Affective Dynamics of Excitable Speech in Milo Rau’s Breiviks Erklärung and Mitleid

Robert Walter-Jochum reflects on the successes and failures of Milo Rau’s stage explorations of hate speech, investigating what Judith Butler terms “restaging and resignifying.” Walter-Jochum references two of Rau’s performances: Breivik’s Statement and Compassion: The History of the Machine Gun. Both pieces highlight the hypocrisy and similarities of rhetoric from right-wing terrorists and liberals with seemingly good intentions. Breivik’s Statement restages hate speech with an actor of color inverting the meaning of the speech, while Compassion restages a woman of color refugee reflecting on her childhood, while a white woman contemplates her time volunteering in the Congo. Walter-Jochum dissects each monologue, analyzing deeper meaning in Rau’s projects.