Ionesco: "For me, it is as though at every moment the actual world had completely lost its actuality. As though there was nothing there; as though there were no foundations for anything or as though it escaped us. Only one thing, however, is vividly present: the constant tearing of the veil of appearances; the constant destruction of everything in construction. Nothing holds together, everything falls apart." (This is the emotional foundations of ideology)
The best in the late Marxism: the Frankfurt School and Odorno (below). Also, the French (Gerody, Deborg and pomists all the way to Pierre Bourdieu and Virilio).
Of course, this is a rediculous page: how can I talk about Marxism without Hegel? What can I say about communism without discussing capitalism? Maybe you better go to my PostAmeriKa files.
Lev Vygotsky on Literature and Art: Imagination and creativity of the adolescent
*
Aesthetic Education
*
The Enigmas of Art
*
Writers as teachers of psychology
*
Tolstoy's Dialogue
* In addition to the dramaturgue pages. I have to work on playwrighting pages!
Notes
Ionesco: Realism, whether it be socialist or not, falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.
Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post-Contemporary Interventions Series)
The term, Postmodernism refers to the cultural and ideological configuration that is taken to have replaced or be replacing Modernity. New movements in architecture and the arts as well as social theories indicate a change from modernity to postmodernity.
* Herbert Marcuse [about One Dimensional Man In Class Society] most known: Reason and Revolution (1941), Eros and Civilisation (1955), One-Dimensional Man (1964) and Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972).
www.marxists.org/archive : "A Marxist shall not be duped by any kind of mystification or illusion."
Herbert Marcuse
The main SCRIPT directory had no "Marxism" page!
I'm posting my messages to the American Society for Theatre Research List.
Dear Bill,
I appreciate your humorous summary with a doze of Freud, but the Left and Marxism had many true believers than, including Meyerhold (who too was no angel). Yes, they did want to have "mass appeal" but not in free market forms (that's why the communists never value freedom, market and economy). The Epic Theatre ideas were "invented" not only to compete, but to replace the entertainment; they tried to replaced the public as well, including the shooting of many. There are good reasons for the Left (we prefer the name Liberalism, since Marxism and Communism in US are not intellectual, but political "commodities"). Personally, I wouldn't mind political theatre in American Theatre, beside SNL. They believed that the politics shouldn't be left to the politicians only and their theatre. The period in question with all its extremes proved to be very productive artistically and I have to credit Marxism with the posthuman radicalism of its ideas and ideals. Their illusions produced a lot of new theatrical forms, which are in use today within the popculture. I have to recognize the contribution made by the Marxists to MTV (conflict, dialectics, montage, etc).
Ex-communist,
Anatoly G. Antohin
Modernism & Socialist Realism
Besides the plain fight for power in the Party, there is a difference between the positions of Stalin and Trotsky regarding the world communist revolution; the first changed the "classical" Marx' stand that the communist revolution can be only in the world-wide forms and adapted the concept of the "building socialism in one country" first (USSR). Meyerhold also believed that the new art is universal because "the workers of the world are united" in the value-system. Many features in Meyerhold's "Theatrical October" are the artistic interpretation of the Trotsky's idea of the permanent revolution (constant renovation of the existing social forms) -- Lenin was first to notice the danger of this concept, when the Bolsheviks came to power. The Cultural Revolution (Socialist Realism is a part of this process) was against the "revolutionary" wing of the Party -- and Meyerhold was the icon figure of this "modernist" heritage. Making "realism" into a state artistic doctrine in 1934, turned Meyerhold into an ideological outcast. The civil war with the Reds against Reds went beyond twenties and the old revolutionary saw Stalin's actions as anti-communist and many communists to this day in Russia believe that that was the time when the Party and the Marxism were destroyed.
The point about Marxism is being the 19th century doctrine I don't fully understand. Historically we can place Existentialism in the same century. Also, I wouldn't dismiss the Marxists of all the decades since the 20s, there are plenty of Marxist principles in contemporary intellectual movements. In fact, it's almost impossible to find any fashionable modern doctrine without Marx in the closet. Even the most abstract ones like Semiotics are based on the Marx's concept of separation of structure and super-structure (which he borrowed from Kant & Hegel). Marxism is very much a part of the high modernity. The period under discussion is the crisis of the modernism, which expresses itself with the Marxism's agony in political spectacles. I am not sure that Modernism would be even possible without those several decades of the Marxism (and Socialism) before. Marx in his radical dismissal of the past is very much a modernist. Not only Nietzsche, we to this day can't swallow the ideological nihilism of the Marxism (historical relativism, the absence of humanity outside of the social and etc.). Just because the Cold War is over it doesn't make Marxism dead; on the contrary, it's more alive than ever (as was predicted by the French communists of the 60s).
The Socialist Realism is a cultural instrument of propaganda and has to have mass appeal, to be understood by all. As in pop-culture it went back to "tell a story" (well-made play). I believe that SR is very postmodern phenomena; it lives off both realism and formalism. It's a blank parody. Most of the Broadway musicals and the "Hollywood" are "products" of this method. SR resurrected Aristotle's Poetics for the masses: Plot (action) became a genre (Karate movies); hero must be a Hero (not anti-hero) and the happy end formula tells you about the Idea (good v. evil). SR has an appearance of both folk culture and art (another achievement of the postmodernism). Perhaps, there will be a day when the repackaged Brecht make to Broadway. After all there is a lot of "mechanics" from Meyerhold's biomechacnics in MTV's dancing and singing. The communists, Soviet or Chinese, understood that the "forms" of realism can be used for packaging any ideology (they are the true formalists). Their SR theatre was bad, because it was produced by the state, unlike our masterpieces of pop-culture, produced by the society. Here is my little Marxist analysis exercise :)
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Suggests an open system of psychological exploration to cut through accepted norms of morality, language, and politics.
@2001-2003 script *
Context * Plot Overview * Characters * Character Analysis * Themes * Scenes * Quotations * Key Facts * Study Questions * Quiz * Further Reading * Notes *
Encyclopedia of Postmodernism (Routledge World Reference)
Providing an all-encompassing and welcome addition to the field this encyclopedia contains entries on foundational concepts of postmodernism which have revolutionized thinking in every intellectual discipline.
[ topics from film600: Bad Subjects, Wrong Theories ]
FYI -- Call for Submissions: Utopian Performatives, A Special Issue of Modern Drama
The concept of utopia has been a prime political force in various moments
of world history, perhaps especially in the United States in the 1960s. Marxist intellectuals like Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch theorized the potential of art practices to model a social utopia through the workings of a creative, often dissident imagination, once that fantasized the world as it might be as a way of motivating resistance to the world as it is. Other writers and literary critics and political visionaries describe utopia as a place of paradise, of non-dissension, without conflict, a place of rather static harmony and peace in which labor and resources are divided equitably and citizens live happily.
Following the Marxist philosophers, however, this special issue addresses
finding "utopian performatives" in live performances that reject a fixed
vision of utopia, and that work instead to offer a fleeting glimpse, an
ephemeral feeling, of what a better world might be like. Utopian
performatives can never congeal into a permanent, coercive form; their
power is inevitably temporary, since they are 'doings' crafted from the
present moment of interaction between performers and spectators in a
specifically situated material, historical performance. Their affective
power lies in their ability to move spectators and performers to
"communitas," and to inspire them to recreate these utopian "doings"
larger configurations of culture.
This special issue will investigate ways of engaging with utopian performatives, or utopia and performance. Essays might riff on this theme
from a variety of perspectives, including but not limited to Addressing how reinstating utopia as a motivating political force.
could reinvigorate a dissident public. Considering utopian performatives and the ethics of performance. Addressing performance and questions of affect or "public" feelings. Describing how imagination works in the liminality of performance not just to delimit utopian content, but to model how to =93do=94 utopia. Analyzing how utopia is represented in performance, as well as how
it's done, Critiquing the premise of utopian performatives, Aligning utopian performatives with the potential of fantasy, imagination, affect, and/or transformation in performance Addressing utopia, democracy, and justice in performance
The deadline for submissions of essays of approximately 5,000-7,000 words
is December 15, 2003. Modern Drama is a peer-reviewed journal; all essays
will be vetted by the journal editor, the special issue editor, and expert readers. Please send articles (one copy via hard copy snail mail, another via email attachment) to special issue editor Prof. Jill Dolan, Department of Theatre and Dance, 1 University Station D3900, Winship Building,
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712. For queries and questions, please email jdolan@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
Brecht & Marxism
S.E. Woodson
The Question:
Each art form is controlled, not by the artists, but by larger social institutions. In a capitalist society, an artist may believe he or she is using the art form for personal expression, but he or she is actually producing merchandise of a kind acceptable to the society.
David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson. Film Art:An Introduction. New York: McGraw Hill, 1990. p360.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
Changed the course of the modern European theatre more than any other playwright since Ibsen
Early works are influenced by Expressionism, later work by Marx
Grew up in a middle class family
Key to Understanding Brecht
Understanding Realism
Understanding Marx
Key to Understanding Brecht
Understanding Realism
As socially and historically delimited cultural paradigm, realism does three things
Realism offers a window on the world
Employs a narrative which has rationally ordered connections between events and characters
Conceals authorship and disguises the production process of the text
Understanding Marx
Alienation: division b/t the work and the good
Division of labor combined with a technological and industrial process that compartmentalizes production and alienates the worker from the product enfolding workers into the machinery of Capitalist industrialization.
In the world of capital, where everything is for sale, all human relations, lives, and desires become commodified
Brecht
Epic Theatre turns the spectator into an observer, but arouses his capacity for action, forces him to take decisions... the spectator stands outside, studies.
Bertolt Brecht. Brecht on Theatre. New York: Hill & Wang, 1964. p.37.
Die Verfremdungseffekt (The Alienation Effect) performs this function. It provides a 'bond' of alienation between performer and audience. Its purpose is to "...alienate the social gest underlying every incident - the mimetic and gestural expression of the social relationships prevailing between people.
Bertolt Brecht. Brecht on Theatre. New York: Hill & Wang, 1964. p.36.
A Comparison between Dramatic and Epic Forms
Dramatic Form
the stage embodies an event
draws spectators into an event
consumes their capacity for action
allows them to have emotions
provides them with experience
the spectator is drawn into the plot
suggestion is used
Humans are unalterable
suspense about the outcome
one scene exists for another
linear development
the world as it is
what man ought to do
his instincts
thinking determines being
Epic Form
the stage narrates an event
makes them an observer, but...
awakens their capacity for action
demands decisions from them
provides them with knowledge
the spectator is placed opposite the plot
arguments are used
Humans are alterable and altering
suspense about the progress
each scene exists for itself
in curves
the world as it becomes
what man is forced to do
his motivations
social being determines thinking
Harold Clurman says
"Brecht's plays are morality plays as surely as anything writteen in the Middle Ages to demonstrate the road to Salvation or to mock the Evil One. There is in Brecht the same basic seriousness, the same need to be clear, popular, real (that is, essential). Those old plays depended a good deal on comedy--often of a primitive kind; so does Brecht, whose shrewd wit and robust humor nearly always assume a rather peasant-like bluntness. Brecht's plays do not attempt to render nuances of personal psychology" they are displays of primary action governed by primary motives."
WHY?
Ultimately, Brecht's theatre is a marxist theatre--he wanted to affect change
The denaturalization of reality
"Brecht's ideas and this theatre are the product of a destroyed world: Germany from 1919 to the [1950s]. In such a world,one has to get down to fundamentals; everything is truly a matter of life and death. In these circumstances, an art such as Brecht's is emblematic, necessary, national." --Clurman
So Consider Galileo
"GALILEO: As a scientist I had an almost unique opportunity. In my day astronomy emerged into the marketplace. At that particular time, had one man put up a fight, it could have had wider repercussions. I have come to believe that I was never in real danger; for some years I was as strong as the authorities, and I surrendered my knowledge to the powers that be, to use it, no not use it, abuse it, as it suits their ends. I have betrayed my profession. Any man who does what I have done must not be tolerated in the ranks of science." --Scene 14
Questions for this play:
How would you graph the structure of this play?
How do the poems at the beginning of each scene contribute to the emotional and intellectual structure of this play?
What does the manifest interest in producing for sale Galileo’s inventions say about the alliance between science and business in the modern world?
What is the central metaphor of this play?
At the end of the play, should we view Galileo as tragic victim, but as heroic nevertheless—or do we see a self-interested scientist who has betrayed his social responsibilities and his responsibilities to his discipline?
Why were Galileo’s “new astronomy” and the invention of the telescope important to the world well beyond their significance to science itself?
What does Galileo suggest about businessmen and their relationship to his new science?
What is the place of God in Galileo’s system? In whom or what does Galileo put his faith?
How does Galileo blame free market business for the state of the world’s ignorance?
For what reason does Galileo say he needs to flatter the powers that be, such as Cosimo de Medici?
Has Galileo really “abolished Heaven” with his theory of the universe? Why or why not?
“Truth is the daughter of Time, not of Authority,” says Galileo. Explain.
Does his decision to recant prove to be the right one? He lives in comfort, he studies motion (the science of mechanics) surreptitiously, and he lives to a ripe old age. His decision was based on “common sense”.
“Even the Church will teach you that to be weak is not human; it is just evil.” .
In what sense is the “new age” “a whore, spattered with blood”?
Empire A book by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. A Marxist critique for the 21st century?
Key arguments:
* In the present age of globalisation ¨C or ¡°Empire¡± (Hardt and Negri 2000) power now operates through intensities and flows rather than originating from monolithic blocks; there are no easily identifiable institutions or mechanisms of control.
* Consequently, Empire is omnipresent: ¡°a decentred and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontier¡± (Hardt and Negri 2000: xiii).
* This means that while Empire has visible agents who promote its systems and do its bidding ¨C for example, the Bush republicans or, more generally, military and police forces ¨C the authors argue that they are ¡°inside¡± larger systems of control. Nor are authoritarian institutions singularly identifiable as centres of power.
* For example, Hardt and Negri argue that in their ideological opposition and response to crisis, neo-conservative groups, and liberal-humanist NGO¡¯s, who might be seen as offering alternatives to Empire, in fact, feed each other (Hardt and Negri 2000: 34-8). Accordingly, while the signs of power are visible, it is important to think about the ways that they are constituted as flows; how even people and groups opposed to Empire might be ¡°inside¡± its machinic structures.
Schirato and Webb (Understanding Globalisation 2003) argue that Hardt and Negri¡¯s thesis has four interweaving parts:
* first, a network that is both a ¡°system¡± and ¡°hierarchy¡±, (that to say, a machine for organising the world);
* second, that it reproduces itself through the production of social and cultural activities;
* third, that it is decentred and therefore everywhere; and
* forth, that through participation in cultural flows, everything is imbricated and inside it¡¯s modus operandi (Schirato and Webb 2003: 33-4).
By this analysis, power is so diffuse that it easily infiltrates our every act. Alongside which, power has become fictionalised and made performative. It is hidden in the dramas of media presentation and cultures of consumption that flow from this new conceptual order. This point is acknowledged in Hardt and Negri¡¯s chillingly prescient observation of the contemporary political situation: Empire is ruled by a ¡°permanent state of emergency and exception justified by the appeal to essential values¡± (Hardt and Negri: 2000: 18).
Empire is utopian
Empire
has attracted wide attention not only for its critical tone, however, but for its imaginative, utopian perspective as well. In the complexity of Empire, Hardt and Negri see revolutionary potential; they observe a decentred system that is vulnerable to intervention and attack. By their view, Empire¡¯s need for mobility creates the conditions for a global mobilisation among people and their restless, endlessly creative crossing of borders. The rising avant-garde energy of ¡°the multitude,¡± experiences of ¡°desertion, exodus, and nomadism,¡± leads Hardt and Negri to argue:
Mobility and mass worker nomadism always express a refusal and a search for liberation: the resistance against the horrible conditions of exploitation and the search for freedom and new conditions of life. (2000: 212)
This statement speaks encouragingly about the situation for refugees and the rise of counterculture movements such as anti-globalisation networks (although the latter have more choice in the matter of nomadism). Hardt and Negri argue that the mediatised, virtualised, shifting landscape of global capitalism creates the conditions for its modification and intervention. Mobility is the Virilio-like condition of the Empire and simultaneously its alternative.
Cyborgs
Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto.
Haraway concerns herself with the semiotics and visual politics of technology and feminism.
* Feminist techoscience politics is about relentless questions about the make-up and distribution of knowledge and well-being
* Haraway's creative image of the cyborg: "By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorised and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism, in short we are cyborgs ¡ [cyborgs committed to] partiality, irony, intimacy and perversity, ¡ it is oppositional, utopian and completely without innocence".
* Sofoulis: Haraway "seizes the means of production" (2002: 85). Haraway situates the cyborg within the context of postmodern technoscience, especially biology, in which the comforting modernist dualisms ¡ such as organism verses machine, reality verses representation, self verses other, subject verses object, culture verses nature¡ªare broken down. (2002: 87).
References:
Eckersall, P. (2003). "Surveillance Aesthetics and Theatre against "Empire"." Double Dialogues (4) www.doubledialogues.com/issue_four/eckersall.htm.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York, Routledge.
Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000). Empire. Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press.
Schirato, T. and J. Webb (2003). Understanding Globalization. London, Sage Publications.
Sofoulis, Z. (2002). Cyberquake: Haraway's Manifesto. Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History. D. Tofts, A. Jonson and A. Cavallaro. Sydney, Power Publications: 84-104.
[ a page for Hegel and Dialectics? ]
theatre theory * 
