1 See the following websites, representing the opinions of Christians objecting to the production. ‘Christian Group Faces Charges for Disrupting Paris Play’, FRANCE 24, 23 October 2011, www.france24.com/en/20111023-christian-group-charges-disrupting-paris-play-institut-civitas-concept-face-son-god-france, accessed 3 November 2011; ‘Play in Paris Draws Wrath of Far-Right Catholic Groups’, FRANCE 24, 1 November 2011, www.france24.com/en/20111101-play-paris-draws-wrath-far-right-catholic-groups-christ-castellucci, accessed 3 November 2011.

2 See the following website for an example of a Christian perspective that is critical of Castellucci. Posted by Rick Warden, ‘Castellucci's Christianaphobia: Teaching Children the Art of the Antichrist’, Templestream Blog, 29 October 2011. Warden states, ‘In the case of Castellucci's work, perhaps the most controversial twist is to have children hurling objects at the image of Christ, which then oozes what appears to be fecal matter. It's not clear what the main drama was intended to be, the actions on the stage, or the protests by the largely Catholic public’, at http://templestream.xanga.com/756192909/castelluccis-christophobia-teaching-children-the-art-of-the-antichrist, accessed 20 November 2011.

3 The banner that the Christians carried onto the stage had the emblem of the ultra-nationalist Catholic organization Renouveau français printed on it. Other sources claim the protesters to be affiliated with a different far-right Catholic group, known as Civitas.

4 ‘Des jeunes du Renouveau français interrompent Castellucci’, YouTube video, uploaded by Renouveau français on 22 October 2011, at www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=EuPCF238ejI, accessed 29 October 2011.

5 See the Renouveau français website at http://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Frenouveau-francais.com%2F, accessed 20 December 2011.

6 See Jeremy M. Barker ‘Far-Right Activists Try to Shut Down Theatre Production in Paris’, 27 October 2011, Culturebot, Arts+ Culture+ Ideas, at http://www.culturebot.net/2011/10/11539/far-right-activists-try-to-shut-down-theater-production-in-paris/, accessed 29 October 2011.

7 ‘French Police Brutality against Catholic Demonstrators’, by Jeanne Smits, Paris correspondent, Friday 21 October 2011, 19.30 EST, at www.lifesitenews.com/news/french-police-brutality-against-catholic-demonstrators, accessed 3 November 2011.

8 In his 1978–9 lectures at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault traces the historical progression of the arts of governance, from the emergence of liberalism in eighteenth-century Europe through to American forms of neo-liberalism, to arrive at the notion of an emergent biopolitical power of government. A pertinent point for performance studies might be Foucault's description of the way in which neo-liberal governance conceives of the citizen in terms of human capital. If citizenship in this political arrangement implies the imperative to perform well, as human capital, then the mediation of the citizen and forms institutionality are necessarily characterized by a penetrative relation to the human body. Questioning this relationship between citizenship and bodily governance also raises the question of the institution of the theatre, and whether or not it may function outside the neo-liberal imperative for the citizen. The calling of the riot police to end the Christians’ protest may be indicative of this style of governance. Foucault, Michel, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College De France, 1978–79 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2010)Google Scholar.

9 For an example of artists who perform acts of dissent in institutional spaces see Tate, Liberate, ‘Disobedience as Performance’, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 17, 4 (2012), pp. 135–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Jacques Rancière's idea of le dissensus is applicable to the use of the term ‘dissensus’ in this article. Rancière gives the following description of le dissensus: ‘A dissensus is not a quarrel over personal interests or opinions. It is a political process that resists juridical litigation and creates a fissure in the sensible order by confronting the established framework of perception, thought, and action with the “inadmissible”, i.e. a political subject’. Rancière, Jacques, The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (New York: Continuum, 2004), p. 148Google Scholar.

11 Judith Butler's recent essay ‘Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street’ presents an analysis of the category of ‘appearance’ and the legal idea of a citizen's ‘right’ to appear, and connects these Arendtian notions to the recent civil actions evidenced in the documented ‘Occupy’ movements. Judith Butler, ‘Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street’, European Institute for Progressive Politics, September 2011, at http//eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en/print

12 See Reinelt, Janelle, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere for a Global Age’, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 16, 2 (2011), pp. 16–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Ibid., p. 17.

14 Ibid., p.18.

15 Ibid., p. 19.

16 Ibid., p. 20.

17 In the case of the Christians affiliated with the Renouveau français, their objectives, as stated on their website, echo the policies of the French National Front, under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen. With a strong emphasis on anti-immigration policies, the French National Front argue for a public sphere in which religious attire such as Islamic headscarves and Jewish skullcaps should be prohibited for the sake of secular democracy. The hidden presumption of this policy is that Christianity participates in a European secularism in a way that Islam and Judaism may not. The Christian's use of the term Christianaphobia suggestively references, perhaps in a competitive way, other identitarian terms describing persecution, such as Islamophobia and homophobia. In this sense, while we may describe the Christians in this case as performing a counterpublic, their politics are not aligned with socio-economically disenfranchised minorities in France. See the following website for further details on Le Pen's policies: Mail Online, 1 October 2012, at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2207486/French-National-Front-leader-calls-ban-wearing-Jewish-skullcap-public–equality.html, accessed 1 October 2012.

18 Foucault states that in the case of American neo-liberalism, and to a large degree of all capitalist governments, ‘all the problems of health care and public hygiene must, or at any rate, can be rethought as elements which may or may not improve human capital. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, p. 230.

19 See Chapter 2 of Bishop's, ClaireArtificial Hells, Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012), pp. 41–75Google Scholar. In this chapter Bishop gives an appraisal of the historical avant-gardes and their relation to the politics of the time.

20 See Reinelt, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere for a Global Age’, p. 20.

21 ‘Sul concetto di spiritualità Romeo Castellucci’, YouTube video, uploaded by klpteatro on 24 July 2011, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxVx6xn4IQ0&feature=related, accessed 20 November 2011.

22 Translation of the interview from Italian to English is mine.

23 Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2003)Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., p. 131.

25 See Trezise, Bryoni, ‘Spectatorship that Hurts: Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio as Meta-affective Theatre of Memory’, Theatre Research International, 37, 3 (2012), pp. 205–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 205.

27 Ibid., p. 206.

28 Ibid., p. 206.

29 Art historian Robert Nelson reappraises the entire history of Western art in order to account for its sacramental structuring. Nelson, Robert, The Spirit of Secular Art: A History of the Sacramental Roots of Contemporary Artistic Values (Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

30 Trezise, ‘Spectatorship that Hurts’, p. 208, original emphasis.

31 Fischer-Lichte, Erika, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., p. 13.

33 Ibid., p. 17, original emphasis.

34 Saba Mahmood notes, ‘Whereas colonial missionary movements were the carriers for many of the practical and doctrinal elements of Protestant Christianity to various parts of the world, aspects of Protestant semiotic ideology became embedded in more secular ideas of what it means to be modern. One crucial aspect of this semiotic ideology is the distinction between object and subject, between substance and meaning, signifiers and signified, form and essence’. Mahmood, Saba, ‘Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?’, in Asad, Talal, Brown, Wendy, Butler, Judith and Mahmood, Saba, Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury and Free Speech (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), pp. 64–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 72.

35 Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power, p. 18.

36 Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota of the Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, published an open letter about the protests, in the tradition of French democracy and the principles of enlightenment. A link to the letter may be found at http://www.culturebot.net/2011/10/11539/far-right-activists-try-to-shut-down-theater-production-in-paris/