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
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The

Theater

in Modernist
Martin Puchner

Thought

It

is the
between

peculiar
two types

fate
of art.1

of
As

the
a

theater
performing

to find
art,

itself
it

suspended
on the

relies

physical
musicians

presence
play music

of human
or dancers

beings
dance.

executing
As

their artistry
art,

the way
it

a mimetic

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 mimesis can be unmediated. Characters, objects, and

speech
prose,

need
a flat

not
canvas,

be

translated
celluloid?but

into a different
can instead

medium?descriptive
be transferred directly

onto does
relies

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 but of abstraction, it nonetheless displacement, a remains condensation, promise or theoretical and possi es

trangement,

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 space, Yet, time, despite and its action. tendency towards the material, the theater has also

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.

fascinated

that shuns

immediate

In order

to examine

between theoretical turn to the common

between theory and the theater, meditation one may and theatrical spectatorship, in the Greek word origin of these two occupations

the relation

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
Jean-Jacques Rousseau relate to the theater, giving expression to what

"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 Barish has called the and theory together. The best place to observe how closely antitheatricalism phy to the theater is the very origin of this "prejudice,"
dialogues. Commentators who focus on Plato's attack

ties philoso namely Plato's

on 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 form.4 How can Plato use different characters in his own texts,

if he denounces art of acting? should

to drama him, for

such vehemence Invariably, what these with for his philosophy

a choice philosophy that was not theater,

the process

have
and

chosen

questions a form free from all connection

certainly restricted have been open dialogue. to dramatic

the of impersonation, is that Plato presume

to

would

pre-Socratic

Instead

of

philosophy, A more
emerges when

assuming we should differentiated

one

that Plato ask what

his

should drew him of

relation

picture

out of have kept dialogue to the dramatic form. to the theater Plato's relation
to the two dominant dramatic

considers

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 offer an alternative to, what is regularly presented at Athens's

Dionysus from Plato's

Theater.

The

varied

theater of interaction and dialogue follows and rich dramatic dialogues

that emerges a new set of

THEATER

IN MODERNIST

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523
number of male characters engaged in

generic

conventions:

limited

specific types of social interaction, the most prominent city of Athens,

Plato manners presents as much is a social drama of as a theater

set either in the countryside of which is the symposium.

of the a new upper drama classes, that a revises

or the What
of

theater comedy

ideas,

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 fundamental representation, critique the of the theater the concerns theatron, and the theatrical scene, apparatus actors. the

and tragedy. In addition

to his revision

Again, Plato

however, invents

this critique
In

does not
response

imply an outright
to his own critique

rejection,
of the

but a
theater,

constructive

engagement.

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, a new 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 theater, if one 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 suspicious of 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
on the

mimesis.8
literary as

The
a bulwark

theater of the philosophical

against the spectacle.

closet

relies

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
this persistent
there exists a

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

antitheatrical
tradition within

reflex,

it is all the more

and

surprising
early-twentieth

that

late-nineteenth-

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
terms as "performance," "performativity," "theatricality," or "dramatism"

as well
"enactment"

as

in a fascination
that characterizes

with

theatrical
twentieth-century

topoi such

as "masks" and
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
study?a form from which Deleuze would soon thereafter depart?

Difference
embraces

and Repetition
without

is steeped
hesitation

in the language
or scruple.

of the theater, which

Deleuze uses the terms

it

apparent

difference and
categories phenomena on

repetition as
which such as to build cyclical

the

two fundamental
an entire explanatory in nature,

and
habits

complementary
"Surface" system. in life, everyday

processes

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, forces

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
appearance, as singular events, in the form of a particular kind 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 its terms, device, but lies at and the heart of Deleuze's What project, happened to determining constructions, arguments.

the

theater

amenable

and to theory to the latter?

that

the

former

has

suddenly

become

THEATER

IN MODERNIST

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525
the theater as model for his theory of

One

reason

that

Deleuze

takes

singular events
on presence, always presentational, on without This

lies in the fact that as a performing

actions inciting as us and events to attribute to happening to them representational, a

art, the theater

live in front of

is based
our eyes, status.

representational character is

opposed

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, namely,
again. The

the identity
traditional

of the play
theater, which

that is being
Deleuze

rehearsed
calls "theater

over and over

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
mimesis, of the eventful presence of "pure live performance, a theater consisting "specters actors" and (DR "unmediated a movement," theater without forces," and "gestures," text and "without

phantoms,"

prewritten

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,
Philosophicum," philosophy diligently: repeats "a this theater theatrical .... where characterization we encounter, of Deleuze's any without

. . . the cries of bodies, and trace of representation (copying or imitating) the gesturing of hands and fingers."13 But from where does Deleuze
derive this speculative theater without representation, which seems so

much

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
emergence performing of art: Artaud's Deleuze's theater Theater of of Cruelty. We events without

pure, nonrepresentational can understand the

representation
Cruelty within

only

if we

recognize

the position
avant-garde

of Artaud's
theater, in

Theater of
particular

early-twentieth-century

Artaud's
important

opposition
component

to mediation
of Artaud's

and representation.
theater is its violent

The
and

single most
uncompro

mising critique text as such, which dramatic from which the theater must a long and diverse tradition
the literary text, a tradition

of dramatic

of the and, by extension, to be an oppressive authority be liberated.14 Artaud here participates in that pits unmediated
which ranges from

masterworks it considers

theatricality
turn-of-the-century

against the
art. that

theater
early The

reformers

such as E. G. Craig
and theater all the way tends to our to view

and Adolphe
contemporary the dramatic

Appia
text

though

avant-garde avant-garde

performance as a detour

526

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

the theater from realizing its immediate force. Any keeps to the staging of established and canonized devoted literary
therefore essence movement, of anathema the theater and to this in avant-garde the creation tradition, of spectacles which based tends on to

theater texts is
see the

gestures,

sounds,

action.

The polarization between the sphere of philosophy. Deleuze's from borrowing

Deleuze's use of Artaud's

is mirrored literature and theatricality in In order to recognize is at stake in what the Theater of Cruelty, one might contrast
antiliterary and antitextual theater with a

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 opposition live human between bodies on 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 theater. In this, Mallarm? 's closet dramas are part of a larger

antitheatrical ITsle-Adam
which

trend within French to Maurice Maeterlinck

ways resisted the

from Villiers de symbolism. Writers wrote so-called metaphysical plays,

contemporary mise-en-sc?ne and were

in many

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 when of textual allegory onto Baroque Benjamin imposes the notion can trace back difference We thus the between Derrida's (and theater.)
textualism and Deleuze's theatricalism not to a simple

Benjmain's)

opposition of drama,
and the

between namely
an ti textual

text and theater, but to a difference within the field between the purely textual closet drama the difference
theater of the avant-garde.

While Derrida's the philosophical,

affinity to the closet drama is situated Platonist interest tradition, Deleuze's

squarely within in an explicitly

THEATER

IN MODERNIST

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527

antitextual tutes a more

theater, surprising

theater choice

to consti of mediation, form any opposed an warrants and therefore explanation.

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
theory, and that is the Utopian character of Artaud's theater. No matter

how
Balinese

far Artaud
theater,

ventured?from
from the Marx

the
Brothers

rituals
to the

of

the Tahahumeras
resem

to

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 textual form of the manifesto. that the manifesto indication one that is entirely devoted
time, these speech acts 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 preliminary: soon all words and

presented

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 something as Utopian and manifesto-driven as 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. anomaly The within more the the spectrum of avant-garde wanted avant-garde from theater, the theater, but rather the more the 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
energy in the construction of impossible an theaters.18

What
Deleuze

we begin
is not

to see here
one

is that the difference

antitheatrical

between
and a

Plato

and

so much

between

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 avant-garde manifesto. While Plato

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 emergence within 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 why theory practices; no the longer needs to representational avant-garde

theater
turn theater

thus has the

the has

theory and
against itself

528
taken
imaginary

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

over

this critical
theaters.19

role

in the aggressive

formulation

of

its own

Ill
The conjunction between avant-garde theater and an openly pro

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
Deleuze ment," to be and a theater characterized text "dance": Nietzsche's by "sonority," "is drama, and "visuality," this means "move theater"

(DR 124).20 Even Deleuze's

long commentary on

theory of repetition
or Zarathustra's,

can be understood
prophecy we of

as a
the

Nietzsche's,

Eternal
from a

Return.
seemingly

Since Nietzsche
antitheatrical

is located
to a protheatrical

right at the historical

stance, may

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 in the Dionysian is a visual whose name for that which it can relation to escapes all representation, scribed negatively; particular even music, representation, special be de only the Dionysian

is little more Nietzsche inherits from Schopenhauer, The origin, in music, the absence of representability.
the construction of a theater without representation,

than a stand-in of Greek

actors, and

for is

tragedy
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 operas in the to be theater. the At first 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.

THEATER

IN MODERNIST

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529
of Wagner's on was, theaters works the one of are hand, the avant the a

increasing two faces precursor

realization of of the the

and

institutionalization legacy and Wagner impossible

Wagnerian programmatic

garde;
realizations

at times he
of a much

even
more

suggested
ambitious

that his operas

conceptual

were

just
yet

shallow

theater

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
sketches the pretheatrical origin of Greek tragedy. However, as soon as

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 carved into and stone. At the moment character, when Wagner's committing work instead loses to its an conceptual programmatic

unapologetic

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
theatricality into music.23 As in the case of Plato, we can see here that

what motivates
theater, but, on

antitheatricalism
the contrary, a

is not
dependence as and is

an

ideological
on

aversion

to the
enthusi

it.24 Nietzsche's

asm for Dionysian

of his own reliance to a commitment avant-garde, of Deleuze theory

rituals and his attack on Wagner

on the theater. mimesis theory an antitheatrical Just theatrical

are both
stands

the effects
between of the

work Wagner's the conceptual between the

theater

so Nietzsche's and

poised attitude.

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 from Artaud's as manifestos. philosophical In constellations?antitheatricalism light closet of these drama;

530
protheatricalism see the that as impossible of Nietzsche avant-garde and Wagner

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

manifesto constitutes a

theater?we transition

can from

case

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 alization of Wagner's
mimesis, theory them and wants into the presence to wrest from apparatus. and the liveness theater Theory of in order thus creates the to theater, revise its own notions and that integrate of

the one

to the other. Driven

its own

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 avant-garde's conceptual theater. It is important to recognize that

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 programmatic designs and 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 part of theory to the theater, the theatrical turn, is 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 used to of think a of as an product performance: underlying, attributes stable are essence worn turns like out to be costumes;

identities Turner's
Erwin

are masks; and Richard

and

embodiment. Victor becomes corporeality Schechner's analyses of scripted performance,

frame analysis, Kenneth Burke's dramatism,

Goffman's

theatrical

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

THEATER

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531

NOTES
1 and 2 Iwould like to thank Barbara Tom Conley, David Damrosch, and Martin Meisel Johnson, on literary theory at Harvard University for reading of the colloquium this essay so generously. theoria, theoreo, means Theoreo ta Olympia, or the particular seeing viewing, including an idiom for travelling for example, became is derived The middle-passive form theaomai, which

as well

as the members

on commenting The verb form of of viewing

meaning to the Olympic from the word

games.

(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 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 The Antitheatrical Antitheatrical 5 Charles Plato's history Ancient Prejudice, pp. 5-30). Rosen is one of those into drama their 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 that takes place Jonas Barish, see my Barish, in the theater (p. 48).

dialogues of either

(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 from repeated by Mikhail

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 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 to Mallarm? (Baltimore, eighteenthPlato. This theater. 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 turn and nineteenth-century excellent study is one virtual of pp. The Fragility of Goodness: 122 and following. 1989) traces a history of

that she also relates back to theater, a tradition to analyze the few attempts the history of imaginary

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 John Der Ursprung Benjamin's Osborne [London, theory. des deutschen 1977]), tr. (The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Trauerspiels is an exemplary of relation between theater the and study

532

NEW

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 14 15 Michel Donald Foucault, F. Bouchard, For a discussion "Theatrum tr. Donald of (New York, 1997), and Jon McKenzie, 1994) Perform or 2001). tr. Paul Patton

(New York,

;hereafter

cited

in Language, Philosophicum," F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon the an ti textualism of the avant-garde

Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), p. 220. see Contours of the Theatrical

Avant-Garde:

(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, also accounts for philosophy of immanent the opposition, constructed between by Giorgio Agamben, name. life and Derrida's of the transcendent philosophy

difference Deleuze's

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 18 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 1978). (Chicago, Writing and Difference 19 See Julia Kristeva, "Modern theater Masochism, Mime. 20 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

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).

1986). 21 This