(N)ever Again: Reading European Mnemopolitics with a Play by Julia Aug

Abstract

How might theatre offer a form of ‘counter publics’ and ‘weak resistance’ to fascism today, as proposed by Ewa Majewska (2021) in contrast to the mnemopolitics that mobilize state-sponsored violence?  How might questions of national sovereignty be rethought in the context of a return to war in Europe; not least, in respect of the Russian government’s claims about ‘defeating Nazism’ in Ukraine, as part of a broader attack on the rights of minorities identified antagonistically with the civic politics of the EU? Such questions are refracted here through a reading of and with a play by the Estonian-Russian theatre artist, Julia Aug, Mum, is our cat also a Jew? (2018). Regarding what Shakespeare calls (in King Lear) the ‘weight of this sad time’, this essay explores the resonances of Aug’s dramaturgy of with Mihaela Mihai’s notion of ‘mnemonic care’ (Mihai 2022) in today's European memory politics.