PERFORMING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ AND SOUTH AFRICA, gender, media, and resistance

290pp., illus., hardback, d.w., New York, 2013

After twenty years of working with guerilla fighter in the Kurdish region of Iraq, refugees in Iran, interreligious groups in Morocco, and former political prisoners in South Africa, Kimberly Segall offers a view of how groups use media, art and popular culture to protest against injustice and to create new political identities.

"Segall engages some of the most innovative artists of contemporary South African theatre, including Brett Bailey, Yael Farber, and Nadia Davids. Performing artists' meditations on the complexities of post-apartheid democracy illuminate the gulf between South Africa's constitution, with its progressive aspirations for human rights, and the legacies of an apartheid past evident in persistent violence and socio-economic inequality today." Catherine Cole, author of "Performing South Africa's Truth Commission: stages of transition".