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The Question of the Scene: On the Philosophical Foundations of Theatrical Anthropocentrism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2009

ESA KIRKKOPELTO
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Abstract

The article consists of two interrelated arguments: First, all theoretical or everyday talk on theatre implies a certain scenic understanding, related to the phenomenon of human action and speech. Second, this understanding has been concealed by an anthropomorphic conception of the human phenomenon, based on the givenness of the human figure. The article tries to deconstruct this figure by analysing classical philosophical texts where the link between the human appearance and the theatrical mode of representation is theoretically established. By questioning this link, new ways to exercise the critique of theatrical anthropocentricism, both in theory and in practice, are established.

Type
Focus on Performance/Theatre and Philosophy
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , October 2009 , pp. 230 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2009

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References

NOTES

1 On this see e.g. Nägele, Rainer, Theater, Theory, Speculation: Walter Benjamin and the Scenes of Modernity (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

2 By ‘phenomenology’ is here meant the thinking that adopts Edmund Husserl's basic insights, particularly as concerns the possibility of reduction, bracketing the world and the constitution of the world thereby achieved. The act of reduction can, of course, be understood and realized in many different ways.

3 Democritus, Fragment 84 (Ancilla to the pre-Socratic philosophers: a complete translation of the fragments in Diels: Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, transl. Kathleen Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1957).

4 Aristotle, De Poetica, 1448 b 8, trans. Ingram Bywater, The Works of Aristotle, Vol. XI, ed. W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952).

5 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 2, 1139 b and 5, 1140 b (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann Ltd, 1962).

6 Aristotle, De Poetica, 1449 b 24.

7 The term is derived from skènè in ancient Greek theatre, where it originally referred literally to a ‘tent’ or ‘barrack’ which in the theatre of the time served as shelter to the actors’ entrances, exits and changes of costume and mask, as well as a backdrop to their performance. From this, the term expanded to cover the elevated area where the protagonists performed, as separate from orkhestra occupied by the chorus. It was only much later that the Latin word scaena, scena began to denote the part of an act. Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (Paris: Le Robert).

8 The idea comes, of course, from Bertolt Brecht, whose modern scene theory, the scene as a podium, is analysed by Walter Benjamin in two versions of the essay ‘What Is Epic Theatre?’, in idem, Understanding Brecht (London: NLB, 1973), pp. 1–25.

9 Denis Guénoun has, in his book L'Exhibition des mots et autres idées du théâtre et de la philosophie (Belfort: Circé, 1998), argued that the space of a theatrical performance is created as the result of a specific type of an assembly of people, as distinct from other models of public gathering.

10 Plato, The Republic, IX trans. Paul Shorey (London and Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann Ltd and Harvard University Press, 1963), from 588 b onwards.

11 Ibid., 589 a 7.

12 This is particularly emphasized in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's deconstructive reading of Plato's Republic, which the present study in many ways continues. See ‘Typography’, in Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, Typography – Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 43–138), here p. 136Google Scholar.

13 ‘Figure’ should be understood here against its modern philosophical background, as Gestalt. As defined by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gestalt is ‘a spontaneous organization of the sensory field which makes so-called “elements” depend on the “totalities” themselves which are articulated inside more extended totalities’ (‘Le Gestalt est une organisation spontanée du champ sensoriel qui fait dépendre les prétendus “éléments” de “touts” eux-mêmes articulés dans des touts plus étendus’), Le Primat de la perception, et ses conséquences philosophiques (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1996), p. 25 (translation by the present author).

14 Plato, Republic, III, 402 d.

15 Martha C. Nussbaum has spoken of Plato's ‘anti-tragic theatre’ in the context of the same dialogue; see her The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 122–35, 385.

16 Aristotle, De Poetica, 1452 b 19, 1453 a 27, 1455 a 28, 1459 b 25, 1460 a 15.

17 On the distribution and use of the theatre space in Greek tragedy performances see David Wiles, Tragedy in Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 63–89. Wiles's analysis clearly demonstrates how scenic action was not only limited to the elevated stage.

18 Aristotle, De Poetica, 1448 b 16–17.

19 A similar way of reading tragedies has in our time been represented particularly by Hannah Arendt, Martha C. Nussbaum and Jacques Taminiaux, among others.

20 Aristotle, De Poetica, 1450 b 16–20; cf. 1453 b 7–8.

21 The question is, in fact, how exactly to understand the sentence kai gar opsis ekhei pan (De Poetica 1450 a 13). According to Bywater's reading, pan includes the unspoken idea of ‘every play’ or ‘all tragedies’, so that the reading goes, ‘As every play, one may say, admits of Spectacle, Character, Fable, etc.’ However, the sentence may also be read more to the letter, as has been done here: ‘Because opsis possesses everything’. Cf. R. Dupont-Roc and Jean Lallot, in Aristote, La Poétique (Paris: Seuil, 1980), pp. 202, 210.

22 Aristotle, De Poetica, 1453 b 6–10.

23 Ibid., 1455 a 22–30. (Translation modified by the author)

24 Ibid., 1451 a 36–38.

25 Ibid., 1455 a 26–29.

26 Ibid., 1455 b 32–1456 a 3. My reading here is based on Dupont-Roc and Lallot (Aristote, La Poétique, pp. 295–8) and, by their reference, the interpretation of Bywater (Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909).

27 De Poetica 1448 b 36; cf. 1459 a 17–19.

28 See Claire Nancy, ‘La Raison dramatique: Du Sens grec de drama’, Po&sie, 99 (2002), pp. 111–21.

29 De Poetica 1460 a 14–17.

30 Ibid., 1462 a 8–12.

31 Ibid., I449 a 10.