Reunion, Complication, Refraction, and Translation: How Postcolonialism and Post-Structuralism Mark Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

What has perplexed critics and audiences about Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (2009) – its seemingly apolitical and ruminative second act – in fact signals why the play is rightful heir to an earlier generation of Broadway productions with postcolonial concerns. While plays such as David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly were indebted to Edward Said’s understanding of the orientalist binary of east/west, Joseph’s play makes a post-structuralist turn midway through its plot, moving beyond familiar territory to offer pictures of intercultural conflict in the Iraq War. This conflict is complicated by the complexities of internal and cultural multiplicity and hybridity, as described in the writings of Homi Bhabha and Arjun Appadurai. Nevertheless, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo simultaneously reflects a humanist desire for reunion and a fear of violent refraction, arguing that, in the confusingly heteroglossic arena of twenty-first-century global warfare, the work of translation offers some hope of social coherence.