Abstract not available

This dissertation is situated within the field of media studies, with a particular focus on the "materialities of communication." The concept of "materialities" is oriented to the underlying conditions that allow communication to take place: the places, carriers and modes of communication that serve to shape and even alter meaning. My dissertation asks how this "material turn" can usefully be applied to and help develop the study of theatre. / The dissertation is divided into four chapters. In Chapter 1, I undertake a critical review of the theoretical literature regarding materialities and its applications to media theory. In Chapter 2, I begin to explore the implications of the material turn for theatre. Scholarly interest in the relation of media and theatre has largely been focused on the use of media and technology within theatrical practice. I argue that theatre cannot be conceived of separately from the prevailing communicational possibilities of a given era, even if we accept the capacity for artistic intervention within these parameters. I integrate theoretical standpoints on the reproducibility, iterability and liveness of theatrical presence into a broad discussion of media and communication and thereby demonstrate a more fundamental relationship between theatricality and mediality. / In Chapter 3, I extend my discussion of a "materialities of theatre" to the subject of translatability. Translation has long functioned as a metaphor for media as well as for theatrical representation. Discourses of the translatability between media forms have recently been revived by digital technologies that present translation as a model of universalization: the search for the perfect language into which all forms of knowledge can converge. Theatre works to converge media forms as a point of intersecting bodies, texts, voices and technologies, yet also remains persistently aware of the economy of shifting linguistic exchanges that renders total translation an impossible pursuit. I thus develop a study of the materialities of theatre that can attend to this disjunction in translation theory by addressing theatre as a point of medial convergence as well as a site of linguistic difference. / In Chapter 4, I elaborate upon these standpoints by discussing circulation as a theoretical concept that, on the one hand, complements the study of materialities of communication and, on the other hand, seeks to overcome the abovementioned disjunction of translation theory. Concentrating on the case of Montreal as a site of heightened linguistic interaction, I investigate theatre as a medial system that works to absorb, interrupt and rediffuse the linguistic materialities of this city.

The language of idealism and skepticism in Shakespearean moments of disillusionment provides terms for understanding features of the late plays—their self-conscious artificiality, their blend of wonder and irony, pathos and moral indignation. The psychology of disillusionment illuminates the relationship of tragedy to romance. In Timon of Athens, perhaps the last tragedy, Shakespeare skeptically exposes the psychology of idealism but reveals the consequence of such skepticism, a world drained of wonder. Subsequent plays rejuvenate idealism, protecting it from its own tendencies toward punishment and revenge. Moving toward heroic assertion and death, tragedy often colludes with the idealist in his time-foreclosing and self-destructive acts of revenge, but the new genre gives him more time to return to reality without sacrificing the psychological benefits of idealism. Pericles escapes the anxiety brought by awareness of evil by flight and delay. The unifying principle of his play is not the tragic closure of heroic integrity, but a life extended in time. Cymbeline returns to the truth impulses of love-idealism. Posthumous' disillusioned misogyny carries these impulses into a punishing mode, but his reacceptance of Imogen represents an irrational but redeeming subordination of epistemological truth to interpersonal truth. The Winter's Tale rejuvenates idealism after displaying its destructive potentials in jealousy. Married love embodies idealism in an image of the good of life. In the statue scene, the wish for an atemporal ideal gives way to faith in the temporal world. In The Tempest wonder arises from seeing a world as if for the first time, and is thus exposed to the irony of perspectivism. Marriage returns as love at first sight, but shares the stage with tropes of ambition, usurpation, subjugation, murder. Prospero identifies with reason over fury but remains perplexed by irony and anxiety. Taking bearings from within the Shakespearean ethos rather than from a specific theory of genre allows this study to register the distinctive tonalities of the individual plays. The development illuminated is not that of a sustained progression toward a preexisting genre but that of a vital intelligence probing a specific set of problems in an intellectually coherent way.

No description available.

Theatre as mimesis, the actor as mimic: can we still think in these terms, two and a half millennia after antiquity? The Meaning in Mimesis puts canonical texts of acting theory by Plato, Diderot, Stanislavsky, Brecht, and others back into conversation with their informing paradigms in philosophy and aesthetics, in order to trace the recurring impulse to theorize the actor's art and the theatrical experience in terms of one-to-one correspondences. I show that, across the history of ideas that is acting theory, the familiar conception of mimesis as imagistic representation entangles over and over again with an "other mimesis": mimesis as the embodied attunement with alterity, a human capacity that bridges the gap between self and other. When it comes to the philosophy of the theatre, it is virtually impossible to consider the one-to-one of representation or re-enactment without at the same time grappling with the one-to-one of identification or vicarious experience.

Two paradoxical elements in Camus's work, both kept at a distance by the author, are the feminine and the sacred. The feminine is paradoxical in its patterns of speech and silence, and of partial or aspectual absence and presence. Whereas feminine speech and presence are abundant in Camus's theatre, absence, silence and fragmentation of the feminine characterize his narrative works, with the exception of the short story, "La femme adultere." The sense of the sacred, which permeates Camus's work, represents a philosophical paradox. Indeed, how to reconcile Camus's agnosticism and his philosophy of the absurd, which denies transcendance, with this sense of the sacred? How to explain the experience of "La femme adultere"? For it is in this text, after having intersected in the plays, that the paradoxes of the sacred and the feminine climactically come together and approach the metaphysical. A first critical approach sets the sacred in the context of Camus's time. Juxtaposing the early Camusian essays with certain writings of contemporary authors relative to religion and the sacred, it considers the sacred from philosophical, historical and sociological as well as religious perspectives. A second approach, psychoanalytic and feminist, explores Camus's narrative works and his drama. Referring mainly to the writings of Kristeva and taking up her notion of the "myth of the feminine" as the "last refuge of the sacred", it examines the absences and silences of the mother in the narrative works before concerning itself with the speech and presence of the female companion in the plays. This difference between the two genres is analyzed. Finally, the last part of the thesis, which focuses on "La femme adultere", examines the modalities of desire. It is this context of desire, linked to the Camusian concept of the absurd, that opens the feminine to the sacred. This double paradox is examined along with the possible meaning of the unexpected alliance of the feminine and the sacred in a corpus of work mostly perceived as masculine and agnostic.

Habil.-Schr.--Freie Universität--Berlin, 1994. / Bibliogr. p. 267-300. Index.

Notre thèse entend développer des concepts « théâtraux », abondants dans la littérature philosophique, en les confrontant aux stratégies représentatives mises en œuvre dans l’écriture théâtrale. Les devenirs de cette rencontre entre philosophie et théâtre sont intimement liés à un processus scénique de défiguration, comprise comme épreuve plastique des figures et de ce qui les excède. En prenant toujours comme point de départ les questions posées par des textes théâtraux et en nous centrant sur leur résonance avec la philosophie française contemporaine, nous avons élaboré divers outils conceptuels afin de cartographier ce travail commun du théâtre et de la philosophie par la défiguration. <p>Notre premier chapitre prend appui sur les textes Matériau-Médée et Hamlet-Machine de Heiner Müller pour analyser les rapports entre mythes et figures ainsi que les critiques de la représentation qu’implique leur mise en scène. Ces questions nous incitent à aborder les processus de démythologisation à l’œuvre dans la pensée critique de la première Ecole de Francfort, et leur reprise par Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe sous le concept de « défiguration ». Nous montrons que cette défiguration est toujours, chez Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, affaire de scène et de théâtre. Nous sommes amenée à élaborer le concept de dé-dramatisation pour saisir la portée d’une telle pensée philosophique et de ses implications artistiques, à la croisée entre l’histoire du théâtre et celle des pratiques conceptuelles. <p>Dans un deuxième chapitre, nous nous affrontons directement à la conceptualisation de la notion de « scène » à partir des contradictions du « théâtre de parole » créé par Pasolini. Nous approchons la scène à travers le champ de la liturgie et de l’esthétique chrétiennes, et à travers celui de l’image cinématographique (dans une réévaluation du « vieux problème » de la différence entre théâtre et cinéma). Nous définissons la scène comme dispositif de monstration des conditions de possibilité d’un « partage du sensible », selon le concept créé par Jacques Rancière. Nous examinons, notamment à travers les travaux d’Esa Kirkkopelto, comment une telle scène travaille la philosophie entre schème et concept (de Wittgenstein à Althusser et de Nietzsche à Derrida), inventant ainsi une théâtralité de la pratique conceptuelle.<p>Notre troisième chapitre analyse les phénomènes de dédoublement des rôles chez Pirandello, Genet et Müller pour revisiter les fonctions de la « scène psychique » ainsi que de tout le lexique théâtral qui structure l’approche psychanalytique de l’inconscient. Nous proposons de penser la théâtralité à l’œuvre dans la construction de la personnalité en fonction d’une subjectivité « scéno-cartographique » dont l’impact thérapeutique a été éprouvé, notamment, par la psychiatrie institutionnelle. <p>Enfin, dans un dernier chapitre, nous nous laissons guider par le théâtre de Samuel Beckett pour définir l’agencement qui se tisse entre théâtre et philosophie, grâce à la défiguration comme opérateur conceptuel. A travers le « faire » dramatique et sa crise, nous interrogeons la manière dont la question de l’action a été posée par l’histoire de la philosophie. Nous examinons les usages que font Deleuze et Souriau du terme de « dramatisation » et de son impact dans le développement des dimensions virtuelles de l’expérience. Nous évaluons ce qu’apporte la pratique de l’acteur aux modes d’attention philosophiques, et nous proposons de comprendre les rapports du théâtre et de la philosophie en fonction du concept d’ « incorporation ». Nous concluons en démontrant que la prise en compte de l’expérience de la scène théâtrale dans et par la philosophie est une condition sine qua non au façonnement d’une théorie croisant études visuelles et conceptualisation de la représentation par l’image et par l’action. Nous déjouons ainsi toute tentation iconoclaste, en travaillant les dimensions de mouvement et de temporalité que la scène permet de saisir.<p> / Doctorat en Philosophie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation demonstrates how props act as conduits of knowledge and (thus?) power in Sophocles’ “non-Theban” plays. I show how certain props challenge the definitions and values that they accrue as they move between actors onstage. Key props in these four plays behave unlike other props in extant tragedy, opening up the possibility for a sustained inquiry into the ways that property speaks to and for power. Focusing on the urn in Electra, the bow in Philoctetes, Hector’s sword and Ajax’s own shield in Ajax, and the robe in Trachiniae, this project argues for the centrality of these props in these plays’ verbal exchanges. The introduction sets up a framework and methodology that draws on Michel Foucault’s notion of power-knowledge (pouvoir-savoir) and the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu alongside contemporary thinkers like Jack Halberstam, Jane Bennett, and Sara Ahmed. The first chapter, “The Urn is the Wor(l)d in Sophocles’ Electra,” builds on prior scholarship on this much-studied stage object by showing how it accrues “symbolic power” and comes to construct reality and the social world. The possibility of that consensus breaks down, however, in the face of the familiar/l strife at Argos, and it is through this breakdown that the urn gives audience members a way to examine the play’s puzzling lack of resolution. The second chapter, “Stringing a Bow: Learning, use, and power in Sophocles’ Philoctetes,” builds on the previous chapters’ by showing how the bow defines the limits of Neoptolemus’ education on Lemnos and the terms of its own exchange. The bow’s frequent back and forth between characters and its role in Odysseus’s subterfuge belie the fact that it still belongs to Heracles, who alone can authorize its use. This reading draws out the strange relationship between the deceptions of the False Merchant and the divine interventions of Heracles, demonstrating an uncomfortable consonance between the two scenes. The third chapter, entitled “Ajax’s economy of hostility: the necropolitics of kleos,” explores how Ajax paradoxically gives up his shield even as it merges with his identity as a defense for the Achaeans against the Trojans. Ajax himself attempts to manipulate this threat through the handling and “exchange” of the sword of Hector with its native soil, misleading his compatriots — and possibly himself — about his intentions in his so-called “deception speech.” When Hector’s sword pierces Ajax’s body, Trojan and personal hostilities merge until Odysseus manages to rectify the play’s errant exchanges and restore Ajax’s status as a shield for his companions. The fourth and final chapter, “Ceci n’est pas un prop: The robe as gift and garment in Sophocles’ Trachiniae,” shows that the robe’s failure to appear onstage as a prop — the audience might see it as part of Heracles’ costume at the end of the play — enacts the conflict between oikos and wilderness that the characters inhabit, exposing them to the threats of order and disorder as they attempt to integrate Heracles’ pure excess into the oikonomia of Trachis. This process ultimately reveals the futility of attempts to analyze the play in terms of its dichotomies: female-male, oikos-polis, concealed-revealed, etc. The circulation of the robe in its box charts a path for understanding the play in terms that defy dichotomization by locating the play’s exchanges along intersecting modes of valuation. In the conclusion, I widen the perspective of this methodology again, turning to the instrumentalization of bodies in Sophocles’ Theban plays. I raise questions about how meaning, use, value, and power come to be confused via onstage exchanges, and I gesture towards possible future avenues of inquiry that might account for the trouble with bodies that Ajax raises.