Modern Theater Does Not Take (A) Place

Author(s): Julia Kristeva, Alice Jardine, Thomas Gora

Source: SubStance, Vol. 6, No. 18/19, Theater in France: Ten Years of Research (Dec. 1, 1977),
pp. 131-134
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3683988
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Modern Theater Does Not Take
(A)
Place
JULIA KRISTEVA
1. As a constructed model of a
system
of
signs, semiology
is a
theory
of the existent.
Modern theater does not exist-it does not take
(a)
place-and consequently,
its
semiology
is a
mirage.
2. To
say
that modern theater does not take
place implies
first that the
speaking
animal has reached a
point
in its
experience
which
signifies
that its
only
inhabitable
place-locus-is language
(le
langage).
Since no set or
interplay
of sets is able to hold
up any longer
faced with the crises of
State,
religion
and
family,
it is
impossible
to
prefer
a discourse-to
play
out a discourse-on the basis of a
scene,
sign
of
recognition,
which would
provide
for the actor's and audience's
recognition
of themselves in the
same Author. The Golden
period
of the Greek
(or Classical)
community
failed to
materialize in the twentieth
century
within
existing
theatrical
communities,
amongst
totalitarians,
fascist
happenings
and socio-realist
productions.
As its
only remaining
locus of
interplay
is the
space
of
language,
modern theater no
longer
exists outside of
the text. This is not a failure of
representation
(as
is often
said),
because
nothing
represents
better than
language
(la
langue)-that privileged
fabric of identification and
fantasy.
Rather,
it is a failure of
de-monstration,
of the theater as de-monstration.
Severed from its
intra-linguistic production
(le
langage),
this de-monstration can do
nothing
but chain itself to the normative
ideologies
to which the failure of
contempo-
rary
social
sets,
and
perhaps,
even the failure of the human
race,
affixes itself. Faced
with the technocratic
explosion,
this is a failure to constitute a communal discourse
of
play (interplay).
Mallarme was the first to
recognize
this situation
when,
cognizant
of the
unfurling
of the
Symbolist theater,
he turned towards "music" and "letters."
Or when he
imagined
the
book-theater,
which was never meant to have
any
other
place
than in the archivist's
records,
destined for the incinerator. The surrealist at-
tempts
to rekindle
hope
in a communal
representation
of
play
within the
space
of a
theater-even Artaud's
attempts-are only
transient,
more or less
tragic
or debilita-
ting, seeking
to
dodge
the Mallarm6an statement. In
short,
Mallarme asserts
first,
the
disappearance
of the sacred-of the communal
sacred-,
the absence of a sacred locus
that is
always
the
locus,
the
place,
of
theater;
and
second,
he asserts the eventual
retreat of this sacredness into
language
(la
langue).
Proof: the
post-Mallarmean
survivors of the modern theater are fantasies
deprived
of a
public,
while the most
advanced
experiments
in
writing
address themselves
uniquely
to the individual uncon-
scious,
without
speculating
on the fantasies of the
larger group.
3.
Nevertheless,
when a
significance
in
play-interplay-does manage
to come to
light
through
an irresistible
scopic
drive
(i.e.,
to
see,
to
act,
to
know),
it
currently
under-
goes
two fates: either it does without
language
(le
langage),
and
,
like the double of
Artaud's
theater,
implements
color,
sound and
gesture-painting,
dance,
music in the
syncretic
work of the silent
theater; or,
it
speaks
a discourse of
verisimilitude,
made
up
of
stereotypes
and
edged
with
debility,
as Beckett and
Ionesco
knowingly
did,
as
any
Sub-Stance NO
18/19,
1977 131
self-respecting
director hints at
doing
with a malice that aims at
putting
the text in
quotes
so that it thus becomes a
reported
discourse,
a
quotation
from an out-dated
code, feeble, just good enough
to make some communal
sign,
but debased. Or like so
many
modern
playwrights
who
innocently bury
themselves in it with the condescend-
ing
boredom of the
sparse
audience as their
only
consolation.
4. The first of these two
modes,
the silent theater of
colors,
sounds and
gestures,
sends the
subject
back to that
region
of the structure of the
speaking being
where a
lethal drive
operates,
a drive of
forgetfulness
or of
death,
which I have called the
semiotic
(le
semiotique).
Threshold of
identity
and of
language
(le
langage), edge
of
primal repression,
absence of the difference which makes
sense,
and
thus,
absence of
sexual
difference,
primary
narcissism. Two variants
emerge
from the articulation of
this
space
in
language-in
the
symbolic
(which
even if it remains silent is still undeni-
ably present
in
any undertaking):
the
first,
more
schizophrenic,
which transforms into
metaphor
the
sound-color-gesture distribution
by
the theme of
death;
the
second,
more
paranoid,
which transforms the
arrangement
of
sound-color-gesture
into meta-
phor through
the theme of
passage
towards action-towards the
act-, by
the theme
of madness.
Independent
American cinema seems to
provide
the best illustration of the first
variant. In his film Wave
Length,
Michael Snow works towards a
representation
which
is no
longer
the result of
editing.
No more
psychological, ideological
or narrative
sequences;
almost no more words either.
Rather,
there is above all a
play
on
colors;
an infinite differentiation in chromatic
wavelength
(color
to black and
white,
gradual
return to
color),
focused on the same filmed
object
(a loft,
a
body).
At the same
time,
a
play
on
sounds,
swelling
and
slowly dying,
thus
paralleling
the increase and decrease
in chromatic effect. All this make it seem that the
projection
of time of the
sequences
is
nothing
but a mad race behind
objects
of
invariably
mistaken
identity,
a time which
has
nothing
to do with the a-chronic time of
representation
which dissolves itself and
recreates itself
over.again
(this second "time" is closer to Freud's famous
a-temporality
in the
unconscious).
The
only
event within this semiotic limit of the
representable
(and
thus of
meaning
and of
time)
is
death;
language
is
present only
to
proclaim
through
a woman's mouth that the
body
of the man is henceforth a
corpse;
words
spoken
to us
while,
in
effect,
we
experience
a never-addressed but nonetheless
present
death;
it enters
through
the
retina,
across an
infinitely
contracted or
infinitely
ex-
panded wavelength.
For we
accompany
death
by following
the
progressive
extinction
of the visible
field;
the camera focuses on a
photo
of ocean
waves,
and
by approaching
closer and
closer,
it transforms visual
perception
into tactile
perception:
chiaroscuro
becomes a
sharply jagged
surface before blackness erases
everything,
thus
coinciding
with death. Theater/cinema
(I
will come back to this
difference)
of
cruelty,
to use
Artaud's
term,
for
according
to him and in this kind of
presentation, cruelty
is a
technique: "cruelty
is above all
lucid,
a kind of
rigid
control."1
How can we think this
economy?
We know that
any signifying practice
involves a
partial recovery
and a relative
independence
of the two extremes of the
signifying
function
S2
(semiotic)
and
S1
(symbolic).
In the
type
of
representation
which I
just
described, S2
encompasses
S1,
but this inclusion remains outside of the
representation.
The
symbolic
(the
meaning),
which is included in the
interplay
of
color-sound-gesture
132
Julia
Kristeva
Modern Theater
Misplaced
(the semiotic),
remains
foreign
to
them,
does not name
them,
does not comment
upon
them;
when it
pronounces
itself,
when it names
itself,
this
meaning
is
nothing
but a
solitary signifier, uniquely
and
ultimately
"death."
5. The second variant of the silent theater-a
production through
a minute semio-
tic
assemblage
of the
acting-out
and of "madness"-is without doubt best
typified
by
the theater of Bob Wilson. Whether it is the deaf man with his surrealist reminis-
cences, Queen Victoria,
Stalin or
Einstein,
there
emerges
the
identity
of a
represen-
tation,
but
only
as a blurred
ensemble,
the
identity
of a
precise arrangement
of
sound,
gesture
and color. Like traces of a
rhythm
which the content will
only summarize,
like the lines of force
underlying
the conflict which Einstein was
already teaching
to his
students,
traces of a
perpetually
blurred and
faulty signifiable
articulate them-
selves on
stage;
lektonic traces in
sound,
gesture,
color. That
they
be carried
by
a
lethal drive here does not
prevent, contrary
to the
preceding
variant,
an
interplay
of
acting
elements
(actants),
and
therefore,
of
signified
elements
(signifies)
from mani-
festing
itself. The
discovery
of an
object (by
the deaf man's
sight)
or of a scientific
object (by
Einstein),
the exercise of
power,
etc.,
thus
appear
as acts of
violence,
as
bursting
forth,
as
enjoyment (jouissance)
which has
finally
arrived from this lethal
drive,
infinitely repeatable
as
aphanisis
and
aphasia.
Therefore,
we have an
acting-
out-a
passage
towards the act-such that no
act,
no
identity
nor character is taken
for
granted,
but
rather,
remains
problematic
as
crisis,
as
catastrophe.
Whence the
fact that the
only
real character in this
representation
is the
Madman,
no
longer
the
comic and
reassuring Crazyman
of the
Carnival,
but the Madman-truth of each utter-
ance,
neither
tragic
nor
comic,
the Madman as
necessary
element of the
spoken,
as
threshold from
aphanisis
to
enjoyment,
from
aphasia
to
action,
from
repetition
to
No.
The
representation
of this
economy
necessitates a
theory
of
catastrophe:
each
specular-spectatorial identity
is a
passage,
fold,
threshold between at least two
spaces
(S1
and
S2).
6. Less
explicit experiments
on the same
psychosemiotic plane
use the same
economy:
the
theater,
dance and cinema of Yvonne
Rainer,
for
example.
What is
represented
here as
"catastrophic"
does not take on the
identity
of the
Madman,
but of the
contestatory
Other
(the
other
sex).
"Feminist"
theater,
"psychedelic"
theater,
"black"
theater;
they
all draw from the same structure in order to effect a more
directly
social and
political project.
7. These two variants of a radical
experiment
show first that it is henceforth
impossi-
ble to
separate
"theater" from "cinema." Reconstruction of the
subjective space
experienced by
our
modernity
demands recourse to all means of
representation,
and
therefore,
to
film,
to
explore
the limits of the
representable,
and in order to include
the visual in the acoustic or the
gestural.
This new
subjective space
in search of itself
through, among
others,
the two structural variants which I have
just outlined,
in
effect
profoundly
modifies the
way
in which
contemporary
man
sees, listens,
acts.
The old cinema/theater distinction
disappears,
a new coalescence
begins
to
emerge.
..
"Listen to what
you
see;
act out what
you
hear. . ."
Here,
the work of Connie
Bently
133
Julia
Kristeva
asserts
itself;
for
Bently,
film is
gaining
a more and more dominant
role,
to the
point
where,
perhaps
one
day,
it will eliminate
theater,
if not become
definitively integrated
into it.
These two variants indicate also that the
stage/audience separation,
which
weighed
so
heavily
on the theater of the
preceding generation
(because
it froze identities
which were thereafter
unacceptable),
is
merely
a
superficial problem;
the new locus of
representation
no
longer develops
out of a mechanical mixture of actors and
audience,
but
by
a different articulation of the semiotic and
symbolic
elements,
through
the
pursuit
of a different
syncretic assemblage
(like
the two
examples given
above)
where
the crises of the
speaking
would be
recognizable.
8.
Thus,
two
spaces
(of
explosive
inclusion and of
catastrophe) appear
to me to have
emerged
in
contemporary
American
experiments
with
representation.
Can
we,
how-
ever,
call them the
beginnings
of a modern
replica
of the classical notion of the "sa-
cred"? In
any
case,
it is evident that these
spaces
constitute or harbor a new
subject,
which
only
a
particular
socio-economic context can favor. Aided
by
the
development
of
productive
forces,
this socio-economic context lends itself
easily
to a certain
power
whose abuses we know
only
too
well,
but
which,
rather than
polarizing
itself when
faced with an
Opposition,
tolerates
multiple oppositions
instead.
Therefore,
poly-
topical
in
power, poly-logical
in discourse: a multitude of stories
(histories)
and
spaces
where totalitarianism cannot extend its
grasp
(a
tactic which
only
reinforces
partisan
dogmatism)
but
rather,
where it is weakened
by
a
plurality
of loci and discourses.
Thus,
it is within this
overwhelmingly protestant society
that the
necessarily
instinc-
tual and maternal
"repressed"
makes its
return,
asking
for new
spaces,
and
therefore,
new
representations
to
enjoy.
Process
analogous
to that which occurred in
Europe
during
that
virgin
and
Jesuit
explosion
which
gave
rise to the
Baroque.
The fact that the United States is
proposing
a
radically
new locus of
representation
today implies
also and
finally
that a new
political body
is
growing
here;
a
supple
subjectivity, finding
its catharsis in the
deepest psychic
clouds,
capable
of
seeing
and thus of
abre-acting
its death and its
catastrophes,
and thus of
facing
the ever-
present
constraints of
power
in
society
with less
resentment,
and
thus,
less
dogmatism.
For if modern theater does not take
(a)
place,
it is
only
as of
late,
as a new
subject
and a new
society,
here and
especially
in
France,
are
running up against
too
many
archaic constructs
(economic
and
ideological).
This
obliges playwrights
and actors
either to
play complacently
with the verisimilitude of an
antiquating society's
anti-
quating
fantasies
(a
narcissistic and
debilitating
accommodation), or,
in the best
situations,
to
develop
a technical arsenal of "alienation"
(the
"Ontological Hysteric
Theater" of Richard
Foreman),
of Brechtian
distance,
thus
keeping
the audience's
lucidity
removed from a criticizable discourse or
ideology,
all the while
waiting
for the
coming
of a
"place":
the
remaking
of
language.
Translated
by
Alice
Jardine
and Thomas Gora
Notes
1. Antonin
Artaud,
The Theater and its Double. New York: Grove
Press, 1958, p.
102.
134