Creating Dissensus and Cross-Identification

Abstract

This chapter examines plays that polarize characters and reveal the problem of statelessness in greater relief. Rancière’s concept of dissensus is deployed here to explore how Yael Ronen, for example, devises dialectical material for characters with opposing viewpoints and backgrounds in her productions of Third Generation: Work in Progress and The Situation, and how Caryl Churchill divides the audience in her controversial play Seven Jewish Children. The chapter also discloses a tactic of cross-identification in such pieces as Robert Schneider’s Dirt and Amos Elkana’s The Journey Home to create a dissensus in which the central characters, based on real people, identify problematically with another group in society, decentring the basis of national, religious and ethnic identities.