Theatricality As Medium

by Weber, Samuel

• ISBN13: 9780823224159
• ISBN10: 0823224155
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-01
• Publisher: Fordham University Press

Summary

Ever since Aristotle's Poetics, both the theory and the practice of theater have been governed by the assumption that it is a form of representation dominated by what Aristotle calls the "mythos," or the "plot." This conception of theater has subordinated characteristics related to the theatrical medium, such as the process and place of staging, to the demands of a unified narrative. This readable, thought-provoking, and multidisciplinary study explores theatrical writings that question this aesthetical-generic conception and seek instead to work with the medium of theatricality itself. Beginning with Plato, Samuel Weber tracks the uneasy relationships among theater, ethics, and philosophy through Aristotle, the major Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Kafka, Freud, Benjamin, Artaud, and many others who develop alternatives to dominant narrative-aesthetic assumptions about the theatrical medium. His readings also interrogate the relation of theatricality to the introduction of electronic media. The result is to show that, far from breaking with the characteristics of live staged performance, the new media intensify ambivalences about place and identity already at work in theater since the Greeks. Praise for Samuel Weber: What kind of questioning is primarily after something other than an answer that can be measured . . . in cognitive terms? Those interested in the links between modern philosophy nd media culture will be impressed by the unusual intellectual clarity and depth with which Weber formulates the . . . questions that constiture the true challenge to cultural studies today. . . . one of our most important cultural critics and thinkers”—MLN

Author Biography

Samuel Weber is Avalon Professor of Comparative Literature at Northwestern University and Director of Northwestern's Paris Program in Critical Theory

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Prior Publication	xiii
Introduction: Theatricality as Medium	1	(30)
Theatrocracy; or, Surviving the Break	31	(23)
Technics, Theatricality, Installation	54	(43)
Scene and Screen: Electronic Media and Theatricality	97	(24)
Antigone's Nomos	121	(20)
The Place of Death: Oedipus at Colonus	141	(19)
Storming the Work: Allegory and Theatricality in Benjamin's Origin of the German Mourning Play	160	(21)
``Ibi et ubique'': The Incontinent Plot (Hamlet)	181	(19)
Kierkegaard's Posse	200	(29)
After the End: Adorno	229	(22)
Psychoanalysis and Theatricality	251	(26)
``The Virtual Reality of Theater'': Antonin Artaud	277	(18)
Double Take: Acting and Writing in Genet's ``The Strange Word Urb''	295	(18)
``Being . . . and eXistenZ'': Some Preliminary Considerations on Theatricality in Film	313	(13)
``War,'' ``Terrorism,'' and ``Spectacle'': On Towers and Caves	326	(10)
Stages and Plots: Theatricality after September 11, 2001	336	(29)
Simon Morgan Wortham
Gary Hall
Appendix: Other Publications by Samuel Weber dealing with Theater	365	(2)
Notes	367	(34)
Index	401