alterity

February 10, 2005

Derrida - "The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation"

Derrida, Jacques. "The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation" In Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 232-250.

Notes:

Derrida seeks to define (scope) the theatre of cruelty. He is speaking in direct response to the thoughts of Artaud.

Theatre of cruelty is NOT [243-245]:
- non-sacred theatre
- theatre that privileges speech/verb over the act --> this is simply speech
- abstract theatre
- theatre of alienation
- non-political theatre
- ideological, cultural communicative, interpretive theatre

Theatre of cruelty:
- is about affirmation [232]
- expulses God from the stage, produces a nontheological space [235]
- is not representation, but life itself (to which life is unrepresentable) [234]
- does not allow voyeurism to overcome pure visibility [235]
- theatre of cruel dreams (a.k.a. "absolutely necessary and determined dreams, dreams calculated and given direction... [not] the empirical disorder of spontaneous dreams" [242]) -- law of dreams, not interpretation that must be produced
- takes place one time [247]

Beneath this is a belief that "Theatricality must traverse and restore 'existence' and 'flesh' in each of their aspects.... whatever can be said of the body can be said of theatre" [232].

Cruelty is about recognizing death (and thus life), the point beyond the void. It is about making this active, present, about giving it presence. It is not representation, but life itself whereby "life is the nonrepresentatable origin of representation" [234].

The illusion of representation is that it "creates nothing, has only the illusion of having created" [235].

"The stage will no longer operate as the repetition of a present, will no longer re-present a present that would exist elsewhere and prior to it, a present that would exist elsewhere and prior to it" [237].

The goal is to rid theatre of producing a space that is about absence (representation, interpretation). Visibility and sensibility, not simply representation [238]. Connected to this is the death of the author and director (who is just an artisan of translation anyhow).

"It is less a question of constructing a mute stage than of constructing a stage whose clamor has not yet been pacified into words" [240]

"The subconscious will not play any true rule on stage" [242].

"The theater of cruelty thus would not be a theater of the unconscious. Almost the contrary. Cruelty is consciousness, is exposed lucidity" [242].

"Dialectics is always that which has finished us, because it is always that which takes into account our rejection of it. As does affirmation. To reject death as repetition is to affirm death as a present expenditure without return. And inversely" [246].

"The theater of cruelty neither begins nor is completed within the purity of simple presence, but rather is already within representation" ... thus cruelty must let itself be penetrated. "The origin is always penetrated" [248].

Category: performance studies

Posted by zephoria at February 10, 2005 3:58 PM

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