Fisun Güner on why cultural boycotts are ineffective, wrong and often hypocritical.
Scotland’s national poet Liz Lochhead has been at it again. Two years ago she was petitioning against a dance company from Tel Aviv, this year it’s an Israeli theatre company that’s set to play the Edinburgh Fringe. Both companies are ‘guilty’ of being in receipt of state funding. So, we have another letter and another long list of high-profile signatories calling for boycott. However, we all know – as Lochhead must know – that a boycott won’t, of course, happen (it’s about being seen to take a ‘principled stand’, d’oh).
The nature of Incubator Theatre’s production is irrelevant – I gather it’s some ‘film noir-type hip-hop musical’. Suffice to say it’s not a political work, but circumstances have inevitably rendered it a political hot potato. More than 50 cultural figures have joined Lochhead in protest, with one, theatre critic Mark Brown, saying that the company have nothing on their website opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. This, he feels, makes them complicit... Keep reading on The Spectator
Scotland’s national poet Liz Lochhead has been at it again. Two years ago she was petitioning against a dance company from Tel Aviv, this year it’s an Israeli theatre company that’s set to play the Edinburgh Fringe. Both companies are ‘guilty’ of being in receipt of state funding. So, we have another letter and another long list of high-profile signatories calling for boycott. However, we all know – as Lochhead must know – that a boycott won’t, of course, happen (it’s about being seen to take a ‘principled stand’, d’oh).
The nature of Incubator Theatre’s production is irrelevant – I gather it’s some ‘film noir-type hip-hop musical’. Suffice to say it’s not a political work, but circumstances have inevitably rendered it a political hot potato. More than 50 cultural figures have joined Lochhead in protest, with one, theatre critic Mark Brown, saying that the company have nothing on their website opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. This, he feels, makes them complicit... Keep reading on The Spectator