Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the intersection between everyday life and critical geopolitics, examining the ways in which intercultural and interfaith performing arts practices are functionalised to challenge narratives of fear and facilitate transformative empathy.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the intersection between everyday life and critical geopolitics, drawing attention to the agency with which individuals respond to global and local fear. In particular, intercultural and interfaith performing arts practices will be presented as spaces that facilitate the galvanisation of emotions. Data drawn from interviews with, and observations of, community musicians and performance poets in Melbourne, Australia, will provide empirical evidence of the performativity of emotions and how music and spoken word is used to construct affective states, towards inspiring change. In line with the 'new geopolitics of fear', the participants from this qualitative ethnographic study provide insight into how the current climate of fear is experienced by marginalised minority groups, and the ways in which they use performing arts platforms to challenge the narratives which demonise them.

By focussing on intercommunity arts practices, this paper also considers the processes through which empathetic engagement across ethnocultural, linguistic and religious boundaries is felt and mobilised. Through analysing the integration of different emotional styles in the fusion of distinct and seemingly dissonant traditional music practices, this paper explores the transformative potential of empathy. Importantly, the practices that will be discussed move beyond hierarchical empathiser-sufferer dynamics, in which empathy becomes an intercultural relations skill with market value and the extension of compassion can be indicative of privilege. The intercommunity arts discussed here exemplify mechanisms for empathy between peers who, in traditional narratives of social justice, might occupy more fixed positions as the objects of empathy.