A Hunger Called Theater

Budhan Theater’s community-based politics and performance seems perfectly aligned with creative economy discourses, given the optimism with which the indigenous Chhara community embraces the possibility of transcending stigmatized histories of criminality through creative practices and livelihood opportunities. Yet, this chapter complicates this optimism by highlighting the complex affective structures—betrayal, sentimental optimism, cruel pessimism, and ordinary regard—that coconstitute Chhara history of criminality and activist performance. Combining transnational feminism, queer and affect theory, it challenges Lauren Berlant’s cruel optimism and argues that cruel pessimism better describes the affective structure of those compelled to pursue the (bad) good life even while living with colonial capitalism’s ongoing betrayals. Like the Chhara, such putative citizens are compelled to embrace citizenship through their pessimistic critique of its resounding failures.