Theatricality as Medium - by Samuel Weber (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Ever since Aristotle's Poetics, both the theory and the practice of theater have been governed by the assumption that it is a form of representation dominated by what Aristotle calls the "mythos," or the "plot." This conception of theater has subordinated characteristics related to the theatrical medium, such as the process and place of staging, to the demands of a unified narrative.

This readable, thought-provoking, and multidisciplinary study explores theatrical writings that question this aesthetical-generic conception and seek instead to work with the medium of theatricality itself. Beginning with Plato, Samuel Weber tracks the uneasy relationships among theater, ethics, and philosophy through Aristotle, the major Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Kafka, Freud, Benjamin, Artaud, and many others who develop alternatives to dominant narrative-aesthetic assumptions about the theatrical medium.

His readings also interrogate the relation of theatricality to the introduction of
electronic media. The result is to show that, far from breaking with the characteristics of live staged performance, the new media intensify ambivalences about place and identity already at work in theater since the Greeks.

Praise for Samuel Weber: "What kind of questioning is primarily after something other than an answer that can be measured . . . in cognitive terms? Those interested in the links between modern philosophy nd media culture will be impressed by the unusual intellectual clarity and depth with which Weber formulates the . . . questions that constiture the true challenge to cultural studies today. . . . one of our most important cultural critics and thinkers"--MLN

Review Quotes

Theatricality as Medium is one of those rare and necessary books that seem--but just seem--to appear out of nowhere, to challenge the habits of thougt and dispel intellectual cliches in the fields of performance and theatre studies.-- "--The Drama Review"

"With his customary wit and an acupuncturist's knack for exerting philosophical pressure on the most banal formulae of consumer society ('home theater, ' 'casting, ' 'the commercial break, ' 'Stay with us!'), Sam Weber outlines a reading of theater as a place, a juncture, never fully inhabited or vacated by its great theorists (as varied as Plato, Sophocles, Kierkegaard, and Benjamin). The transition from 'theater' to 'media' is made by an excavation of long-submerged metaphors and a recovery of the many meanings of 'acting.' Sharp, dramatic in its own right, and rich in implications, this book is entirely 'in character.'"-------Haun Saussy, Yale University

About the Author

Samuel Weber is Avalon Professor of Comparative Literature at Northwestern University and Director of Northwestern's Paris Program in Critical Theory. He is the author of numerous books, including The Legend of Freud, Institution and Interpretation, Mass Medianras: Form, Technics, Media, Theatricality as Medium, and Targets of Opportunity: On the Militarization of Thinking. (Fordham)