La relation theatrale au tournant du siecle: Mallarme, Claudel, Artaud

La relation theatrale au tournant du siecle: Mallarme, Claudel, Artaud , explores how these authors describe and theorize the relations involved in a theatrical event, in terms of both poetics and performance. I focus on the representation of the relationship between the live performance and its audience, and show that at the turn of the century, these authors imagine the theatrical performance as a hybrid social/aesthetic event. This is still a central problem of performance theory, which tends to treat the performance either as a system of signs or as a social event, whose horizon is the ritual, the celebration, or la fete . In the latter case, the barrier between the performance and the audience is claimed to be erased. I relate these authors to French social thought about religious experience, from Durkheim to Bataille, in order (1) to attempt to understand why a demand emerges for the performance as ritual, (2) to evaluate the possibility of erasing the division between performance and audience, and the political implications of making such a claim. My approach is informed by Marxist cultural theories (Althusser, Benjamin, Bourdieu, Lukacs), Lacan\u27s concept of the Other, and Derrida\u27s critique of the metaphysics of presence. I conclude that a search for community through theatre is best exemplified by Mallarme, whose stance is both ironic and utopian, or by Artaud, whose position is tragic but not without similarities to that of Mallarme. Claudel, by contrast, perpetuates myths about the theatre\u27s unifying force; his success depends on the perpetuation of a lack of lucidity about representation, and ultimately on manipulative techniques