Performance Research

A Journal of the Performing Arts

ISSN: 1352-8165 (Print) 1469-9990 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rprs20

Dialectics and the Brechtian Tradition

David Barnett

To cite this article: David Barnett (2016) Dialectics and the Brechtian Tradition, Performance
Research, 21:3, 6-15, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2016.1176732

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2016.1176732

Published online: 09 Jun 2016.

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 Dialectics and the Brechtian Tradition
Some thoughts on politicized performance
DAVID BARNETT

The international financial crash of 2007–8 in opposition with each other. The Hegelian
has had a palpable effect on the way politics proposition of thesis and antithesis, whose
has been reconceived. Marxism is no longer relationship is defined by contradiction,
(quite) the dirty word it had become in political robustly criticizes any sense of permanence in
discourse since the fall of the Berlin Wall and a given state of being. The tensions between
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the implosion of the Soviet Bloc. The success opposing entities, be they people, conditions
of Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the or ideas, suggest a fundamental instability in
surprise victory of Jeremy Corbyn as leader reality. When reality is unstable, it is subject
of the UK’s Labour Party, in addition to the to change and is mutable. Correspondingly,
discussion around Thomas Piketty’s Capital in contradiction becomes a motor of change
the Twenty-First Century (2014), have at least and its identification a potential source
returned a more visible, unashamedly left- of momentum.
wing politics to the public realm. Marxism’s Yet because entities themselves are also
theoretical underpinning, the dialectic, has products of dialectical interaction, they are
understandably received less public attention, always ‘impure’. The idea of the ‘thing in itself’,
yet it and its dynamics have been subject cut off from human or social influence, becomes
to renewed academic study in recent years. intensely problematic because dialectical
In terms of theatre, there has been a revival of processes pervade interactions. In the light of
interest in both concepts of realism, a much- this, it is difficult to assert that any one person,
maligned term in postmodern thought, and, by for example, has any fixed qualities independent
extension, the foundational figure of dialectical of his or her social and historical context. One
theatre, Bertolt Brecht. This article considers may, for example, revile racists and oppose
contemporary understandings of dialectics their views and sometimes murderous actions,
before concentrating on Brecht’s reception but the rise of neo-Nazism is also a social
and articulation of the term in theory and in phenomenon, born of dissatisfaction with the
performance, and how his ideas may inform status quo. It is no surprise that neo-Nazis also
contemporary theatre practice. organize events that offer a sense of community,
however offensive this community’s ideas and
manifestations might be. Racists are thus not
DIALECTICS AND RADICAL POLITICS
irredeemable; they are contradictory and only
The appeal of the dialectic to revolutionary by viewing them in their complex, dialectical
politics is primarily its critique of what those entirety can one start to confront them.
in power and their agents present as reality. As Fredric Jameson has pointed out, dialectics
That is, typically, that reality is in some way has traditionally been understood as either
inevitable and that it is beyond human control a system or a method (2009: 3). He notes
to effect substantial change. A dialectical that both terms have been discredited over
worldview, on the other hand, understands time for fairly obvious reasons: systems are
reality as composed of entities that are always too totalizing and methods can be too easily

6 PERFORMANCE RESEARCH 21·3 : pp.6-15 ISSN 1352-8165 print/1469-9990 online

http: //dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2016.1176732 © 2016 TAYLOR & FRANCIS

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 instrumentalized. He is also concerned about Stegemann’s description neatly sidesteps
the third term of the dialectical mechanism three of the main criticisms levelled at
– the synthesis of the thesis and antithesis. dialectics. The first is that the term is little
Drawing on Slavoj Žižek, he dismisses synthesis more than a synonym for ‘roundedness’. John
as ‘that stupid old stereotype’ and contends Fuegi accuses Brecht as theatre director of this
that there are ‘no real syntheses in Hegel’ (57). by asserting that if a character were painted in
Instead, he prefers the term ‘neutralization’ as a particularly positive light in one rehearsal,
‘a kind of negative work on the negative itself’ Brecht would search for more negative elements
(32). In the light of these issues, he proposes in the next (1987: 158). This flattened notion
the move from ‘the’ dialectic to ‘a’ dialectic: of dialectics fails to acknowledge the processes
this ‘dialectic proceeds by standing outside that lead to contradictions, the relationships
a specific thought … in order to show that the that lead to the construction of contradictory
alleged conclusions in fact harbor the workings unities. Instead it seeks to leave the good and
of unstable categorical opposition’ (26). Here the bad as discrete parts within a whole.
Jameson highlights both instability and the A second simplification of dialectical analysis
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interpenetration of apparently discrete entities is that it is in some way teleological, that

in each other. successive generations of contradictions lead
Bernd Stegemann articulates the qualities of to an end point, an ‘end of history’ where all
a dialectical relationship: contradictions have been resolved. Such an
There is an A and there is a B, and there is impulse is most clearly found in Hegel, but
a relationship between the two. There is the idea also at some points in Marx, such as the ‘1844
(Begriff) about a thing (Sache), there is the thing and Manuscripts’. Jameson cites The Eighteenth
there is the difference between the idea and the Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the account of
thing. Only when the relationship between the idea the coup staged by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte
and the thing is considered as a part of the idea
in 1851, as a riposte to this charge in the
itself can one talk of the dialectical work of the idea.
(2013: 64)1
later Marx. He notes that ‘what we observe 1
All translations from the
German are mine unless
is indeed the very opposite of this allegedly otherwise acknowledged.
This perhaps complicated formulation pious rehearsal for longed-for truths, of history
abstracts important features of more concrete written as wish-fulfillment and as the simple-
occurrences. Stegemann offers the example of minded interaction of a few abstractions’
a group of prisoners interred because they are (Jameson 2009: 287). Marx defers to the twists
considered violent and who are also hungry. and turns of reality rather than imposing
The warder throws in a piece of bread that an ends-focused meta-narrative that leads
leads to further violence in the acquisition of to socialist salvation. Again, Stegemann’s
the scarce resource. Stegemann notes that the example refutes the charge of inevitability:
violent reaction confirms the necessity of the there is no knowing how the prisoners would
prisoners’ incarceration only to an undialectical have behaved had the warder provided food
mind. The relationship between a propensity for for all. The situation is contingent upon all its
violence, the material situation itself and the different elements.
intervention of a third party, the warder, mean The third charge is summed up in the French
that there is no single interpretation of the adage ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’
response to the action. By taking each factor in (‘the more it changes, the more it’s the same
turn, one could reach a different conclusion as thing’). This offers a critique of the appearance
to why the prisoners behaved as they did. The of change and essentially embodies the
discrepancy between the ‘idea’ and the ‘thing’ conservative position that things will always
reveals an unstable landscape that is marked by ultimately stay the same. Again, Stegemann
a tension between what has happened and what helps counter this meta-assertion by proposing
is thought about it. that any ‘thing’ is itself polyvalent, so that

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 it is impossible to impute the quality of a theatrical art form he unashamedly calls
permanence. Arguably, the only permanence ‘realistic’. This is also the term Brecht used to
is a repeated discursive assertion that nothing describe the bases for his own representational
2
See Giles 2012 for has changed. strategies.2 This may surprise the reader, given
a discussion of Brecht’s
concept of realism in the
However, one final major criticism of that Brecht rejected the dominant theatrical
context of the Marxist dialectical thought, that of relativism, requires definition of realism, that it should reproduce
thought of his times.
further consideration. Even if one accepts the surfaces of reality we encounter in everyday
Jameson’s and Stegemann’s articulations of life. Brecht’s ideas on realism and dialectics can
dialectical processes, they still run the risk of shed light on the potentially liberating forms
offering up reality as something endlessly open available to a politicized theatre.
to multiple interpretation, depending on one’s
point of view. Yet in another work, Stegemann
BRECHT AS DIALECTICAL THEORIST
makes an interesting distinction between two
terms: ‘Wirklichkeit [actuality]’ and ‘Realität Brecht offered a conceptual rather than an
[reality]’ (Stegemann 2015: 77). Actuality is what aesthetic definition of realism in 1938 in a series
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really happens; reality is how people respond of points that I have enumerated for clarity:
to actuality. For example, one could objectively Realistic means: [1] revealing the causal complex of
say that two people had an argument. The society/ [2] unmasking the ruling viewpoints of the
disputants, however, might contend that they rulers/ [3] writing from the standpoint of the class
were both in the right, presenting two different that has in readiness the broadest solutions for the
realities. Stegemann’s conceptual distinction most urgent difficulties besetting human society/
acknowledges the existence of many realities – [4] emphasizing the factor of development/
[5] concretely and making it possible to abstract.
something that would be difficult to refute – yet
3
It is worth drawing the (Brecht 2014c: 203)3
reader’s attention to the he goes on to reserve a privileged position
revised and updated for a particular one. He notes that in socialist In the first instance, realism is active (1–4):
translations of Brecht now
available in the different thought, perspective is defined by class and it is no longer a reflection of a situation, but
English volumes cited in not by individuals, and it is from this collective an interrogation of it. The aim is to reveal the
the references section. The
volumes also offer much standpoint that interpretations can be made processes that lie beneath the surface (1, 2 and
material previously that may then lead to social change. 4) and to take up a perspective solely based on
unavailable to readers of
English.
This argumentation harnesses the power of class (3). Realism, because it is predicated on the
dialectics for radical politics. The potential for collective rather than the individual, also strives
action is predicated on identifying contradiction to take the particular and to make it general
and exploiting the necessary instability it (5). The status of the individual, however, is
suggests. Contradictions can endure for as long a special one, inflected by the dialectic. In
as they are tolerated, of course, but they never another essay, written about a year later, Brecht
disappear. Dialectics provides a philosophical considered how an eviction from a flat might
rigour for political movements that seek to be represented. He notes that to the evictor,
change fundamental aspects of their actuality. the evicted man is just a number, another part
Marxism, through its analysis of class, attacks of a process carried out day in, day out. Brecht
the individual perspective promoted by speculates about whether ‘it could be that the
capitalism and derives its ontology from larger evicted man is only to be represented in his
social formations. In changing the perception anonymity, i.e. indeterminate, as one of the
of reality, dialectics can also refashion masses, personally lacking in characteristics,
consciousness by exchanging categories of so: as Unemployed Man X. That, however,
thought that seek to inhibit change for ones would be wrong’ (Brecht 1993: 522). Instead, he
that accept and encourage it. proposes that this X is, of course, an individual,
Stegemann, who is, by trade, a dramaturg, but that his representation hinges on his
paves the way with philosophical argument for struggle to assert himself as such in the face

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 of a dehumanizing process that views him It is difficult, however, to call this chinoiserie:
as just another number. This realistic detail, the book refracts its subject matter through
which seeks out a contradiction and dramatizes a Chinese philosophical mode that resists
it, locates individuals in social systems and superficial pastiche and allows Brecht to
consequently permits a representation that is discuss topical matters at a distance. The form
at once specific and general. If one then asks, in comprises of short, self-contained reflections,
response to point 5, ‘who does the abstracting?’, rather than lengthy, complex chapters. Brecht
it is the spectator, acting on the provision of admired Chinese philosophers’ focus on social
well-articulated dialectical material. context and ‘the closest connection between
Brecht approaches the world dialectically, in knowledge and action’ (354), something
both his understanding of realism and his draft at variance with the Western penchant for
for its practical application on stage. Yet, as epistemology and metaphysics. Günther
has been shown above, dialectics is a contested Heeg reads the fragments and their rendition
topic, not least by leftist theorists themselves, as pieces consciously written in exile: ‘the
and so it is sensible to understand how Brecht appropriation of foreign material suggests in
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understood the term. the first instance the acceptance of foreignness

Brecht encountered Marxism in the mid- as a basic acceptance of one’s own existence’
1920s and became fascinated by dialectics. His (2011: 140). Such a starting point acknowledges
most sustained treatment of dialectics is to be a dialectical conception of human identity and
found in The Book of Twists and Turns (Buch der development in that the individual is always
Wendungen), which is sometimes also known as informed and constructed by material and
Me-ti.4 The ‘book’ is actually a collection of experiences that lie beyond it. 4
This important work is
due to be published in
often short sections, whose order Brecht never The Chinese form, which tends to move English translation for the
stipulated and which was never published in sententiously from the particular to the general, first time in 2017. As there
is no current agreed title
Brecht’s lifetime. He began writing the sections allowed Brecht more than simple stylistic
for the work, I have chosen
in the mid-1930s and worked, as he often did, in flourishes. Expression is often suggestive and mine from a translation
phases, up until the final documented section, pithy, as in the following example: ‘terror made elsewhere (Müller
1980: 43).
written in 1955. Brecht chose the figure of the strengthens timidity and courage, two qualities
invented Chinese philosopher Me-ti as an that are very dangerous for dictators’ (Brecht
allusion to a real, yet little-known figure, 1995:136). The reader is left to work on the
Mo-Tse. As Antony Tatlow notes: ‘for Mo-Tse contradictory apophthegm: it, like many
the prime cause of social problems was others in The Book, provokes further thought
contradictions in society; his teaching amounts and potentially action. As Rodney Livingstone
to a systematic attempt to do away – once and explains: ‘in the Me-ti … manner, attitude
for all – with these contradictions, to remove and the ideas expressed are all … tightly
the cause of conflict’ (1977: 415). There was thus intertwined’, that is, the discrete sections differ
a clear affinity between older social thought and little in their style and are designed to incite
more recent dialectical analysis, yet Tatlow active reading in the first instance (Livingstone
emphasizes that Mo-Tse’s philosophy ‘helped 1998: 62).
[Brecht] realize and formulate his views’, rather Brecht devoted many sections of The Book
than informing them, something attributable to to the subject of dialectics, which he renamed
Hegel, Marx and Lenin (431). ‘the Great Method’. The fragmentary mode of
For the most part, The Book of Twists organizing the different sections, in which there
and Turns is an allegorical commentary on are no direct through-lines, means that Brecht
contemporary and recent events in Europe. did not set out an argument, as in the Western
Historical figures often appear in hardly philosophical tradition, but deployed a montage
disguised form (Karl Marx is Ka-meh, although form in which the parts communicate with each
Stalin is Ni-en), and Germany becomes Chima. other suggestively rather than logically. In the

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 following discussion, then, it cannot be said all-embracing materialism as too mechanistic
that Brecht develops his thoughts on the Great and deterministic (1998: 100). As a result, Brecht
Method systematically; I have taken material offers a careful formulation in his best-known
strewn throughout The Book and connected it theoretical work, the ‘Short Organon for the
according to my own line of enquiry. Theatre’ of 1949. Here dialectics is articulated as
Brecht offers an often aphoristic account of a ‘materialist dialectic’ (Brecht 2014b: 242) and
dialectics, a term only used once and alluded not ‘dialectical materialism’, as John Willett first
to once in The Book itself. Its origin is simply translated it (Brecht 1964: 193). That is, Brecht
offered thus: ‘the Great Method came about did not associate himself with a (sanctioned
when human beings saw one thing and another’ and codified) system, but preferred to deploy his
(Brecht 1995: 160). This straightforward starting dialectic without doctrinal limitation, ultimately
point hides an important principle: human prioritizing dialectics over materialism.
beings did not simply accept the differences The other major description of the Great
between things in the world, but sought to Method proposes that it is
account for them. This observation already a practical doctrine of alliances and the
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suggests activity as a central component dissolution of alliances, of the exploitation and the
of dialectical practice, one to which I will dependencies of change, of the initiation of change
return below. and the changing of the initiators, of the division
and the establishment of unities, of the dependence
There are two substantial sections that
of oppositions on each other, of the reconcilability
address the Great Method directly and of mutually exclusive oppositions. The Great
it is worth quoting them at length for Method makes it possible to recognize processes
obvious reasons. within things and to make use of them. It teaches
the asking of questions that enable action.
The Great Method is best grasped when one
(Brecht 1995: 104)
considers it as a doctrine about mass-processes
(Massenvorgänge). It never treats things The chiastic style signals the full reach
individually, but rather sees them in a mass of of dialectics: processes are mutually
both similar or related things and different things, interdependent so that nothing remains
and then proceeds to resolve them into masses
unchanged. Its transformative power, however,
themselves. (184)
is not specified and, in this reading, is freed
The aversion to taking anything in isolation of any trace of facile determinism. There is
is made plain, and the proposition, found nothing mechanical about the description and
in another section, that ‘relationships are so the emphasis is firmly placed on process and
decisive’ (71), sets up the broad terms of this activity. The freedom from dogma also suggests
dialectic: the thing-in-itself is banished. Yet a pragmatism identified by Klaus-Detlef Müller
here, Brecht extends the scope from ‘similar’ in the treatment of the revolutionary leader
to ‘different things’ in order to acknowledge disguised as ‘Mi-en-leh’: ‘Lenin’s strong point,
its possibility for connection with objects that and in this he proves himself to be a master in
may only appear to be unrelated. Jameson notes the “grand method”, is the ability to adjust his
that Brecht’s treatment of quantities in this behaviour according to the situation’ (Müller
section exposes ‘the “metaphysical” basis’ of 1980: 52). Brecht is thus able to circumvent
this way of approaching the world: ‘it means Jameson’s criticism of dialectics as method,
that one of the central tasks of the dialectic discussed above, because his dialectic is
will be a search for the most “minimal unity”’ liberated from a restrictive, ends-focused
(Jameson 1998: 114). He continues: ‘this, narrative and allowed to move unfettered
then, is a fundamental social materialism, as through history.
opposed to a physical kind’ (115). Steve Giles Elsewhere, Brecht discusses dialectics’
examines the role of materialism in Brecht’s relationship to epistemology. Under the guise
thought and notes that Brecht suspected an of Me-ti, he proposes that one should not fix

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 what can be known too firmly, as has been the Around 1931, Brecht underplayed the idea
philosophers’ wont, as ‘they are not interested that nature itself was dialectical and ascribed
in the more or the less, but the all or nothing’ that view to those who read dialectics ‘from
(Brecht 1995: 56). Brecht’s ambitions are the perspective of progress’ (Brecht 2003: 103).
more modest: dialectics is not concerned with He continued that dialectical thought was
determining what can and cannot be known, but rather a way of criticizing common ideas and
prefers to linger on a perpetual renegotiation of to proceed against dominant ideologies. Here
the limits of knowledge. Using a characteristic it would appear that Brecht favoured the idea
reversal, he writes: ‘it is the whole world of dialectics as a weapon for challenging the
that creates a picture, but the picture never discourses peddled by the proponents of the
encompasses the whole world’ (60). Brecht status quo. Yet as Giles writes:
contends that knowledge (or judgements, on the one hand, [Brecht] construes dialectic as
as he puts it) has to be based on experience, a mode of cognition that discloses transformative
not idealist, metaphysical systems. Yet such contradiction.… On the other hand, he implies
judgements cannot take on a life of their own that the contradictory processes uncovered by
dialectical thinking are themselves ontologically
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by being linked together: therein lies dogma.

real and thus able to resist the closure imposed by
Knowledge, for Brecht, has to start with an
cognitive patterns … (1998: 96)
observation of processes, and these are likely to
change over time, and so knowledge, too, will The question arises as to whether this
never be stable. ambiguity affects the application of dialectics in
The dialectics that emerges from The Book of the theatre.
Twists and Turns is not tethered by any doctrine
other than its own workings, and these are
DIALECTICS ON THE BRECHTIAN
couched in terms that are broad and expansive.
S TAG E
In this reading, ‘the’ dialectic becomes
Jameson’s ‘a’ dialectic, a mechanism with both After fifteen years away from Germany, Brecht
the ambit to analyze any social formation and was finally able to return to the theatre in 1948.
the openness to reach the most remarkable of He founded a company a year later together
conclusions, unfettered by meta-narrative. with his wife, Helene Weigel, in what was
A link with activity also runs through the shortly to become the German Democratic
fragments on the Great Method and this Republic (GDR). The Berliner Ensemble (BE)
evokes the Marxist definition of ‘critique’: the allowed him to work through the ideas he had
application of theory to provoke practice. The developed in exile. The fruits of his and his
emphasis on activity differentiates between team’s labours, as suggested by the nature
two types of change. Tatlow notes that Brecht of the dialectics Brecht explored in The Book
found Taoism’s identification of ‘the flow of of Twists and Turns, were never definitive.
things’ important for a dynamic conception of They involved the application of a theoretical
the world, but that he ‘did not believe that social construct to dramatic fiction, and the results
change occurred by itself’ (Tatlow 1977: 457). were always open to further modification in the
Intervention is the key term and the process light of experience. Indeed, for Brecht a show’s
that brings it forth is articulated with pithy premiere did not mark the point at which
precision in The Book of Twists and Turns: work on a production stopped: the dossiers
‘thinking is something that follows difficulties held in the BE’s archive testify to long-term
and precedes action’ (Brecht 1995: 62). This is monitoring, assessment and re-rehearsal over
what Klaus D. Wagner calls Brecht’s ‘dialectic the life of any one show. The application of
of the deed’ (2015: 239) in that it emerges from dialectical thought to dramatic material did
a concrete situation and, with the requisite not guarantee its own results: dialectics, as
hunger for change, moves to action. noted above, are complex, and no one can

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 interpret contradictions from a privileged of the Prince was not allowed either to be
position outside history or society. Brecht the completely in control of his actions or to be
pragmatist called the phrase ‘the proof of the completely subject to the will of his German
pudding is in the eating’ an ‘iron law’ in 1953 masters. Both impulses had to be shown in
(Brecht 2014a: 251). Here he asked whether order to represent the complex situation. In the
dialectical analysis proved itself in realistic same production, it was noted that the play’s
representation, but he found that he had to main character, Hörder, was rehearsed in two
reformulate his terminology. different ways. First, the actor approached
In a note made in the last year of his the figure as an unpleasant person because
life, Brecht acknowledged that realism in he was a Nazi soldier. Then, the actor ‘played
the theatre was always provisional. Käthe a sympathetic young man who, however,
Rülicke, a dramaturgical assistant at the BE, speaks and acts like a Nazi. It becomes clear
transcribed Brecht’s sentiment: ‘realism is what that a young person is being made into a Nazi’
is more realistic, it doesn’t exist otherwise’ (Anon. b n.d.a.: 13). The emphasis on dialectical
(Rülicke 1956: 10). This conclusion, made process over surface appearance exposed the
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after seven years’ work with the company, dialectics of identity negotiation in the figure,
suggests that theatrical representation of banished character as a ‘thing in itself’ and
dialectical processes will always only offer an revealed politically charged features of the
approximation of the world outside. The task ‘world’ of the play.
of the director and the actors is nonetheless ‘to For all the dialectical verve of the theatre
discover the typical (das Übliche), the schematic; work, however, there were some not
that can’t be reconstructed afterwards’ (ibid.). inconsiderable limitations that Brecht placed on
So, the necessarily approximate representations the interpretive possibilities offered to the
still had to be crafted out of a special kind of audience. Meg Mumford has drawn attention to
observation – not of the individual, but of the a certain simplification in Brecht’s practice and
individual’s dialogue with the social situation – identifies ‘something closed about the
in order to generate the complexity required to performed structure of opposition, as if the
go beyond superficial mimesis. promise of offering up multiple options had
Documentation at the BE reveals sustained been replaced by a presentation of “the”
attempts to analyze situations rather than alternative, the “socially efficacious” way of
characters and to develop appropriate staging behaving, the “better” social solution’
responses in rehearsal. In a note to his 1954 (2000: 45). This was in part due to a more
production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Brecht theoretically constrained understanding of
stated: ‘people don’t act out of one motive, dialectics on Brecht’s part. Having read Mao’s
but always out of several, that are sometimes ‘On Contradiction’, he agreed with the author’s
contradictory’ (Brecht in Bunge undated: 44). division of contradictions into a ‘main
Actors could no longer look inwards, but had to contradiction’ at the top of a hierarchy and
5
Brecht explicitly used the acknowledge their insinuation in more than one a series of ‘sub-contradictions’ beneath it.5
term in his appendices to
the ‘Short Organon’.
social nexus. For example, in Battle in Winter, In orthodox Marxism, the ‘main contradiction’
a play about the failed Nazi campaign to capture is the one between labour and capital, yet in
Moscow during World War II, a returning Seventeen Contradictions and the End of
émigré Prince is described as wanting to use Capitalism David Harvey argues for a far more
the Germans to regain his estates while the heterogeneous treatment of the contradictions
Germans are using him for propaganda value in that pervade society (2014). His work is firmly
the Soviet Union: ‘everyone is using everyone founded in the Marxist tradition, yet it
else for their own purposes’ (Anon. a n.d.a.: acknowledges several significant sources of
2). The production was thus concerned with social, economic and political crisis that may all
contradictory performance so that the figure vie for dialectical treatment, often together.

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 Brecht’s penchant for economism, not signalled and not being offered to spectators for their
in The Book of Twists and Turns, can reduce own judgement.
a broader identification of contradiction in his The adjective and adverb parteiisch (partisan,
theatre work and restrict the spectators’ partial) was not a pejorative term to Marxists
interpretive freedom. of the early twentieth century; indeed it was
As a result of theoretical constraint, the an important tenet of socialist realism. Brecht
problem for Brecht’s stagecraft was that it had Me-ti pronounce on the status of partial
conflated two related, but distinct issues. opinions in response to the question whether
The first was the dialectical interrogation of one can be simultaneously objective and
dramatic material, the second its presentation. partisan: ‘if the party is objectively right, then
To Brecht, the two were intimately linked: to there is no distinction between objective and
be a dialectician was to be a Marxist, and this partisan’ (Brecht 1995: 127). While the line is
implied a certain optimism. Brecht’s motto to couched in the conditional, it appears that the
The Threepenny Lawsuit was ‘Contradictions criteria can be met and, in the evidence of some
are our hope!’ (2001: 148), and this inflection of Brecht’s theatre work in the GDR, were.
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coloured Brecht’s theatre practice, too. He was It should not be forgotten, however, that
making theatre in the first socialist nation on Brecht’s rehearsal and production practice of
German soil and believed that he was living in the 1950s were radical and innovative. Despite
the better Germany. His stagecraft set about the examples given above, it would be crass to
dramatizing class conflict in a way that loaded call Brecht’s work wholly doctrinaire or rigid.6 6
See Barnett 2011 for
arguments that attest to
his dialectics in the favour of the working class The introduction of dialectical stagecraft and its Brecht’s commitment to
(rather than only interpreting dramatic material dramatization of contradictory class-based a more open application of
dialectics.
through its perspective), applying implicit society were not only feted in the GDR, but won
value judgements to his representations. prizes at festivals in Paris and adulation in
See, for example, Brecht’s production of London. The criticisms above, made from
Erwin Strittmatter’s Katzgraben, a play a contemporary perspective, should in no way
about agricultural reform in the eponymous diminish Brecht’s achievements in pioneering
farming village. In one note, Rülicke considers consciously dialectical practices in the theatre
a scene involving a farmer and his wife who or lessen their potential for modification.
are not members of the rural proletariat, the
peasantry: ‘of course we show [these problems]
D E V E LO P M E N T S I N T H E B R E C H T I A N
in a partisan way (parteiisch), but we can’t
TRADITION
flippantly dismiss the problems as such or
make them look silly’ (Rülicke 1953: n.p.). The The optimism and the faith in certain aspects
note acknowledges that the production team of the Party line that can be discerned in
had already determined the meaning of the Brecht’s post-war productions with the
couple’s difficulties: they would be tarred with BE became ever less sustainable after his
the Party’s ideological brush even if they were death in 1956 and, later, the traumas state
not to be overtly trivialized. The couple were socialism both perpetrated and endured.
certainly represented in terms of their social The hope of a bright, harmonious future was
affiliation. As such, their actions connected not realized, and theatre-makers started
personal experience and the demands of class. to decouple dialectical forms from loaded
Yet the audience were invited to view the presentational modes. Stegemann, who
couple’s problems as ones that were not as makes a sustained plea for realism in the
serious as those experienced by figures lower Brechtian tradition on the contemporary stage,
down the social scale. So, while it is clear offers the following definition: ‘in realistic
that dialectics were in play, they were being art, society’s contradictions and human
loaded in favour of a particular interpretation beings are presented differently than reality

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 permits by itself’ (2015: 12). The dialectical terms of critical and audience response, was
imperative is clear and present; attendant value his production of Brecht’s The Resistible Rise
judgements are not. Such a theatre can defer of Arturo Ui at the BE in 1995. Dialectical
interpretation on stage and instead invite the ideas ran through the central character’s
audience to judge the status of material in new construction, for example: ‘Ui doesn’t have
presentational forms. a personality of his own, he’s actually a nobody
The response to dissatisfaction with orthodox who always has to be constructed by others’
Brechtianism was the development of post- (Vestner 1995: n.p.). Yet the production
Brechtian theatre from the 1970s onward. should not be mistaken for a Brechtian
It was not that theatre-makers like Ruth imitation: the rehearsal notes betray the
Berghaus, Einar Schleef or Heiner Müller post-Brechtian impulse of articulating and
doubted the dialectical connections between accruing contradictions without seeking to
individual, society and history, or Brecht’s resolve them. The effects of this understanding
critique of surface naturalism. Rather, they of dialectics were clear to see in the final
were wary of the conclusions that could be production. Arturo Ui, Brecht’s Chicago
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reached, preferring to leave contradictions gangster and allegorical representation of

more provocatively open than Brecht, and Hitler, was not presented wholly negatively.
this had an effect on the ways they staged In such an interpretation he would have
dramas. This not only reflects the problem remained an object of critical enquiry, studied
with implied value judgements, noted above, by the audience from a distance. Müller did not
but also one concerning the epistemological discard a dialectical approach to staging Ui,
landscape within which they were working. but the figure was also played as seductive and
Directors in the GDR were struggling with appealing. The dialectical inversions meant
contradictions between the promises of that the spectators were never too close to
socialism and their own everyday experiences. the figure, yet he was also allowed to break
Their colleagues in the West were confronting frame and entice the audience, acknowledging
the instability engendered by post-Fordist Hitler’s charisma and undeniable successes.
economics and a media-saturated environment It is the audience that have to reconcile
in which knowledge was becoming ever more their attraction to a repulsive figure, not
commoditized. As time has gone on, and the production.
globalization has extended its reach, alienation Post-Brechtian theatre retains the impulses
in the Marxist and metaphorical senses has present in The Book of Twists and Turns
increased, and the development of ever more and translates them into a theatre practice
complex financial and social systems has not that is uncomfortable with closed forms of
halted the hegemony of what is today known as signification. Dialectics continue to demystify,
the ‘1 per cent’. or at least open up, the complexities of surface
Müller understood dialectics in the following, reality, but are presented to the spectators for
open terms: ‘Marx didn’t devise a system, their own judgement. Of course, there is no such
on the contrary, he worked on negation, thing as ‘theory-free presentation’ – dialectics
on a critique of the existing state of affairs. is itself an interpretive enquiry into actuality
Consequently, he was open to new realities – yet the material on stage is not packaged in
in principle’ (2008: 432). Here Müller is not a way that elicits a particular response from an
that far from expressing Adorno’s argument audience. As such, Brecht’s vision of a dialectic
in Negative Dialectics in which synthesis that is free to approach different realities is
is eschewed and contradictions are left to still, at heart, a politically hopeful instrument:
accumulate. His politicized theatre marks it gives the lie to the mantra that ‘there is no
an affinity with the Brecht of The Book of alternative’ and proposes that change is always,
Twists and Turns. His greatest success, in somehow possible.

14 P E R F O R M A N C E R E S E A R C H 21·3 : O N D I A L E C T I C S

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 REFERENCES Giles, Steve (2012) ‘Realism after Modernism:
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