The Playwrights’ Ironic Criticism of the Post-Truth Discourse of Institutions in Selected British and Irish Plays about the Iraq War

Abstract

The concept of post-truth, theorised by Ralph Keyes in 2004 and used to denote the normalisation of lying in modern societies, remained popular for a long time due to political discourses during the American Presidential Election and the Brexit Referendum in the United Kingdom in 2016. Its popularity led to the word being chosen as the Word of the Year in 2016 by Oxford Dictionaries. The concept is defined as the consideration of the compatibility of information with one’s emotions rather than with objective facts when accepting information as truth. One of the early instances of using post-truth discourse was in the process leading to the 2003 Iraq War. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Tony Blair was considering sending armed forces along with the US army in an operation against Iraq. To persuade the public, both he and British institutions disseminated pro-war propaganda. Although the society was not convinced by these discourses and participated in large-scale anti-war protests, the British army began the invasion of Iraq with Operation Telic in March 2003. Playwrights joined in the public response and criticised the post-truth discourses of the British institutions by quickly writing successful plays. In this context, Scottish playwright Gregory Burke, in his Black Watch (2006), depicts the pro-war discourse of the military institution and criticises this discourse from an anti-war perspective. Similarly, Irish playwright Colin Teevan, in his How Many Miles to Basra? (2006), addresses the pro-war stance of the media institution and criticises its discourse. On the other hand, differing from the others, English playwright Simon Stephens, in his Motortown (2006), opposes the anti-war discourse of the family institution and confronts his reader/audience with a pro-Iraq War discourse. This dissertation analyses how post-truth discourses of the military, the media and the family institutions are scrutinised in these plays and argues that these playwrights, ironically, use a counter post-truth discourse while presenting their arguments.