Rethinking Theatricality and Performativity: The Body Imaginaries of Artaud and Orlan
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Lin, Chia-Nan
Abstract
English Abstract The thesis adopts a comparative approach to investigate the theatrical expressions, bodily performances, and spectatorship of the two French artists, Artaud and Orlan. Apart from their similar concerns, I will also foreground their disparities in methods and culminated consequences. The opening chapter will pursue Derrida’s problematic of the symptoms of classical theatricality, which will be illustrated by Plato’s cave metaphor, Guy Debord’s critique of the spectacle, and Josette Feral’s law of reversibility. Afterwards, I will draw on Samuel Weber’s deconstructive definition to address the seductiveness and virtual risk of Artaud’s and Orlan’s theaters. The second chapter turns to their bodily performance. In the light of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, I intend to underscore why and how they re-signify the body conditioned by the sexual differentiation and hierarchization of normative discourses, proceeding to offer alternative performances bordering on the human and the non-human. Regarding Butler’s more ambiguous accounts about theatricality, their practices may also provide some new ways of thinking. The third chapter will contextualize Artaud’s and Orlan’s creations in the social conditions of modernity and postmodernity. The growth of visual entertainments engenders niches as well as crises for their artistic productions. Observably, their ideas about spectatorship and their actual audience participation also reflect the changes in visual regimes and functions of arts. Finally, I will use Jacques Ranciere’s “the emancipated spectator” to revisit the problem of spectatorial passivity and to reflect on how his individualist aesthetics can shed new light on Debord’s universal autism. Evolving from artistic intentions in the first two chapters to audience participation in the third, this thesis will examine their theories and practices from different perspectives, with a view to clarifying the investments of different parties in the artistic communication of performances. Keywords: Artaud, Orlan, spectacle, theatricality, virtuality, performativity, spectatorship
Subjects
Artaud
Orlan
spectacle
theatricality
virtuality
performativity
spectatorship
Type
thesis