The politics of Jean Genets late theatre Spaces of revolution

by Lavery, Carl

• ISBN13: 9780719077135
• ISBN10: 0719077133
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-07-01
• Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PR

Summary

This book is the first publication to situate the politics of Genet's theatre within the social, spatial and political contexts of France in the 1950s and 1960s. The book's innovative approach departs significantly from existing scholarship on Genet. Where scholars have tended to bracket Genet as either an absurdist, ritualistic or, more recently, a resistant playwright, this study argues that his theory and practice of political theatre have more in common with the affirmative ideas of thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, Jacques Ranciere and Alain Badiou. By doing so, the monograph positions Genet as a revolutionary playwright, interested in producing progressive forms of democracy. This original and interdisciplinary reading of Genet's late work will be of interest to students and practitioners of Theatre, as well as those interested in French and History.

Author Biography

Carl Lavery is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Aberystwyth University.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. x
Politics and aesthetics
Introduction	p. 1
Genet and commitment: politics and aesthetics	p. 21
Tracing the shift: the event of the wound	p. 49
Aesthetic politics: staging the wound	p. 78
Spatial politics in the late plays
Exploding the bordello in The Balcony: spectacle, allegory and the wound of theatre	p. 105
Détournement, abjection and disidentification in The Blacks	p. 136
Bringing it all back home: the battle of The Screens	p. 168
Conclusion: Genet our contemporary	p. 195
Interviews
Interview with Lluís Pasqual	p. 201
Interview with JoAnne Akalaitis	p. 208
Interview with Ultz	p. 215
Interview with Excalibah	p. 221
Appendix: 'Preface to The Blacks', translated	p. 227
References	p. 235
Index	p. 249
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