Fall/Winter 2006 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S
City Stages
Theatre and Urban Space in a Global City
Michael McKinnie
Bodies of Tomorrow
Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction
Sherryl Vint
CULTURAL SPACES
In every major city, there exists a complex exchange
between urban space and the institution of the
theatre. City Stages is an interdisciplinary and materialist
analysis of this relationship as it has existed
in Toronto since 1967. Locating theatre companies
– their sites and practices – in Toronto’s urban environment,
Michael McKinnie focuses on the ways in
which the theatre has adapted to changes in civic
ideology, environment, and economy.
Over the past four decades, theatre in Toronto
has been increasingly implicated in the civic selffashioning
of the city and preoccupied with the consequences
of the changing urban political economy.
City Stages investigates a number of key questions
that relate to this pattern. How has theatre been
used to justify certain forms of urban development
in Toronto How have local real estate markets
influenced the ways in which theatre companies
acquire and use performance space How does the
analysis of theatre as an urban phenomenon complicate
Canadian theatre historiography
McKinnie uses the St. Lawrence Centre for the
Arts and the Toronto Centre for the Performing Arts
as case studies and considers theatrical companies
such as Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto Workshop
Productions, Buddies in Bad Times, and Necessary
Angel in his analysis. City Stages combines primary
archival research with the scholarly literature emerging
from both the humanities and social sciences.
The result is a comprehensive and empirical examination
of the relationship between the theatrical arts
and the urban spaces that house them.
Anxieties about embodiment and posthumanism
have always found an outlet in the science fiction
of the day. In Bodies of Tomorrow, Sherryl Vint
argues for a new model of an ethical and embodied
posthuman subject through close readings of the
works of Gwyneth Jones, Octavia Butler, Iain M.
Banks, William Gibson, and other science fiction
authors. Vint’s discussion is firmly contextualized
by discussions of contemporary technoscience, specifically
genetics and information technology, and
the implications of this technology for the way we
consider human subjectivity.
Engaging with theorists such as Michel Foucault,
Judith Butler, Anne Balsamo, N. Katherine Hayles,
and Douglas Kellner, Bodies of Tomorrow argues for
the importance of challenging visions of humanity
in the future that overlook our responsibility as
embodied beings connected to a material world. If
we are to understand the post-human subject, then
we must acknowledge our embodied connection to
the world around us and the value of our multiple
subjective responses to it. Vint’s study thus encourages
a move from the common liberal humanist
approach to posthuman theory toward what she
calls ‘embodied posthumanism.’ This timely work
of science fiction criticism will prove fascinating
to cultural theorists, philosophers, and literary
scholars alike, as well as anyone concerned with the
ethics of posthumanism.
Sherryl Vint is an assistant professor in the Department
of English at St. Francis Xavier University.
Michael McKinnie teaches in the Department of
Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of
Birmingham.
Approx. 208 pp / 5 ½ x 8 ½ / December 2006
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-9121-0 / 978-0-8020-9121-5
£28.00 $45.00 E
Approx. 304 pp / 6 x 9 / December 2006
Cloth ISBN 0-8020-9052-4 / 978-0-8020-9052-2
£32.00 $50.00 E
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