Performing Noncitizenship: Asylum Seekers in Australian Theatre, Film and Activism by Emma Cox (review)

In Performing Noncitizenship: Asylum Seekers in Australian Theatre, Film and Activism, Emma Cox acknowledges the vast body of work that has already been carried out on asylum seekers and refugees in social and political science and more recently in the humanities. She makes it clear that her aim in this book is not to create an "archive of work that has responded to asylum politics" (8). Instead, she provides "thick" descriptions of selected examples of theatre, film, and activism in Australia "to elucidate them as sites of representation […] and as sites of social practice that are generative of, and not just reflective of, the ways that identities manifest in the space between groups separated-in-proximity by demarcations of national community" (9).

Cox's study focuses centrally on the concept of "irregular noncitizenship" (the categorization and treatment of "undocumented noncitizens"), and she pays close attention to how, in the Australian context, this notion informs "identity politics amongst those who make up the majority of audiences and spectators for this work – that is: citizens or those who already belong" (2–3). In fact, Cox argues that Australian noncitizenship is now so enmeshed in public discourse that to imagine "what Australia means without it" would be impossible (3; emphasis in original). Giorgio Agamben's "'topological structure' of the state of exception" (6) helps inform a framework for the "ideological, temporal and topological bases" of Australian noncitizens (6), and Agamben is a very useful theoretical touchstone for the arguments Cox wants to make. An important dimension of Cox's approach is the concept of emotion. Cox argues that Performing Noncitizenship is concerned with tracking "how robust the contagions of affect may be both inside and outside the time-space of the theatre, or the cinema, or a protest, or a personal encounter" (7). These are core concerns for those with an interest in questions of spectatorship and ethics, and Cox's careful elucidation of them, particularly through her case studies, positions this book as an important addition to the field.

Cox's case studies traverse genre and content – from performance art and installations to verbatim theatre pieces, activism, and documentary film – to provide a rich and nuanced picture of the key political, social, and cultural questions Australians currently face. She draws on a range of theoretical tools and approaches to support her own analyses of these works, engaging with Michel Foucault, Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Henri Bergson, Emmanuel Levinas, Judith Butler, Gassan Hage, and Aileen Moreton-Robinson, among others. What differentiates this book from others that cover similar theoretical terrain, however, is her focus on the "politics of emotion" (7) at play in these case studies, opening up a discussion about the ways in which these events or "sites of social practice" (9) impinge on us both within and beyond the performance space. Cox re-examines how questions of belonging, responsibility, and identity are extended and challenged through a concentration on the emotional force of the sites in question. Arguing for the idea of an "ambivalent engagement" (8), she considers how tropes such as "shame, pity, fascination, exoticization and aversion" (8) are liberated via our engagement with the works and events.

In her final chapter, Cox discusses the activist practice of Aboriginal Australians and, in so doing, further complicates the notion of noncitizenship by illuminating how it might "also become a strategic position claimed by those who were 'there first,' in defiance of prevailing frameworks for Australian belonging" (13). By highlighting the actualities of noncitizenship, as well as the moral, political, and legal issues this category raises, and by finally situating the concept in relation to Aboriginal sovereignty, she calls on readers not only to seek to forge relationships with noncitizens and citizens but also to take responsibility for their own complicity in the neoliberal consensus, a consensus that allows noncitizenship to exist. Cox asks – indeed, demands – not only that we share social and emotional bonds with...