DOCSLIB.ORG

A Desacralisation of Violence in Modern British Playwriting

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Desacralisation of Violence in Modern British Playwriting A Desacralisation of Violence in Modern British Playwriting A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2014 Amani Alied School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 2 Contents List of Abbreviations 3 List of Figures 4 Abstract 5 Acknowledgements 8 Preface 11 Chapter One 16 Carnival Humour and the Role of the Victim in the Rebirth of a ‘New Order’ Chapter Two 62 Laughter in Persecution Texts: the Victim in the Plays of Peter Barnes and Peter Shaffer Chapter Three 126 Recording Pain - a Continuing Encounter with Laughter in Plays by Howard Barker and Sarah Kane Chapter Four 197 Demythologising Carnival Triumph and Revealing the Bloodline of the Grotesque Feast in Caryl Churchill and David Rudkin Chapter Five 263 Daring to See Within Ourselves Bibliography Word count 81, 007 3 List of Abbreviations I See Satan Fall Like Lightning…………………………………… ISSFLL Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World………………...THSFW Howard Barker, Ecstasy and Death: an Expository Study of his Drama, Theory and Production Work……………………………………………………HBED Howard Barker, Politics and Desire: an Expository Study of his Drama and Poetry………………………………………………………………..HBPD 4 List of Figures 1. Dulle Griet (Dull Gret) ……………………………………………….. 225 2. The Triumph of Death ………………………………………………… 235 5 Abstract My thesis journey was initially motivated by an interest in the individual’s search for God, the self and the other (neighbour, men/women and enemy) as represented in the play texts. This call for a personal relationship with the ‘other’ highlights the individual’s feelings of unease and strangeness at a time when, one might argue, the majority belittles the role of religion, in support of scientific discoveries and human rights. Here, the French philosopher René Girard - whose anthropological and scientific interest in violence, religion and human culture has shaped my research - argues that the progress of humankind would not have become a reality without what he terms sacrifice. Here, I should confirm that the main influence on the early steps of finding my research topic were Peter Shaffer, Slavoj Žižek, Julia Kristeva and Mikhail Bakhtin rather than Rene Girard. This thesis explores several interconnected relationships, the most important of which is between humour and violence or forms of ‘sacrifice’ in the plays of six British playwrights – Peter Barnes and Peter Shaffer, Howard Barker and Sarah Kane as well as Caryl Churchill and David Rudkin. It is this strange relationship which leads me later on to uncover and explore the representations of the stranger, the victim/iser and the foreigner in their works. The return of the stranger – the dead, the ashes of victims of extreme violence, the ghosts, the prisoners and the children - is inseparable from the search for individuality in a world ruled by the gods of war, money and dark humour. My research findings are viewed in the light of two narratives: the first is to do with the upper world and the second is to do with the lower as defined by Bakhtin’s idea of the carnival and the culture of folk humour in the Middle Ages. The upper is serious, official, exclusive and authoritative whereas the second is festive, comic, mythical and popular. It is hard to describe the relationship between these narratives as simply oppositional (some say iconoclastic) because they are coexistent and rely on one another. At this point, the different professional and ideological positions of the playwrights are important aspects in arriving at an understanding of the ways they collapse the borders between humour and terror, the banquet and the battle, carnivals and trials, the parade and economic exploitation, clownery and politics. Though these playwrights are not preachers or reformers, they challenge our easy laughter and our role as we witness the risen from the dead, those in the flames or in the future signalling to us to halt our participation and face responsibility for the victims. 6 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or 7 Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=487), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 8 Acknowledgements I wrote this thesis during a time of war, pain and big challenges. It is hard indeed to draw a line between my experience as a war victim and my research. Sometimes I imagine what my research would have been like had there been no war in Syria. Four years ago when this research project was still a dream, I did not know that I share with victims of violence a history of dark humour, and social and political oppression. Here I want to give special thanks to Professor Maggie B. Gale, who read the entire work chapter by chapter, helped me by supplying references and gave me a great deal of time, constructive criticism and warm encouragement. I would particularly like to thank Dr Jenny Hughes for her enthusiasm, advice, critical feedback and careful reading of every chapter. My thanks also go to Dr Rachel Clement for her kind assistance, and valuable and constructive suggestions. I would also like to thank Dr Alison Jeffers, Professor Viv Gardner and Dr David Butler who supported me directly or indirectly during this research journey. My special thanks are extended to Dr John Healey and Elizabeth Healey who read my work and helped me greatly with corrections. I would like to express my very great appreciation to Damascus University, Syria and the Department of English Literature for the scholarship and for their financial support during this difficult and painful journey at a time of war. I also thank my interior supervisor, in the Department of English Literature, Damascus University, Dr Amal Abed El Maula for her help. 9 My grateful thanks go to Adel for his financial support and priceless encouragement without which this research would not have come true. Finally, I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to my father without whom I would not have been able to finish this research. For the last three years of war, economic sanctions and the closure of the Syrian Embassy in London, my father put his life at risk for me and managed to transfer the tuition fees I need from Damascus to Manchester. 10 For Syria, Adnan and Mariam 11 Preface My cultural position as a Syrian is central to the genesis of this thesis. Graduating from Damascus University I received funding for postgraduate study in Manchester. Here, my interest in textual analysis as well as cultural critical theory, rather than performance and the history of productions, stems from my background in literature. My MA dissertation (2010), explored the possibility of love and forgiveness in the face of laughing terror and the need to make peace with ourselves, neighbours and enemies in three plays by Peter Shaffer, and this created the context for my PhD research. The desire to find playwrights similar to Shaffer, who show an interest in the Bible, violence, poetry and imagination, shaped the initial steps of this PhD research. Frustrated by the difficulty of focusing again on Shaffer’s work, I expanded my research to explore a larger group of modern British playwrights – these included John Arden, Samuel Beckett, Edward Bond, Martin Crimp, David Greig, John Osborne, Harold Pinter and Mark Ravenhill as well as Peter Barnes, Howard Barker, Sarah Kane, Caryl Churchill, David Rudkin – some of whom are contemporary with Shaffer. Out of this group, I settled on exploring and comparing the work of what some would think of as an odd selection of six playwrights – whom I hope I have placed in productive pairings: Peter Shaffer and Peter Barnes, Sarah Kane and Howard Barker, Caryl Churchill and David Rudkin. This eventual arrangement of my analysis is the outcome of having identified an implicit dialogue across their works which I hope to unpack through these pairings. Despite the playwrights’ different ideological leanings, this dialogue may be seen in terms of language, their uses and understanding of carnival forms of humour within structures of social and political oppressions, and a shared interest in victims of violence.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Atom Smashersrel
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT Voleine Amilcar, ITVS 415-356-8383 x 244 [email protected] Mary Lugo 770-623-8190 [email protected] Cara White 843-881-1480 [email protected] For downloadable images, visit itvs.org/pressroom/photos/ For the program companion website, visit pbs.org/independentlens/atomsmashers “THE ATOM SMASHERS,” AN EXCITING INSIDE LOOK AT THE FRONTIER OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, TO HAVE ITS BROADCAST PREMIERE ON THE EMMY ® AWARD–WINNING PBS SERIES INDEPENDENT LENS ON TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, AT 10 PM “Finding this Higgs particle will help scientists figure out why the universe is made of something instead of nothing, why there are atoms, people, planets, stars and galaxies. But it also will do much more than that. It will open a door to a hidden world of physics, where scientists hope to find unimagined wonders that will make relativity and quantum mechanics seem like Tinker Toys.” —Ronald Kotulak, Chicago Tribune (San Francisco, CA)—Physicists at Fermilab, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator laboratory, are closing in on one of the universe’s best-kept secrets, the Holy Grail of physics: why everything has mass. With the Tevatron, an underground particle accelerator buried deep beneath the Illinois prairie, Fermilab scientists smash matter together, accelerating protons and antiprotons in a four-mile-long ring at nearly the speed of light, to find a particle—the Higgs boson—whose existence was theorized nearly 40 years ago by Scottish scientist Peter Higgs. The physicists searching for the Higgs boson are excited; they may be approaching the discovery of a lifetime, and there’s almost certainly a Nobel Prize for whoever finally finds it.
    [Show full text]
  • Strategies of Political Theatre Post-War British Playwrights
    Strategies of Political Theatre Post-War British Playwrights Michael Patterson published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building,Trumpington Street,Cambridge cb2 1rp,United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building,Cambridge, cb2 2ru,UK 40 West 20th Street,New York, ny 10011–4211,USA 477 Williamstown Road,Port Melbourne, vic 3207,Australia Ruiz de Alarcon´ 13, 28014 Madrid,Spain Dock House,The Waterfront,Cape Town 8001,South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Cambridge University Press 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2003 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press,Cambridge Typefaces Trump Mediaeval 9.25/14 pt. and Schadow BT System LATEX 2ε [tb] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 0 521 25855 3 hardback Contents Acknowledgments ix Brief chronology, 1953–1989 x Introduction 1 Part 1: Theory 1 Strategies of political theatre: a theoretical overview 11 Part 2: Two model strategies 2 The ‘reflectionist’ strategy: ‘kitchen sink’ realism in Arnold Wesker’s Roots (1959) 27 3 The ‘interventionist’ strategy: poetic politics in John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (1959) 44 Part 3: The reflectionist strain 4 The dialectics of comedy: Trevor Griffiths’s Comedians (1975) 65 5 Appropriating middle-class comedy: Howard Barker’s Stripwell
    [Show full text]
  • The Morning Line
    THE MORNING LINE DATE: Tuesday, June 7, 2016 FROM: Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh Emily Motill PAGES: 19, including this page C3 June 7, 2016 Broadway’s ‘The King and I’ to Close By Michael Paulson Lincoln Center Theater unexpectedly announced Sunday that it would close its production of “The King and I” this month. The sumptuous production, which opened in April of 2015, won the Tony Award for best musical revival last year, and had performed strongly at the box office for months. But its weekly grosses dropped after the departure of its Tony-winning star, Kelli O’Hara, in April. Lincoln Center, a nonprofit, said it would end the production on June 26, at which point it will have played 538 performances. A national tour is scheduled to begin in November. The show features music by Richard Rodgers and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The revival is directed by Bartlett Sher. C3 June 7, 2016 No More ‘Groundhog Day’ for One Powerful Producer By Michael Paulson Scott Rudin, a prolific and powerful producer on Broadway and in Hollywood, has withdrawn from a much- anticipated project to adapt the popular movie “Groundhog Day” into a stage musical. The development is abrupt and unexpected, occurring just weeks before the show is scheduled to begin performances at the Old Vic Theater in London. “Groundhog Day” is collaboration between the songwriter Tim Minchin and the director Matthew Warchus, following their success with “Matilda the Musical.” The new musical is scheduled to run there from July 15 to Sept. 17, and had been scheduled to begin performances on Broadway next January; it is not clear how Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • Drama Book Shop Became an Independent Store in 1923
    SAVORING THE CLASSICAL TRADITION IN DRAMA ENGAGING PRESENTATIONS BY THE SHAKESPEARE GUILD I N P R O U D COLLABORATION WIT H THE NATIONAL ARTS CLUB THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK CITY THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION SALUTING A UNIQUE INSTITUTION ♦ Monday, November 26 Founded in 1917 by the Drama League, the Drama Book Shop became an independent store in 1923. Since 2001 it has been located on West 40th Street, where it provides a variety of services to the actors, directors, producers, and other theatre professionals who work both on and off Broadway. Many of its employees THE PLAYERS are young performers, and a number of them take part in 16 Gramercy Park South events at the Shop’s lovely black-box auditorium. In 2011 Manhattan the store was recognized by a Tony Award for Excellence RECEPTION 6:30, PANEL 7:00 in the Theatre . Not surprisingly, its beneficiaries (among them Admission Free playwrights Eric Bogosian, Moises Kaufman, Lin-Manuel Reservations Requested Miranda, Lynn Nottage, and Theresa Rebeck), have responded with alarm to reports that high rents may force the Shop to relocate or close. Sharing that concern, we joined The Players and such notables as actors Jim Dale, Jeffrey Hardy, and Peter Maloney, and writer Adam Gopnik to rally support for a cultural treasure. DAKIN MATTHEWS ♦ Monday, January 28 We look forward to a special evening with DAKIN MATTHEWS, a versatile artist who is now appearing in Aaron Sorkin’s acclaimed Broadway dramatization of To Kill a Mockingbird. In 2015 Dakin portrayed Churchill, opposite Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth II, in the NATIONAL ARTS CLUB Broadway transfer of The Audience.
    [Show full text]
  • Peter Barnes and the Nature of Authority
    PETER BARNES AND THE NATURE OF AUTHORITY Liorah Anrie Golomb A thesis subnitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Centre for Study of Drarna in the University of Toronto @copyright by Liorah Anne Golomb 1998 National Library Bibliothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliagraphiques 395 Wellington Street 395, nie Wellington OttawaON K1AW Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à fa National Libmy of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loaq distriiute or sell reproduire, prêter, distri'buer ou copies of this thesis in microfonn, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. PETER BARNES AND THE NATURE OF AUTHORITY Liorah Anne Golomb Doctor of Philosophy, 1998 Graduate Centre for Study of Drama University of Toronto Peter Barnes, among the most theatrically-minded playwrights of the non-musical stage in England today, makes use of virtually every elernent of theatre: spectacle, music, dance, heightened speech, etc- He is daring, ambitious, and not always successful.
    [Show full text]
  • Redgrove Papers: Letters
    Redgrove Papers: letters Archive Date Sent To Sent By Item Description Ref. No. Noel Peter Answer to Kantaris' letter (page 365) offering back-up from scientific references for where his information came 1 . 01 27/07/1983 Kantaris Redgrove from - this letter is pasted into Notebook one, Ref No 1, on page 365. Peter Letter offering some book references in connection with dream, mesmerism, and the Unconscious - this letter is 1 . 01 07/09/1983 John Beer Redgrove pasted into Notebook one, Ref No 1, on page 380. Letter thanking him for a review in the Times (entitled 'Rhetoric, Vision, and Toes' - Nye reviews Robert Lowell's Robert Peter 'Life Studies', Peter Redgrove's 'The Man Named East', and Gavin Ewart's 'The Young Pobbles Guide To His Toes', 1 . 01 11/05/1985 Nye Redgrove Times, 25th April 1985, p. 11); discusses weather-sensitivity, and mentions John Layard. This letter is pasted into Notebook one, Ref No 1, on page 373. Extract of a letter to Latham, discussing background work on 'The Black Goddess', making reference to masers, John Peter 1 . 01 16/05/1985 pheromones, and field measurements in a disco - this letter is pasted into Notebook one, Ref No 1, on page 229 Latham Redgrove (see 73 . 01 record). John Peter Same as letter on page 229 but with six and a half extra lines showing - this letter is pasted into Notebook one, Ref 1 . 01 16/05/1985 Latham Redgrove No 1, on page 263 (this is actually the complete letter without Redgrove's signature - see 73 .
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter Three Howard Barker: the Freedom and Constraint of the Artist’S Imagination
    80 Chapter Three Howard Barker: The Freedom and Constraint of the Artist’s Imagination During the 1980s, theatrical culture was liable to a variety of political and economic pressures that “produced an enormous sense of dislocation and dissatisfaction”.1 Besides funding cuts, the aesthetic merits of artistic values did not seem to be understood by the politicians. So, theatre was not only subject to funding cuts, but also to censorship, as we shall see. Government interference in performance and writing led to a sense of insecurity. So, works which were economically unviable were threatened with being banned or cancelled. In doing so, the commissioning of artists began to depend entirely on the criteria of the ruling political party – the Conservatives – who ignored the artists’ true feelings. In other words, the aesthetic value of artworks was ignored in favour of monetarism. Instead, the duty of the artist was to be devoted to espousing political ideals. The dilemma of the artist, therefore, was how did artists enjoy a degree of freedom without being censored? And if the artist failed to match the criteria of the ruling political party, what was the price of free expression? All these questions suggest radical changes in the British theatre system which is very complicated ideologically in respect to democracy, sponsorship and how the artists responded to it. Howard Barker is a writer who began to grapple with these questions when he became suspicious of the effectiveness of politically committed theatre at about the same time that Thatcher was elected as Prime Minister. Although he is marginalized in his country, Barker has remained a challenging writer who dismantled the strictness of Conservative values during Thatcher’s time.
    [Show full text]
  • Marketing Fragment 6 X 10.5.T65
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-86606-4 - The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson Edited by Christopher Bigsby Excerpt More information 1 CHRISTOPHER BIGSBY August Wilson: the ground on which he stood I am one of those warrior spirits. The battle since the first African set foot on the continent of North America has been a battle for the affirmation of the value and worth of one’s being in the face of this society that says you’re worthless. ...AsAfricans prior to coming over here, they existed, and they were the center. Everything revolved around them in their world view. Over here, all of that has been taken and stripped away. So I say, ‘Let’s look at it. The world is right here in this back yard.’ There is no idea that cannot be contained by black life. We have the entire world here...italldepends on where you’re standing...I’mstanding over here. August Wilson1 On 2 October 2005 August Wilson died at the Swedish Medical Centre in Seattle. It was just eight months after the death of another American playwright, Arthur Miller. They came out of different worlds. Miller was descended from immigrants on both sides of the family, Jews who went to America to escape persecution and seek their fortune. And if they sub- sequently lost the fortune they made, they nonetheless never lost belief in the system that had redeemed them from a far worse fate. To be sure, they encountered prejudice, but even so they slid with some ease into an Amer- ica which swiftly bore the impress of European Jews as they emerged as entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and intellectuals surprisingly ready to inter- pret America to itself.
    [Show full text]
  • English Literature, History, Children's Books And
    LONDON 13 DECEMBER 2016 DECEMBER 13 LONDON HISTORY, CHILDREN’S CHILDREN’S HISTORY, ENGLISH LITERATURE, ENGLISH LITERATURE, BOOKS AND BOOKS ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON ENGLISH LITERATURE, HISTORY, CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 13 DECEMBER 2016 L16408 ENGLISH LITERATURE, HISTORY, CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND ILLUSTRATIONS FRONT COVER LOT 67 (DETAIL) BACK COVER LOT 317 THIS PAGE LOT 30 (DETAIL) ENGLISH LITERATURE, HISTORY, CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND ILLUSTRATIONS AUCTION IN LONDON 13 DECEMBER 2016 SALE L16408 SESSION ONE: 10 AM SESSION TWO: 2.30 PM EXHIBITION Friday 9 December 9 am-4.30 pm Saturday 10 December 12 noon-5 pm Sunday 11 December 12 noon-5 pm Monday 12 December 9 am-7 pm 34-35 New Bond Street London, W1A 2AA +44 (0)20 7293 5000 sothebys.com THIS PAGE LOT 101 (DETAIL) SPECIALISTS AND AUCTION ENQUIRIES For further information on lots in this auction please contact any of the specialists listed below. SALE NUMBER SALE ADMINISTRATOR L16408 “BABBITTY” Lukas Baumann [email protected] BIDS DEPARTMENT +44 (0)20 7293 5287 +44 (0)20 7293 5283 fax +44 (0)20 7293 5904 fax +44 (0)20 7293 6255 [email protected] POST SALE SERVICES Kristy Robinson Telephone bid requests should Post Sale Manager Peter Selley Dr. Philip W. Errington be received 24 hours prior FOR PAYMENT, DELIVERY Specialist Specialist to the sale. This service is AND COLLECTION +44 (0)20 7293 5295 +44 (0)20 7293 5302 offered for lots with a low estimate +44 (0)20 7293 5220 [email protected] [email protected] of £2,000 and above.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter One a Theoretical Background to the Figure of The
    19 Chapter One A Theoretical Background to the figure of the Artist in Literature and Theatre In an article published in Fall 2009, Csilla Bertha maintains that the central place an artist occupies within a work of art adds an additional dimension to plays, since the fictional artist’s point of view, attitudes to the world and evaluation of phenomena, may double or multiply the layers of the connections between art and life. She then adds: If an artist is chosen to be the protagonist of a play or novel, that choice naturally leads to the thematization of questions and dilemmas about the existence of art and the artist; relations between art and life, art/artist and the world; the nature of artistic creation; differences between ways of life, values, and views of ordinary people and artists; relations between individual and community, between the subject and objective reality; and many other similar issues.1 No doubt, with the advent of highly sophisticated and challenging notions such as Formalism2 and the death of the author,3 it is hard to conceive the figure of the artist without paying attention to the interrelations between art and life in which the ideal and reality, subject and object, constitute sharp contrasts. Traditionally, this dialectical relationship forms “binary 1 Csilla Bertha, “Visual Art and Artist in Contemporary Irish Drama”, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS) v. 15, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 347. 2 Formalism is a Russian literary movement which originated in the second decade of the twentieth century. Its leading figures were both linguists and literary historians such as Boris Eikhenbaum (1886-1959), Roman Jakobson (1895-1982), Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984), Boris Tomashevskij (1890-1957) and Jurij Tynjanov (1894-1943).
    [Show full text]
  • United States Theatre Programs Collection O-016
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8s46xqw No online items Inventory of the United States Theatre Programs Collection O-016 Liz Phillips University of California, Davis Library, Dept. of Special Collections 2017 1st Floor, Shields Library, University of California 100 North West Quad Davis, CA 95616-5292 [email protected] URL: https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/archives-and-special-collections/ Inventory of the United States O-016 1 Theatre Programs Collection O-016 Language of Material: English Contributing Institution: University of California, Davis Library, Dept. of Special Collections Title: United States Theatre Programs Collection Creator: University of California, Davis. Library Identifier/Call Number: O-016 Physical Description: 38.6 linear feet Date (inclusive): 1870-2019 Abstract: Mostly 19th and early 20th century programs, including a large group of souvenir programs. Researchers should contact Archives and Special Collections to request collections, as many are stored offsite. Scope and Contents Collection is mainly 19th and early 20th century programs, including a large group of souvenir programs. Access Collection is open for research. Processing Information Liz Phillips converted this collection list to EAD. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], United States Theatre Programs Collection, O-016, Archives and Special Collections, UC Davis Library, University of California, Davis. Publication Rights All applicable copyrights for the collection are protected under chapter 17 of the U.S. Copyright Code. Requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Regents of the University of California as the owner of the physical items.
    [Show full text]
  • Prologue: 'After Auschwitz': Survival of the Aesthetic
    Notes Prologue: ‘After Auschwitz’: Survival of the Aesthetic 1. In 1959 the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger called Adorno’s state- ment ‘one of the harshest judgments that can be made about our times: after Auschwitz it is impossible to write poetry’, and urges that ‘if we want to con- tinue to live, this sentence must be repudiated’. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, ‘Die Steine der Freiheit’ in Petra Kiedaisch (ed.). Lyrik nach Auschwitz? Adorno und die Dichter (73). 2. Herbert Marcuse, too, criticised the tendency toward uniformity and repres- sion of individuality in modern technological society in his seminal 1964 study One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced industrial Society. 3. For philosophers such as Hannah Arendt the culmination of totalitar- ian power as executed in the camps led not only to the degradation and extermination of people, it also opened profound and important questions about our understanding of humanity and ethics (see: Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism). The question of an ethical response to Auschwitz also preoc- cupies Giorgio Agamben who argues that an ethical attempt to bear witness (testimony) to Auschwitz must inevitably confront the impossibility of speak- ing without, however, condemning Auschwitz to the ‘forever incomprehensi- ble’ (Remnants of Auschwitz 11). 4. See Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg’s Postmodernism and the Holocaust. However, Adorno’s response to the Holocaust is not discussed in this volume. His most notable reflections on Auschwitz can be found in Negative Dialectics (‘Meditations on Metaphysics’), Metaphysics: Concepts and Problems (1965), and in the collection Can one Live after Auschwitz? 5.
    [Show full text]