Carnival and beyond: colonialism, control and resistance

Back in 1949, the Italian anthropologist and philosopher Ernesto de Martino claimed that “Western European civilisation” reflected the needs of a dominant, bourgeois class vis-a-vis the subaltern popular world of colonial and semi-colonial peoples, peasants and proletarians (De Martino, Gutherz and Licandro 2017). Carnival, born within the folds of this civilisation was, through time, appropriated and transformed in different parts of the world by groups of diverse social provenance. Different forms of Carnival festivity, even when originally deriving from colonial importation, constituted an ideal focus for cultural adaptation, giving rise to new celebrations flanking or rivalling older, more historical forms. Various carnivals provided, under the pretext of general good fun, a means of control through rules and impositions, but also a tool for protest and resistance, often linked to nationalist political agendas. Taking Malta – a former British colony and now a member country of the European Union – as a main case-study, this paper will examine the development of Carnival to show the negotiation between control and resistance within a colonial setting, especially in relation to the struggle for nationalism.

The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has argued more recently that nationalism has also pervaded the post-colonial world, defining it, in Gramscian terms, as “our common sense, and the principal justification for our ambitions, our strategies and our sense of moral well-being” (2005, 158). The ideal of greater sharing of common cultural values, one of the fundamental principles on which post-war Europe was founded, greatly contributed to efforts among European nations having unequal levels of historical and economic power to develop a more common outlook. This has encouraged lower-income countries to develop exchanges through Pan-European Carnival organisations with global aspirations which have emerged. Recent history, however, has witnessed the rise of populist trends that see nations folding inward, as well as new forms of protest that have been termed, perhaps too quickly, as ‘carnivalesque’. The paper will question the limits of the carnivalesque within socio-political contexts.

Biography

Vicki Ann Cremona is professor in the Department of Theatre Studies and former Chair of the School of Performing Arts at the University of Malta (2012-24). She was appointed as Ambassador of Malta to France between 2005-2009, and to Tunisia between 2009-2013. She was member of and rapporteur for the EU Evaluation committee for the Valletta Capital of Culture 2018. She lectures in theatre history, popular performance, contemporary stagings, and performance theory. She has published internationally about theatrical events, protest and resistance, theatre anthropology, Maltese Theatreand public celebration, particularly her monograph: Carnival and Power. Play and Politics in a Crown Colony  (PalgraveMacmillan 2018, 304 pp). She has also translated various books into English, and co-edited books for her working group: the Theatrical Event.