in a variety of postcolonial literary texts from South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East Raises the subject of terror as both an expression of globalization and a postcolonial product Features key essays by well-known theorists, such as Robert J. C. Young, Derek Gregory, and Achille Mbembe, and Vron Ware

He persuasively demonstrates that horror films are not merely a manifestation of the solitary, unconscious ′I′ or cultural abjection. . . . This well-crafted, insightful, and devilishly witty study brings horror out from under the psychoanalytic rock to let it scurry and bleed in the daylight of everyday life. The detailed endnotes are scintillating gems in and of themselves. --Choice "Terror and Everyday Life is an important, well-conceived, and well-executed work. Crane′s treatment of the topic is unusual; he clearly positions himself as a fan of the contemporary horror film. Consequently, there are moments that seem to revel in the disgusting details of murder and mayhem. However, this approach is appropriate; as Crane makes perfectly clear, this is what the genre is about, so to ignore it would be to misrepresent its effects and--for horror fans--its pleasures. This is a complex scholarly work, exceptionally original." --Charles R. Acland, Communication Department, The University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada How does horror in film relate to the horror we experience in everyday life? This is one of the key questions addressed in this new examination of the horror film genre. Terror and Everyday Life argues that today′s horror films have broken away from the genre′s tradition to embrace far more violent imagery, images that are in keeping with the escalating violence in our society. By examining the horror film, its history, and its current trends, Jonathan Lake Crane furthers our understanding of the genre′s meaning in today′s culture and our fascination with violence. An important supplement for courses in popular culture, media studies, and film; Terror and Everyday Life′s unique approach on the nature of horror in our society will also be of interest in a wide range of disciplines.

This 2001 book looks at how British drama and popular entertainment were affected by the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.

It's the winter of 1564 and the beautiful young Princess Margot is summoned to her mother's household, where her true education begins in earnest. Known across Europe as Madame la Serpente, Queen Catherine is an intimidating and unmoving presence in France, even as her country recovers from the first of many devastating religious wars. Among the crafty nobility of Queen Catherine's royal court, Margot learns the intriguing and unspoken rules she must live by to please her manipulative family. Eager to be an obedient daughter, Margot embraces her role as a pawn to be married off to the most convenient bidder. Despite her loyalty, Margot finds herself charmed by the powerful and charismatic Duc de Guise and falls for him even as she is promised to another. Finally setting aside her happiness for duty, Margot leaves the man she loves for Henri of Navarre, a Huguenot leader and a notorious heretic. Yet Queen Catherine's schemes are endless, and Margot's brother plots vengeance in the streets of Paris. Forced to choose between her family and what's right, Margot at last finds the strength within herself to forge her own destiny. Médicis Daughter is historical fiction at its finest, weaving a unique coming-of-age story and a forbidden love with one of the most dramatic and violent events in French history.