By Astrid Oesmann
Staging historical past analyzes the dedication to social swap found in the theatrical and theoretical writings of Bertolt Brecht. not easy past notions, Astrid Oesmann argues that Brecht's paintings was once much less depending on Marxist ideology than is usually assumed and that his paintings could be obvious as a coherent entire. Brecht used the degree to free up political principles into experimental areas within which actors and spectators might discover the relationships among summary inspiration and urban social existence. Oesmann locations Brecht in the context of the main leftist theorists of the 20th century, quite Adorno, Benjamin, and Lukacs, concentrating on their discussions of realism, aesthetics, usual background, and mimesis. Oesmann elaborates upon the imaginative and prescient of a "counter-public sphere" in a couple of Brecht's theoretical texts and plays--especially the 3 Penny Trial and worry and distress of the 3rd Reich--that current the emergence of any such sphere within the face of fascism. through exploring Brecht's theoretical writings, chosen performs, and lately released theatrical fragments, Oesmann unearths unpredictable structures of heritage and mind-blowing differences between a variety of political ideologies, whereas additionally proving that Brecht continues to be vitally appropriate to a "post-communist" global.
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Extra info for Staging History: Brecht's Social Concepts Of Ideology
Sample text
Adorno’s surprisingly similar concept of natural history takes shape in his essay on Hölderlin entitled “Parataxis” in which he analyzes a process that he calls “parataktische Zerrüttung” (paratactical disorder) in terms that resemble the Brechtian gestus. 46 The destruction of the hypotactical, and thus hierarchical, order of a sentence in order to equate all syntactical elements is familiar from Brecht’s concept of “gestische Sprache” (gestic language). The “parataktische Zerrüttung” (paratactical disorder) happens despite the subject’s intention to establish coherent meaning.
He invokes mimesis to break with the compulsion inherent in enlightened rationality. In Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment), for example, mimesis (the “organische Anschmiegung ans andere” [organic adaptation to otherness])71 refers to a prehistorical condition in which the subject, prior to separating from the object, employs imitation and repetition to master nature. Mimesis survives in Enlightenment thought as sensuality, expression, and the communication of the living substance.
Instead, the comrades must become members of the Chinese working class and live the contradictions that eventually produce revolution. When the impatient fourth comrade unmasks himself before the revolution can begin, he reveals a different face from the one that the mask first covered. By unmasking himself, the comrade separates himself from the collective, and it must then kill him. The teaching plays release ideology into staged exercises in mimesis that present ideology as mimetic failure. Brecht’s teaching plays, as experiments in the organization of mimesis, demonstrate how ideology—whether traditional or revolutionary—in practice comes down to social domination, which is the opposite of mimesis.
