Transcript Some cultural theorists File

Cultural Theory
Discussion topics Sept 2006
SM202 Cultural theory topics

“In Prisms (1955), Theodor Adorno wrote that 'To write
poetry after Auschwitz is barbarous.' The alternative,
however, may be no less so.” – Bruce Fraser
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Choose ONE of the following topics to
research, and lead a discussion in seminar
on the implications of the concept for
modern performance.
A
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Deconstruction
‘In his two early essays on Antonin Artaud,
Jacques Derrida writes about Artaud's virulent
reaction to and banishment of the prompter
from his proposed theater. Artaud, as Derrida
describes him, bitterly imagined the prompter
as an intervening voice set on the margins of
the stage to whisper into the ears of the meekly
receptive performer, "receiving his delivery as if
he were taking orders, submitting like a beast to
the pleasure of docility"’ (Derrida, Jacques.
Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. )
•
From:http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3612/is_200207/ai_n
9119402#continue In the name of Coriolanus: The prompter
(prompted) Comparative Literature, Summer 2002 by Lunberry, Clark
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. (see also Theatre and Everyday
Life: An Ethics of Performance ~Alan Read: Routledge, 1995)
B

Interculturalism
“Reflection on translation confirms a fact well known to
theatre semioticians: the text is only one of the elements
of performance, and here of translating activity. The text
is much more than a series of words: grafted on to it are
ideological, ethnological and cultural dimensions. Culture
is so omnipresent that we no longer know where to start
investigating it….. Culture intervenes at every level of
social life, and in all the nooks and crannies of the text….
Theatre translation is never where one expects it to be:
not in the words, but in the gestures, and in the ‘social
body’, not in the letter, but in the spirit of culture, ineffable
but omnipresent”
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Pavis, P: Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture Routledge 1992
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See: The Intercultural Performance Reader by Patrice Pavis (Editor)
C
Postmodernism

Twenty-five years ago, inspired by a theatre
conference, (Francois) Lyotard published his
famous 'report on knowledge'. The Postmodern
Condition was the new state of contemporary
culture. Since then many have been living a life
of fragmentation, our certainties destabilised
and relativised, our judgments forever qualified,
with dramatic implications for performance and
theatre.

(http://www.rhul.ac.uk/drama/news/beyond_postmodernism.html)
D
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Structuralism
Literary philosopher Roland Barthes (1915–
1980), arguably one of the most influential
postmodern theorists, presented his theory of
semiotics as a way of deconstructing dominant
ideologies, or mythologies. Before becoming
what was to be known as a semiotician – one
who deconstructs ideological signs connoted
through texts – Barthes was a theatre critic. He
observed Brecht’s plays and was aware of his
experiments in both playwriting and staging
practices – activities that would foreshadow the
postmodern theatrical deconstructionists of the
later twentieth century and, to some extent,
Barthes’s own semiotic theories. …
D
Structuralism (cont.)
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This distortion, whereby an idea is used to
manipulate an image, constitutes what Barthes
calls mythology: “everything happens as if the
picture naturally conjured up the concept, as if
the signifier [the image] gave a foundation to
the signified [the concept]” (129–30). In
Barthes’s definition of mythology, the concept
becomes the dominant ideology, which is born
when specific ideas are used to manipulate
images. For example, in the theatrical world at
the beginning of the twentieth century, the
dominant ideology of theatre maintained “slice
of life” naturalism and realism, as promulgated
most prominently by Stanislavsky. (This
ideology still dominates most of Western
theatre, as well as television and film.)

Theatrical Deconstructionists: The Social “Gests” of Peter Sellars’s Ajax and Robert Wilson’s
Einstein on the Beach KURT LANCASTER Published in Modern Drama - Volume 43 Number 3.
E
Authenticity
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Walter Benjamin wrote on Brechtian theory and practice,
and aesthetic theory more generally, from a Marxist
perspective. In 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'
(1950), Benjamin notes the uncomfortable relation
between the arts and the society they reflect: 'There is no
document of civilization which is not at the same time a
document of barbarism.' In The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction (1936), he points out how the
technology of mass production makes mimesis
reproducable, so art becomes a product, subject to the
commercial laws of supply and demand. The aura and
authenticity of the original, ritualistic, work are lost in the
distance created between art and audience, yet a new
intimacy emerges between the art and the world it
represents: reproduction is a close-up technique.
Benjamin's argument gives a useful framework in which
to consider differences between theatrical and cinematic
representation.
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Bruce Fraser's classical links: The Influence of Greek Tragedy A discussion of philosophical and
theatrical responses to Greek tragedy blf. May 1997: revised 2005
F
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Carnivalesque
In Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, (Mikhail)Bakhtin
points to the pre-Lenten Medieval Carnival - a period of
festivities like our modern Mardi Gras that might test for
weeks or even months as a time in the life of the
community when the spirit of liberation was set free. He
says, “What is suspended [in carnival] first of all is
hierarchical structure and all the forms of terror,
reverence, piety, and etiquette connected with it - that is,
everything resulting from sociohierarchical inequality or
any other form of inequality among people (including
age).” (122-23)
During that moment the normal constraints and
conventions of the everyday world are thrown off.
Democracy reigns while commoner and aristocrat rub
shoulders in the marketplace and all social distinctions
are erased: master and servant trade places, the high
and the low are reversed. The crude and vulgar are
enshrined. The fool reigns.
F
Carnivalesque (cont)

Another aspect of the festivities was the
enlarging, exuberant laughter at the
arbitrariness of the manners and mores that
lock people in their social spaces, It filled the air
and gave rise to feelings of change, perhaps
even revolution. Parody, satire, and insult
directed at the authorities upholding the norms
appeared everywhere - in ballads, plays, skits,
and jokes told on street corners.
Understandably, in the Middle Ages the satirical
barbs fell largely on the church and the feudal
aristocracy - all those for whom maintenance of
the status quo was important.

Bakhtin's "carnivalesque" in 1950s British Comedy by Tom Sobshack
Further Reading
Eco, Umberto: Travels in hyperreality
 Baudrillard, Jean: The precession of
simulacra
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