The Theater in Modernist Thought
Author(s): Martin Puchner
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 33, No. 3, The Book as Character, Composition, Criticism,
and Creation (Summer, 2002), pp. 521-532
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057738
Accessed: 23/04/2009 14:06
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
New Literary History.
http://www.jstor.org
The
in Modernist
Theater
Martin
is the
It
or
Puchner
of
art.1
of human
music
play
of
types
presence
physical
musicians
fate
peculiar
two
between
Thought
the
art,
performing
beings
dancers
to find
theater
a
As
dance.
it
suspended
on
relies
their artistry
executing
As
itself
a mimetic
art,
the
the way
it
however,
turns these performing
human beings, along with stage props and light,
into material
used for the purpose
of representation.
This double
to
has
rise
of
the
theoretical
debates,
schools, and
many
allegiance
given
theater.
In
the
of
it
fueled
has
the
practices
particular,
recurring fantasy
that
theatrical
speech
a flat
prose,
onto
does
relies
can
mimesis
not
need
be
be
unmediated.
can
celluloid?but
canvas,
Characters,
into a different
translated
instead
and
objects,
medium?descriptive
be
transferred
directly
the stage where
they may act as what they really are. This fantasy
not describe
the actual practice of the theater, which
inevitably
on
forms
of
but
trangement,
abstraction,
displacement,
a
remains
it nonetheless
condensation,
promise
or
es
and
theoretical
possi
that has attracted
the theater from its inception.
Indeed, various
and
aesthetic
doctrines
from
the
Aristotelian
unities
poetic
through
to the rise of a new
naturalism
physical theater in the twentieth century
themselves
the theater's supposedly
direct mimesis
legitimate
through
bility
of
time,
space,
Yet,
despite
fascinated
and
its
action.
towards
tendency
a
that shuns
the
material,
the
theater
has
also
immediate
discipline
physicality: the discipline of
more
domain
of theory. From
the
or,
philosophy
generally
speaking,
Plato to Hegel,
there ranges a heterogeneous
tradition of thought that is
intertwined with the theater, if in an often conflictual manner.
deeply
Since the later nineteenth
century, the interaction between
theory and
the theater seems to have reached a new level of
intensity. Philosophers
fascinated by theatricality,
such as Kierkegaard
and Nietzsche,
but also
theorists of the performativity
of literature and of performance
studies
new
a
over
essence
of
over
masks
and
bespeak
priority
theatricality
ontology.
In order
to examine
between
theoretical
turn to the common
the relation
between
theory and the theater,
meditation
one may
and theatrical
spectatorship,
in the Greek word
origin of these two occupations
New LiteraryHistory, 2002, 33: 521-532
522
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
reminds us that the sense of sight, thea, is central
thedria.2This etymology
to both the act of going to the theater and of engaging
in theoretical
not
has
these two
this
shared
origin
prevented
inquiry. However,
in what Plato called the "ancient struggle"
from engaging
endeavors
of the
them. His Republic takes the theater to be the antagonist
between
a
to
of
that
needs
apparently
emerging
philosophy,
discipline
discipline
from
associated
itself
its
with
prove
everything
dignity by distancing
remains
the predomi
theatrical
spectacles. This gesture of distancing
to
nant mode
in which philosophers
from Plato through St. Augustine
Rousseau
Jean-Jacques
to
relate
the
theater,
giving
to what
expression
"antitheatrical
But far from
Jonas
prejudice."3
are
are indepen
that
and
that
the
theater
theory
enterprises
proving
antitheatricalism
of philosophical
dent from one another, the existence
that has bound the theater
is a symptom of the conflictual
entanglement
has
Barish
the
called
and theory together.
The best place to observe how closely antitheatricalism
phy to the theater is the very origin of this "prejudice,"
Commentators
dialogues.
on
focus
who
Plato's
ties philoso
namely Plato's
on
attack
the
theater
his
encounter
between
what at first looks like a simple contradiction
and his own use of the
embodiment
critique of the theater's mimetic
dramatic
if he denounces
art of acting?
should
to drama
him,
for
Instead
and
philosophy
that Plato
ask what
differentiated
when
emerges
a choice
theater,
one
texts,
the
of impersonation,
is that Plato
presume
questions
a form free from all connection
that
would
was
not
have
certainly
restricted
been
to dramatic
open
to
dialogue.
out of
have kept dialogue
to the dramatic form.
to the theater
Plato's
relation
should
drew him
picture
his
considers
own
in his
characters
the process
for his philosophy
assuming
we should
philosophy,
A more
different
such vehemence
Invariably, what these
pre-Socratic
of
use
Plato
with
chosen
have
can
How
form.4
of
relation
to
the
two
dominant
dramatic
tragedies at an
tragedy and comedy. Plato is said to have written
so we can presume
that his rejection of theater was based
early age, and
on a fundamental
it. Indeed,
rather than simply
with
engagement
them
Plato
revises
and
constructively,
offering
comedy,
attacking tragedy
in the
his own version of tragedy in the Apology and a new comedy
are substantial: Socrates' suicide is justified by
Both
revisions
Symposium.
a
of a religious,
choice and not the product
specifically philosophical
or "tragic" dilemma;
Diotima's
and
abstracted
mysticism
mythological,
Greek
that characterizes
and sexual repertoire
sublates
the physical
not
new
thus
do
and
Plato's
simply reject, but
tragedy
comedy
comedy.5
genres:
also
an
offer
alternative
Theater.
Dionysus
from Plato's
varied
to,
what
is
regularly
presented
theater of interaction and dialogue
follows
and rich dramatic
dialogues
The
at Athens's
that emerges
a new set of
a
conventions:
generic
523
THOUGHT
IN MODERNIST
THEATER
limited
Plato
manners
presents
as much
and tragedy.
In addition
is
a
social
of male
number
drama
of
of
ideas,
as a theater
characters
the
a
classes,
upper
a new
drama
in
engaged
or the
set either in the countryside
of which
is the symposium.
specific types of social interaction,
the most prominent
city of Athens,
that
What
of
theater
revises
comedy
of tragedy and comedy, Plato views with the
the actual place of the theater and the
greatest
imaginable
suspicion
this
the
gesturing actors on the skene pandering
people occupying
place,
to
to the masses assembled
in the theatron. Actors exhibiting
themselves
an audience
create a theater based on visual display and perception,
what Aristotle
called the problematic
visuality or opsis of the theater.
Plato's
of
most
to his revision
fundamental
theatrical
the
representation,
however,
Again,
constructive
of
critique
this critique
In
engagement.
the
concerns
theater
the
scene,
the
and
theatron,
does not
imply an outright
response
to his
own
critique
apparatus
actors.
the
but a
rejection,
of
the
theater,
form of theatricality, what one could call the first
closet drama.6 Conceived
enemy of the theater, the
by the declared
to keep the theater at bay,
closet drama is a form specifically designed
to
take
its
but also, and more
place. Far from abandoning
importantly,
Plato
a new
invents
of watching
Plato shifts the experience
theater
theatricality altogether,
to the act of reading a closet drama, which becomes
the new forum for
into a
the activity of philosophizing.
The
is thus turned
theater
ismediated
form, whose mimesis
by the dramatic text; the
phantasmatic
is turned away from the bodies on the scene, but
eye of the philosopher
it is still
engaged
in a
if one
theater,
that
cannot
be
seen
except
in
the
Plato's banishing
of poets
interplay between a text and the imagination.
is not the act of a dictator who hates the arts, but the act of a writer who
wants to get rid of his rivals.7 Indeed,
the closet drama will remain the
genre
of
choice
for
philosophers
of
suspicious
the
theater,
and,
con
versely, for dramatists with philosophical
aspirations from Seneca through
to Percy Shelley. The closet drama satisfies their desire to
John Milton
to do with the actual theater, replacing
have nothing
it with a textually
actors and their
theater free from the presence
of human
processed
seemingly
drama
unmediated
relies
on
the
mimesis.8
literary
as
The
a bulwark
theater of the philosophical
against
the
closet
spectacle.
II
feature in the
rivalry with the theater remains a dominant
Theory's
reason
of
both
fields.
It
is
this
that
for
invested in
history
philosophers
the theater can be found amongst
the theater's harshest
critics. Given
524
NEW
antitheatrical
this persistent
a
exists
there
reflex,
it is all the more
that
surprising
and
late-nineteenth-
within
tradition
HISTORY
LITERARY
early-twentieth
by a critique
century theory whose use of the theater is not accompanied
of the institution and practice of the spectacle.9 On the contrary, central
from Friedrich Nietzsche's
The Birth of Tragedy
projects,
philosophical
The
Music
the
and
Walter
Origin of the German
Benjamin's
Spirit of
from
to
Deleuze
and
of
Gilles
the
work
Judith Butler, develop
Trauerspiel,
of
the
theater
the
without
in
any direct
language
steeped
paradigms
of what one could call the
attack.10 The ramifications
antitheatrical
in the recurring use of such
theatrical turn of philosophy are registered
as
terms
as well
in a fascination
that
"enactment"
theatrical
with
characterizes
or
"theatricality,"
"performativity,"
"performance,"
as
twentieth-century
"dramatism"
as "masks" and
topoi such
Heidegger
theory.11
to language philosophy
with the
the turn from ontology
captured
a
tradition
of
diverse
of
is
the
house
formulation
being";
"language
a theater.
seems to believe
house
is
this
that
philosophy
The most ambitious example of a theatrical, or protheatrical,
theory is
but
still
Gilles Deleuze's
translated,
neglected,
Diff?rence et
recently
form
of
the
in the traditional
Presented
philosophical
R?p?tition}2
had
from
form
study?a
Difference
embraces
categories
phenomena
on
to
which
such
as
or
hesitation
apparent
repetition as
difference and
an
entire
depart?
uses
Deleuze
scruple.
and
explanatory
in nature,
processes
cyclical
thereafter
it
of the theater, which
two fundamental
the
build
soon
would
in the language
is steeped
and Repetition
without
Deleuze
which
habits
the
terms
complementary
"Surface"
system.
in
life,
everyday
or the differentiation
caused by
Freudian
repetition
compulsions,
to
are
all
Deleuze,
according
by
process
produced,
evolutionary
All
and difference.
forces: repetition
interplay of two fundamental
to picture what these
and it is difficult
sounds rather speculative,
the
the
this
two
even
himself
and repetition
of difference
really are; Deleuze
noumenon
closest to the
is "the
admits that what he calls "difference"
to
in order
(DR 286). At this point,
push this "almost"
phenomenon"
text.
enters
noumenon
Deleuze's
into visibility, the theater
perceptible
For Deleuze
asks us to imagine that repetition and difference make their
forces
appearance,
as
in
events,
singular
the
form
of
a
kind
particular
of
nor
theater, a theater that is neither a philosophical
study of the theater
a theater
a "philosophical
theater," a term that designates,
presumably,
an equivalent
of
of ideas. Instead, he attempts to "invent, in philosophy,
the theater" (DR 17). Clearly, the theater, here, is not simply a metaphor
or
a
communicative
determining
the
theater
amenable
its terms,
device,
but
constructions,
and to theory
to the latter?
that
lies
at
and
the
the
heart
of
arguments.
former
Deleuze's
What
has
project,
happened
suddenly
become
to
THEATER
reason
One
that
on
on
presence,
This
takes
Deleuze
the
as model
theater
lies in the fact that as a performing
singular events
without
525
THOUGHT
IN MODERNIST
always
and
actions
us
inciting
as
presentational,
events
to
opposed
his
in front
live
happening
to them
to attribute
for
a
is based
our
of
representational
is
character
representational,
of
theory
art, the theater
eyes,
status.
precisely
what Deleuze
needs for his theater of singular events, for these events
form series of differences
that cannot be reduced to a stabilizing identity
the theater nevertheless
behind
them. But doesn't
try to somehow
a
world?
In
of a single play
different
addition,
represent
performances
a
model
of
difference
that
is
anchored
imply precisely
by an identity,
The
again.
of the play
the identity
namely,
traditional
theater,
that is being
which
Deleuze
over and over
rehearsed
calls
"theater
of
representa
tion," is thus certainly not what Deleuze has in mind when he talks about
a "theater of events"; on the contrary, he must struggle hard to
keep his
in the theater that would mediate,
distance
from everything
through
the
mimesis,
of
eventful
"unmediated
movement,"
a
phantoms,"
of
presence
a
performance,
theater
and
"gestures,"
text
and
"without
forces,"
"pure
without
theater
live
prewritten
consisting
and
"specters
actors"
(DR
art
19). In other words, Deleuze must insist on the theater as a performing
and repress the function of the theater as a (representational)
medium.
in a review of Diff?rence et R?p?tition entitled "Theatrum
Michel Foucault,
repeats
Philosophicum,"
"a
diligently:
philosophy
this
theatrical
theater
....
characterization
we
where
of
Deleuze's
without
encounter,
any
. . . the cries of bodies, and
trace of representation
(copying or imitating)
the gesturing
of hands and fingers."13 But from where does Deleuze
this
derive
theater
speculative
without
so
seems
which
representation,
at odds with the actual practices of the theater as we know it?
While Plato had to invent his philosophical
closet drama, Deleuze had
a name and model
to a
available for his fantasy of a theater reduced
much
pure,
nonrepresentational
can
understand
the
representation
within
Cruelty
Artaud's
performing
of
emergence
if we
only
of dramatic
mising
critique
text as such, which
dramatic
from which
the theater must
a long and diverse tradition
the
literary
theater
early
The
text,
reformers
avant-garde
avant-garde
a
theater
theater
that pits unmediated
the way
tends
and
particular
single most
uncompro
of the
and, by extension,
to be an oppressive
authority
be liberated.14 Artaud here participates
in
tradition
all
The
is its violent
Theater of
in
masterworks
it considers
which
such as E. G. Craig
and
of Cruelty. We
events
without
of Artaud's
and representation.
of Artaud's
component
of
theater,
avant-garde
to mediation
Theater
theater
the position
recognize
early-twentieth-century
opposition
important
art: Artaud's
Deleuze's
to our
to view
ranges
from
and Adolphe
theatricality
Appia
contemporary
the
dramatic
against
turn-of-the-century
text
though
performance
as a detour
the
art.
that
526
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
the theater from realizing
its immediate
force. Any
keeps
to the staging of established
and canonized
devoted
literary
therefore
to
anathema
essence
the
of
movement,
this
in
theater
and
sounds,
use
of
of
spectacles
see
to
tends
on
based
the
gestures,
action.
The polarization
between
the sphere of philosophy.
Deleuze's
from
borrowing
Deleuze's
which
tradition,
avant-garde
the
creation
theater
texts is
Artaud's
is mirrored
literature and theatricality
in
In order to recognize
is at stake in
what
the Theater of Cruelty, one might
contrast
and
antiliterary
antitextual
theater
a
with
a
tradition of theory based explicitly on a literary and textual paradigm,
is the most prominent
tradition of which Jacques Derrida
proponent.
can be
The most fundamental
differences
between Derrida and Deleuze
seen as the consequence
of their respective reliance on the model of the
text and of the theater. While
Derrida's
insistence
that any form of
in a chain of signifiers is
is forever interrupted
and displaced
presence
understand
derived from the fact that text displaces presence, Deleuze's
on
events
is
the
form
of
based
of
that
presence
precarious
singular
ing
characterizes
The
human
live
opposition
on
bodies
between
a
Derrida's
stage.15
textualism
and
Deleuze's
theatri
be qualified
in a number of ways. The most
important one
is that Derrida
related his notion of text or ?criture to the domain of the
Like
theater as well, namely to the closet dramas of St?phane Mallarm?.
's closet dramas reject the material mimesis
Plato's dialogues, Mallarm?
calism must
of
the
In
theater.
antitheatrical
ITsle-Adam
in many
which
this,
Mallarm?
's closet
trend within French
to Maurice Maeterlinck
ways
resisted
the
are
dramas
part
a
of
larger
from Villiers de
symbolism. Writers
wrote so-called metaphysical
plays,
mise-en-sc?ne
contemporary
and
were
once
a new
type of avant-garde
only hesitantly
performed
staging
as it was in such theaters as the Th??tre de
was
established,
practice
l'
uvre
or
the
Th??tre
d'Art.16
In
the
absence
of
an
actual
theater,
the
in one of Mallarm?
's texts,
described
gestures of the mime,
but a peculiar
form of
in Derrida's
famous reading, nothing
become,
to the condition
is thus assimilated
of text and
the theater
writing;
a
on
to
turn
the
similar
based
theater into
(A
attempt
theory
writing.17
one based on text can be observed
in The Origin of the German Trauerspiel,
theatrical
of textual allegory onto Baroque
Benjamin
imposes the notion
can
trace
back
difference
We
thus
the
between Derrida's
(and
theater.)
when
Benjmain's)
opposition
of drama,
and
the
textualism
between
namely
an ti textual
While Derrida's
the philosophical,
and
Deleuze's
theatricalism
not
to
a
simple
text and theater, but to a difference within the field
between
the purely textual closet drama
the difference
theater
of
the
avant-garde.
affinity to the closet drama is situated
Platonist
interest
tradition, Deleuze's
squarely within
in an explicitly
antitextual
a
theater,
a more
tutes
527
THOUGHT
IN MODERNIST
THEATER
to
consti
of mediation,
form
any
opposed
an
warrants
and
therefore
explanation.
theater
choice
surprising
Is
as it is on the written word, on
not the pursuit of philosophy,
dependent
abstraction
and
reflection,
mediating
entirely at odds with an
distancing
is one feature of the
There
antitextual
theater of unmediated
presence?
Theater of Cruelty that enabled the intrusion of theatricality into Deleuze's
and
theory,
is the
that
far Artaud
how
Balinese
character
Utopian
from
theater,
rituals
to
Brothers
the Marx
matter
to
the Tahahumeras
of
the
No
theater.
of Artaud's
the
ventured?from
resem
Plague?nothing
was anywhere
to be
representation
bling his idea of a theater without
found. Nor was Artaud ever able to institute such a theater himself. The
came into existence was the journal
only place where the Theater of Cruelty
La Nouvelle Revue Fran?aise. More
fantasy of a
specifically, Artaud's
was realized only in the entirely
theater without mediation
nontextual
form of the manifesto.
textual
that the manifesto
indication
one that is entirely devoted
these
time,
acts
speech
are
This is not so much a bitter irony as an
is a particular mode of textual mediation,
to the force of its speech acts. At the same
as
presented
soon
preliminary:
all words
and
all manifestos
will stop and the Theater of Cruelty itself will emerge. The
fact that this promise might not be fulfilled, that itmight be impossible to
realize
as
something
and
Utopian
as
manifesto-driven
the
Theater
of
this textual effect. The dependence
Cruelty, does not in the least diminish
of the Utopian and phantasmatic
Theater of Cruelty on the manifesto
is not
an
rule.
the
within
anomaly
The
more
the
of
spectrum
but
theater,
avant-garde
from
wanted
avant-garde
the
rather
the
theater,
the
more
it
theater. It ultimately
turned
grew dissatisfied with the actual, existing
it did not value the
against all existing forms of theater not because
it invested all its programmatic
and theoretical
theater, but because
in
energy
the
construction
is not
Deleuze
of
one
so much
theaters.18
impossible
to see here
we begin
What
is that the difference
an
between
antitheatrical
between
and
a
Plato
and
protheatrical
stance, but rather a shift within the sphere of the theater, a shift in which
one imaginary theater is replaced by another, and one genre, the literary
closet
drama,
by
another,
namely
the
manifesto.
avant-garde
Plato
While
competed with Greek tragedy, Deleuze borrowed from a theater that was
a theater as much at
itself already divorced from theatrical representation,
odds with the theater as any Platonist philosopher
could have wanted it to
turn towards the theater thus was made possible by Artaud's
be. Deleuze's
own
turn
away
from
it. The
within
emergence
the
early-twentieth-century
and necessarily
avant-garde of a programmatic
imaginary
for
fundamental
the interaction between
consequences
theater.
theater's
It
is the
reason
representational
why
theory
practices;
no
longer
the
needs
avant-garde
to
theater
thus has
theory and
turn
theater
against
itself
the
the
has
528
NEW
over
taken
this critical
role
in the aggressive
LITERARY
HISTORY
formulation
its own
of
theaters.19
imaginary
Ill
The
between
conjunction
theater
avant-garde
an
and
pro
openly
in the late nineteenth
theatrical philosophy
emerges
century in the work
to Nietzsche
It is Deleuze
of Friedrich Nietzsche.
himself who attributes
the articulation
of a theory, "conceived
within
completely
philosophy
but also fully for the stage" (DR 18). Nietzsche's
appears to
philosophy
to be
Deleuze
and
ment,"
a
characterized
theater
"dance":
commentary
long
Eternal
from
a
Return.
seemingly
or
Nietzsche's,
to a
antitheatrical
Zarathustra's,
"move
theater"
as a
of
prophecy
right at the historical
is located
Since Nietzsche
"visuality,"
this means
can be understood
theory of repetition
(DR 124).20 Even Deleuze's
on
by
"sonority,"
"is drama,
and
text
Nietzsche's
we
stance,
protheatrical
may
the
shift
turn
to
to test a type of analysis that links the history of theory with the
history of the theater.
theater and theory, it is not
In order to observe the relation between
to
of Nietzsche's
celebration
theatrical philoso
follow Deleuze's
enough
use of the theater in theater history.
phy; we must ground Nietzsche's
The particular
of Nietzsche's
theory lies in the fact that, for
complexity
from
the hypothetical
is not derived
him, Greek
directly
tragedy
of a compromise
itself, but rather it is the product
Dionysian
origin
of repre
and Dionysian
destruction
between Apollinian
representation
him
sentation.
Since
representation,
scribed
negatively;
the
in
is a
Dionysian
particular
even
music,
visual
name
for
that
whose
construction
of
a theater
without
to
relation
special
is little more
Nietzsche
inherits from Schopenhauer,
The origin, in music,
the absence of representability.
the
which
it can
representation,
than a stand-in
of Greek
and
actors,
representation,
escapes
all
be
de
only
the Dionysian
tragedy
for
is
behold
of an invisible theater that isn't one.
ers, the hallucination
The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music
is
Nietzsche's
However,
as
not so much with the origin of Greek
the
with
concerned
tragedy
of Wagner's
work. But how can the pretheatrical,
Dionysian
promise
uvre? Originally,
Nietzsche
had
origin of tragedy return in Wagner's
considered
programmatic
Wagner's
revolution
to
operas
in
the
be
theater.
the
first
At
that
sign
time,
of
a
none
far-reaching,
of
Wagner's
operas had received full-fledged
stagings, they were still what Wagner
himself had called "the music of the future," and Prince Ludwig II had
not yet sponsored
the institution Nietzsche
would never tire of ridicul
a theater of the future and the
for
The
call
programmatic
ing: Bayreuth.
of
the
of
precursor
garde;
the
programmatic
even
Wagner
ambitious
works
are
one
hand,
the
of
theaters
impossible
were
that his operas
suggested
more
a much
of
realizations
legacy
and
Wagnerian
at times he
of Wagner's
on
was,
institutionalization
and
realization
increasing
two faces
529
THOUGHT
IN MODERNIST
THEATER
theater
conceptual
yet
a
avant
the
just
the
shallow
to come.21
time and
invested considerable
the other hand, however, Wagner
a
realization
which
for
of
his
theatrical
in
realization
the
energy
utopia,
see in
as
could
still
Nietzsche
As
is
external
the
long
sign.22
Bayreuth
of
what
oeuvre
sketch
the
Wagner might have
programmatic
Wagner's
could project onto these
called the "Theater of the Future," Nietzsche
On
the
sketches
of Greek
origin
pretheatrical
as
However,
tragedy.
as
soon
to full realization and institution
commitment
he had to face Wagner's
in Bayreuth,
theater at the Festspielhaus
alization of a compromised
theatrical practice, which was
had to start attacking Wagner's
Nietzsche
now
stone.
into
carved
and
conceptual
At
the
moment
when
character,
programmatic
an
to
instead
committing
its
loses
work
Wagner's
turns from a seeming
Nietzsche
practice,
an antitheatrical
one. Now, he sees inWagner
to
position
protheatrical
in the domi
the craziness of believing
of the mime,
"the Theatocracy
nance of the theater over the arts" and scolds him for having introduced
theatrical
unapologetic
into
theatricality
theater,
but,
on
the
his
own
on
reliance
a commitment
contrary,
to
the
theatrical
so Nietzsche's
avant-garde,
of Deleuze
theory
a
case
of
is not
an
the
and
theater.
and
is
theory
an
as
Just
mimesis
antitheatrical
see
can
ideological
on
dependence
we
Plato,
between
poised
attitude.
to the
enthusi
are both
the effects
stands
work
Wagner's
the conceptual
between
theater
the
that
here
aversion
it.24 Nietzsche's
rituals and his attack on Wagner
asm for Dionysian
of
in
As
music.23
antitheatricalism
what motivates
of
the
protheatrical
relation between
The intimate, if contentious,
theory and the theater
of indepen
indicates
that the history of theory cannot be conceived
are
enter
two
intertwined
The
the
of
theater.
from
the
history
dently
a
must
be
of
double
therefore
which
path:
by way
approached
prises,
Derrida/
Plato/Greek
Nietzsche/Wagner;
Tragedy; Deleuze/Artaud;
a
constitutes
Mallarm?;
Trauerspiel. Each of these pairings
Benjamin/
In
theater.
the
between
constellation
and
historical
different
theory
Plato's case, we have an explicit critique of the theater, paired with a
which is set not only
revisionist use of the dramatic form, a combination
of
the concept
but
also against
tragedy and comedy,
against Greek
theater. Deleuze,
that stands behind Greek
by contrast,
theatricality
the theater and assigns to it the
presents a theory that openly embraces
what he calls the event; such a theater of
central role of conceptualizing
events,
two
however,
is derived
constellations?antitheatricalism
from
Artaud's
manifestos.
as
philosophical
In
light
closet
of
these
drama;
530
NEW
protheatricalism
see
the
that
the one
as
impossible
of Nietzsche
case
LITERARY
manifesto
avant-garde
and
Wagner
HISTORY
can
theater?we
a
constitutes
transition
from
to the other. Driven
by the increasing realization and institution
theater
in Bayreuth,
Nietzsche
transforms
his
an
stance.
into
antitheatrical
original protheatricalism
here certainly do not exhaust all the
The specific cases mentioned
the
interaction
between
theater and theory. Nevertheless
of
possibilities
we can draw some conclusions
from this limited set of instances. The
in a struggle over visibility, material
theater and theory are engaged
of Wagner's
alization
and
mimesis,
wants
theory
them
the
presence
to wrest
from
its own
into
and
the
apparatus.
of
liveness
theater
Theory
the
revise
and
its own
creates
thus
that
notions
theater,
to
in order
integrate
of
concepts
are prone
to be at odds with the real theater. The
theatricality,
and
the
theater is fought through a variety of
between
theory
struggle
art
closet drama and the manifestos
of
and
the
forms, including
genres
which
the
theater.
conceptual
avant-garde's
It
is
to
important
that
recognize
is not limited
the critique of the theater and itsmodes of representation
to theory, but can occur within
the domain
of the theater itself, as in
Wagner's
and
designs
programmatic
Artaud's
Utopian
hallucinations.
as soon as the critique of the theater is launched from within
the
use
to
is
free
and
of
the
theatrical
domain
theater, theory
concepts
models
that are no longer firmly tied to actual bodies on a stage. This
And
turn
on
the
of
part
to
theory
the
theater,
the
theatrical
is
turn,
thus
of avant-garde
theater.
made possible by the fundamental
self-critique
of the theatrical turn are visible everywhere
The ramifications
today.
we consider
the history of gender, of ethnicity, or even of the
Whether
consensus
human body itself, there is a widespread
among critics that
what
the
we
product
identities
Turner's
Erwin
used
to
think
of
a
performance:
are masks;
and Richard
Goffman's
as an
of
underlying,
attributes
stable
are
essence
worn
turns
like
out
to be
costumes;
embodiment.
Victor
becomes
corporeality
Schechner's
analyses of scripted performance,
and
theatrical
frame
analysis,
Kenneth
Burke's
dramatism,
or the application
of speech act theory to the study of literary texts from
to Hillis Miller?all
these concepts
and Judith Butler
Jacques Derrida
are indebted
to the theatrical turn of theory.25 Finally, this turn changes
the way we think about the history of theory: theatrical theory and the
interrelated
systems so that changes in the
history of the theater become
one will cause changes
in the other. This is not to say that the study of
theater, literature, and theory are one and the same thing. But it is to say
of theatrical
that an understanding
through a
theory is only possible
that
bound
the
and
has
of
contentious
theater
the
intimacy
knowledge
not
if
theory closely,
always happily, together.
Columbia
University
THOUGHT
IN MODERNIST
THEATER
531
NOTES
1
and
2
Tom Conley, David Damrosch,
and Martin Meisel
Johnson,
on literary theory at Harvard University
for reading
of the colloquium
this essay so generously.
like to thank Barbara
Iwould
as well
as the members
on
commenting
The verb form of
of viewing
or
the particular
seeing
viewing,
including
an idiom for travelling
for example,
became
is derived
The middle-passive
form theaomai, which
theoria, theoreo, means
Theoreo ta Olympia,
games.
meaning
to the Olympic
from the word
(Gemoll,
374).
games
theater or theatron, likewise means
seeing or viewing, but also, in conjunction
is really the case or seeing reality in the sense that for
with the word al?thes, seeing what
of philosophy
in
became
the definition
(theaomai to al?thes). Indeed, Heidegger,
Heidegger
und Besinnung"
his essay "Wissenschaft
1959), explicitly
(Vortr?ge und Aufs?tze, Stuttgart,
relates theory to the root theawhich means
the seeing
seeing in all of these forms, including
that takes place
Jonas Barish,
see my
Barish,
in the theater
(p. 48).
1981). For a more detailed
Prejudice (Berkeley,
critique of
and Drama
2002).
(Baltimore,
Anti-Theatricality,
Stage Fright: Modernism,
4 Barish discusses
Plato as the origin of the "antitheatrical
himself
contenting
prejudice,"
content
to the "contradiction"
form and anti-theatrical
dramatic
between
with pointing
3
Antitheatrical
5
Charles
Plato's
history
Ancient
The Antitheatrical
Prejudice, pp. 5-30).
Rosen
is one of those
dialogues
of either
into
their
drama
or
to integrate
critics who attempt
form of
the dramatic
this dramatic
form in the
however,
analysis without,
placing
the theater. The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry: Studies in
(New York, 1988).
Thought
to which
6 The
first to recognize
the extent
Plato not only rejected,
but also directly
as a
the theater was Friedrich
who described
Plato's dialogues
with,
Nietzsche,
competed
a new,
of
Greek
creation
of
the
and
the
tragedy
comedy,
synthetic genre, namely
composite
novel. Friedrich
Die Geburt der Trag?die aus dem Geiste der Musik
Nietzsche,
(The Birth of
was to be
the Spirit of Music)
(1872; Stuttgart,
1976), p. 122. This argument
who does not attribute
it to Nietzsche.
M. M. Bakhtin,
The
Bakhtin,
tr. Caryl Emerson
ed. Michael Holquist,
and Michael
(Austin,
Holquist
Dialogic Imagination,
1981), p. 22.
as drama, namely as Plato's "anti-tragic
7 Martha Nussbaum
also refers to Plato's dialogues
on their relation,
or
of the stage that
theater," without,
however,
rejection,
reflecting
Tragedy
from
by Mikhail
repeated
one recognizes
as closet dramas.
when
Plato's dialogues
emerges
Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
1986),
(Cambridge,
8 Evlyn Gould's
Virtual Theater from Diderot toMallarm?
(Baltimore,
eighteenthPlato. This
and nineteenth-century
excellent
study is one
The Fragility of Goodness:
122 and following.
1989) traces a history of
pp.
that she also relates back to
theater, a tradition
to analyze
the few attempts
the history of imaginary
virtual
of
theater.
turn
to the theater,
in the late nineteenth
century, was in many ways prepared
by
in particular
its fascination
with Greek
that found its
Idealism,
tragedy, a fascination
most
in Hegel's
influential manifestation
reading of Antigone. See in particular
Christoph
Menke,
(Frankfurt,
1996).
Trag?die im Sittlichen: Gerechtigk?t und Freihat nach Hegel
a group of primarily French
10
In addition,
to Freudian
theorists
itself
indebted
thought,
9
The
German
infused
thought.
with
Their
theatrical
work
to the theatrical
of twentieth-century
"scenes," added
vocabulary
is available now in a excellent
of essays edited by Timothy
collection
in Contemporary French Thought
Murray, Mimesis, Masochism, Mime: The Politics of Theatricality
cited in text as M. Reiner Naegele's
(Ann Arbor,
Theater, Theory, Speculation:
1997); hereafter
a study of
Walter Benjamin
and the Scenes of Modernity
includes
(Baltimore,
1991), which
Der Ursprung
Benjamin's
Osborne
[London,
John
theory.
tr.
(The Origin of German Tragic Drama,
Trauerspiels
is an exemplary
of
relation
between
theater
the
and
study
des deutschen
1977]),
NEW
532
LITERARY
HISTORY
to subject the terms of performance
studies to a critical analysis have
attempts
and Joseph Roach
in Critical Theory and Performance
undertaken
(Ann
by Janelle Reinelt
studies in
Arbor,
1992) and by Judith Butler's
critique of her appropriation
by performance
Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (London,
1993). See also The Ends of
11
Other
been
Performance, ed. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane
toPerformance
Else: From Discipline
(London,
12 Gilles Deleuze,
Difference and Repetition,
in text as DR
13
Michel
Foucault,
F. Bouchard,
For a discussion
Donald
14
(New York,
1997),
2001).
tr. Paul Patton
(New York,
"Theatrum
in Language,
Philosophicum,"
F. Bouchard
and Sherry Simon
the an ti textualism
of the avant-garde
tr. Donald
of
and Jon McKenzie,
1994)
Perform
;hereafter
or
cited
Counter-Memory, Practice, ed.
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), p. 220.
see Contours
of the Theatrical
(Ann Arbor,
2000).
Performance and Textuality, ed. James M. Harding
For an extended
studies
study on the notion of liveness in the theater and performance
see
in a Mediatized
Liveness: Performance
Culture
(London,
1999). This
Philip Auslander,
Avant-Garde:
15
difference
Deleuze's
also
accounts
philosophy
for
the opposition,
constructed
between
by Giorgio
Agamben,
name.
life and Derrida's
of the transcendent
philosophy
of immanent
in Philosophy,
Potentialities:
Collected Essays
ed. Daniel
Heller-Roazen
Agamben,
Giorgio
(Stanford,
1999), p. 239.
can be found
in Pierre Bourdieu,
The Rules of Art:
16 A detailed
analysis of this process
Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, tr. Susan Emanuel
(Stanford,
1995).
17 Jacques Derrida,
the title Dissemination
La Diss?mination
(Paris,
1972).
Translated
by Barbara
Johnson
under
1981).
(Chicago,
borrows
from Derrida's
here
of Artaud, which
the
My reading
reading
foregrounds
nature of Artaud's
theater. See Derrida,
"Le theater de la cruaut? et la cl?ture de
impossible
in L'?criture et la diff?rence (Paris, 1967), pp. 341-68.
Translated
la representation,"
by Alan
Bass under
the title "The Theater
of Cruelty
of Representations"
in
and the Closure
18
1978).
(Chicago,
Writing and Difference
19 See Julia Kristeva,
"Modern
theater
Masochism, Mime.
does
not
take
(a) place,"
in Murray's
Mimesis,
a standard
as the
of masks has become
This
of Nietzsche
interpretation
philosopher
on Nietzsche
to Deleuze's
book
and a number
of other
thanks
reading,
subsequent
as a "thinker on
to Peter Sloterdijk, who cast Nietzsche
from Gianni Vattimo
commentators,
/ Sogetto e laMaschera: Nietzsche e il problema d?lia liberatzione (Milano,
stage." Gianni Vattimo,
(Frankfurt am Main,
1974). Peter Sloterdijk, Der Denker auf der B?hne: Nietzsche's Materialismus
20
1986).
21 This
as
for example,
theater was promoted,
of Wagner
by
avant-garde
reception
as a critical revision
Der
whose
theater
entirely
gelbe
Klangis
Kandinsky,
conceptual
presented
theater of the future.
of Wagner's
see
to performance,
The
For an extended
discussion
relation
of Wagner's
22
Lydia Goehr,
1998).
(Berkeley,
Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy
in Richard Wagner
"Der Fall Wagner,"
in Bayreuth, Der Fall Wagner,
Friedrich Nietzsche,
23
Nietzsche contra Wagner
1966), p. 117.
(Stuttgart,
was continued
Adorno
in his,
anti-theatrical
by Theodor
critique of Wagner
?ber Wagner,"
in Die musikalischen Monographien
(Frankfurt am Main,
1971).
to Theatre: The Human
Seriousness of Play (Baltimore,
From Ritual
25 Victor Turner,
1982);
Frame
Richard
Schechner,
1988); Ervin Goffman,
Performance Theory, rev. ed. (New York,
on the
1986); J. Hillis Miller,
Speech Acts in
Analysis: An Essay
ofExperience (Boston,
Organization
24
Nietzsche's
"Versuch
Literature
(Stanford,
2001).