The Theatre of Death – The Uncanny in Mimesis: Tadeusz Kantor, Aby Warburg, and an Iconology of the Actor

336 Pages·2016·3.09 MB·English

by  Mischa Twitchin (auth.)

THE THEATRE
OF DEATH –
THE UNCANNY
IN MIMESIS
TADEUSZ KANTOR, ABY WARBURG,
AND AN ICONOLOGY OF THE ACTOR
Mischa Twitchin
Performance Philosophy
Series Editors
Laura   Cull Ó Maoilearca
Department of Dance, Film and Theatre
University of Surrey
Guildford ,   United Kingdom
Alice   Lagaay
Zeppelin University
Friedrichshafen ,   Germany
Freddie   Rokem
Faculty of the Arts
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv ,   Israel
Will   Daddario
Independent scholar
North Carolina , USA
Performance Philosophy is an emerging interdisciplinary fi eld of thought,
creative practice and scholarship. The newly founded Performance
Philosophy book series comprises monographs and essay collections
addressing the relationship between performance and philosophy within
a broad range of philosophical traditions and performance practices,
including drama, theatre, performance arts, dance, art and music. It also
includes studies of the performative aspects of life and, indeed, philosophy
itself. As such, the series addresses the philosophy of performance as well
as performance-as-philosophy and philosophy-as-p erformance.
Series Advisory Board: Emmanuel Alloa, Assistant Professor in
Philosophy, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland; Lydia Goehr, Professor
of Philosophy, Columbia University, USA; James R. Hamilton, Professor
of Philosophy, Kansas State University, USA; Bojana Kunst, Professor of
Choreography and Performance, Institute for Applied Theatre Studies,
Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany; Nikolaus Müller-Schöll,
Professor of Theatre Studies, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main,
Germany; Martin Puchner, Professor of Drama and of English and
Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA; Alan Read, Professor
of Theatre, King’s College London, UK
http://www.performancephilosophy.org/books/
More information about this series at
h ttp://www.springer.com/series/14558
Mischa   T witchin
The Theatre of
Death – The Uncanny
in Mimesis
Tadeusz Kantor, Aby Warburg,
and an Iconology of the Actor
Mischa   Twitchin
British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow
Department of Drama, Queen Mary
University of London, United Kingdom
Performance Philosophy
ISBN 978-1-137-47871-9 ISBN 978-1-137-47872-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-47872-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956570
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016
The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover illustration: © courtesy of Mischa Twitchin
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
From ‘The Water Hen’ to ‘The Dead Class’, exhibition at Krzysztofory Gallery,
Krakow, 2000. Photo Ewa Kulka, courtesy of the Cricoteka Archives.
v
Dedicated, with love, to my parents.
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
At a time when the servants of Mammon are remorselessly pursuing the
commodifi cation of everything—not least, higher education—it seems all
the more important to acknowledge the commitment of those who value
the residual autonomy of academic research. I am profoundly grateful to
the British Academy for the award of a post-doctoral fellowship, which
allows me to develop in new directions some of the ideas presented in this
book. I am also grateful to the editors of the “Performance Philosophy”
series for their vision of a transversal relation between these two fi elds,
which are too often distinguished in a competitive disciplinary argument
signifi ed by the “and” that is ostensibly missing here. I am greatly indebted
to those who suffered reading earlier versions of my text and who kindly
gave their time to respond to it: Joe Kelleher, Michal Kobialka, Sophie
Nield, Alan Read, Nick Ridout, and Freddie Rokem. It is a real pleasure
to acknowledge also Harvey Grossmann, Jeremy Hardingham, Henryk
Jurkowski, Eleanor Margolies, and Patrice Pavis, from whose insights into
theatre and from whose friendship I have learnt so much over many years.
Besides the academic context, I am also privileged to have shared in the
creative adventure of the performance collective Shunt, with whom I have
learnt something of what theatre making could be. Without the enthusi-
asm and friendship of Alice Lagaay this research would most probably not
have become a published book. And without the unstinting generosity of
my father, John Twitchin, it would most probably have never been written
at all. Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of my mother, Annela,
who also wanted to have read it.
Mischa Twitchin
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The primacy of the object is affi rmed aesthetically only in the character of art
as the unconscious writing of history, as anamnesis of the vanquished, of the
repressed, and perhaps of what is possible.
Theodor Adorno [A esthetic Theory ] 1
The events surrounding the historian, and in which he himself takes part, will
underlie his presentation in the form of a text written in invisible ink. The his-
tory which he lays before the reader comprises, as it were, the citations occurring
in this text, and it is only these citations that occur in a manner legible to all.
To write history thus means to cite h istory. It belongs to the concept of citation,
however, that the historical object in each case is torn from its context.
Walter Benjamin [A rcades Project ] 2
NOTES
1. Theodor Adorno, A esthetic Theory , ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann,
newly trans. and ed. Robert Hullot-Kentor, London: Athlone Press, 1999,
p. 259. (English translation copyright 1997 by the Regents of the University
of Minnesota. Original, German-language, edition copyright 1970 by
Suhrkamp Verlag.)
2. Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project , trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin
McLaughlin, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1999, p. 476. (Reprinted by permission of the publishers from The Arcades
Project by Walter Benjamin, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
Copyright © 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.)
C
ONTENTS
Introduction: Three Instances of Reading the Past in
the Present 1
Part I 15
1 Thinking of the Dead Through a Concept of Theatre
(The Dead Class) 1 7
1 A nalogy and Aporia 17
2 M etaphor 24
3 S éance 27
4 S hock 3 3
5 M ajor and Minor 37
6 A rt and Truth 4 1
7 R eality and Autonomy 48
8 P athos 53
9 T ragedy 58
10 E limination 60
Part II 83
2 Precedents (Craig and Artaud, Maeterlinck
and Witkiewicz) 85
xi