Responding to rupture: kids killing kids

What is the duration of rupture? In this essay I wish to investigate how rupture may be traced past an ephemeral moment, sustained and transformed through performance. Central to this investigation is the theorization of rupture developed by Paul Eisenstein and Todd McGowan in their book, Rupture: On the emergence of the political. Eisenstein and McGowan claim that ‘[t]he theory of rupture is first and foremost a theory of signification’, and that rupture is central to the development of political values such as equality and freedom (2012:11). While they develop this theory using a number of cinematic and literary ruptures, an early example they give, that rupture may simply be a slip of the tongue, raises the question of rupture in performance. Eisenstein and McGowan suggest that through a theoretical commitment to moments of rupture, politics emerges: ‘[I]t is possible to commit oneself to the position that the slip opens up. This is the politics of rupture, and it occurs when we pay attention to the act of signification itself rather than to what has been signified’. Performance then, in this politicized theorization of rupture, may offer not simply the moment of rupture, but also an opportunity for artistic commitment to rupture, to draw attention to the act, and opportunities to not only develop but to enact an alternative politics of rupture.