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Performing Cancer: Toward an Aesthetic of the Unpresentable

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Performing Cancer: Toward an Aesthetic of the Unpresentable i PERFORMING CANCER: TOWARD AN AESTHETIC OF THE UNPRESENTABLE by Virginia Dakari A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of American Literature and Culture, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy, In fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece September 2016 ii PERFORMING CANCER: TOWARD AN AESTHETIC OF THE UNPRESENTABLE by Virginia Dakari Has been approved September 2016 Dissertation Committee: APPROVED Savas Patsalidis, Supervisor ____________________ Zoe Detsi-Diamanti, Co-Advisor ____________________ Domna Pastourmatzi, Co-Advisor ____________________ Department Chairperson: ACCEPTED Michalis Milapides ____________________ iii This dissertation is dedicated to my mother iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. vi Abstract.............................................................................................................................. viii INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 PART I: THEORETICAL VIEWS ABOUT PAIN, ILLNESS, AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE UNPRESENTABLE IN PERFORMANCE CHAPTER 1 Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor: The story behind the essay and a critical fallacy............................................................ 40 CHAPTER 2 Theoretical and philosophical perspectives on the experience and expression of suffering............................................................................................... 57 CHAPTER 3 Theorizing the unpresentability of cancer: Jean François Lyotard’s elaboration of Kantian sublime aesthetics............................ 74 CHAPTER 4 Being with others: A Heideggerian perspective on current theories of performance and performativity...................................................................................... 96 CHAPTER 5 The role and limits of the critic: The Croce/Jones debate and the stakes of “victim art”.................................................................................................................... 134 CHAPTER 6 Sontag’s “performance of certainty:” a personal story................................................. 160 PART II: THE AESTHETICS OF THE UNPRESENTABLE IN PLAYS AND PERFORMANCES ABOUT CANCER v CHAPTER 7 The unpresentable made spectacular: Cancer on the American popular stage............................................................................ 185 CHAPTER 8 Cancer and its performative aporias: When the representational collapses into the real.......................................................... 223 CHAPTER 9 Schlingensief’s ‘Death’ in Venice: Art in (spite of) suffering......................................... 260 CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................. 297 Works Cited........................................................................................................................ 305 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The writing of this dissertation has been one of the most significant academic as well as personal challenges I have ever had to face. Without the encouragement and help of the following people, this study would not have been completed. It is to them that I owe my deepest gratitude. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Savas Patsalidis, for all the guidance, support, and patience throughout this project. His academic genius, rigorous teaching, deep knowledge of world theatre, and magical touch with words have not only been invaluable but also inspirational. I would also like to thank the other two members of my thesis committee. To Associate Professor Zoe Detsi-Diamanti, I owe my gratitude for all the years she has believed in my potential. She has continuously encouraged me in so many ways to pursue my dreams in academia. My sincere thanks also goes to Associate Professor Domna Pastourmatzi, whose knowledge of American culture and commitment to teaching have been an ongoing source of stimulus and admiration to me. This thesis would not have been what it is if it weren’t for her insightful comments. I have also greatly benefited from the constructive feedback I received from Professor Yiorgos Kalogeras, Professor Youli Theodosiadou, and Dr Ioulia Pipinia. Dr Christina Dokou has greatly influenced this thesis; her suggestion that I “smell the disease” helped me to run the extra mile. I owe special thanks to Dr Konstantinos Blatanis, whose brilliant comments have been most helpful during critical stages of my thesis. I treasure our conversations with Kostas because they have enriched this study with a deeper perspective. I want to acknowledge a special debt to the immensely talented and diligent students of the Narrative Medicine workshop, organized by Dr Tatiani Rapatzikou and taught by Ms Catherine Rogers, Narrative Medicine specialist, that was held at the School of English, Aristotle University, in 2013. Their genuine interest in illness narratives and their creative participation revealed to me the potential of my work: Our collaboration was a chance for me to become involved with the field of Narrative Medicine and put part of my research into practice. It has been a most exciting and educating experience, and I thank them for that. I also gratefully acknowledge the funding I received from the Research Committee of Aristotle University during the early stages of my doctoral research on account of its originality. vii My thank you also goes to Pam Patterson and Angela Ellsworth, who kindly shared visual material from their performances and were willing to talk about their art with me. This dissertation owes much to “Metaxa” Cancer Hospital medical and professional staff: Vassiliki Villiotou, head of biochemical department, Vassiliki Spyropoulou, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and Nikolaos Karvounis, oncologist, whose commitment to their vocation is outstanding. I am, also, particularly grateful to all the people I met in group therapy sessions, but also in waiting rooms, who shared with me their experience with cancer and whose stories I will forever honor. I also want to express my profound appreciation to my two mentors: Professor Linda Lyman, for all the years of friendship and for the inspiring model of woman academic she has been; and Stella Albani, my teacher and close friend, who has instilled in me a love for English and has strongly believed in me. You have nurtured my intellect and I deeply thank you for that. My family deserves all the credit as the steady base that has given me the spiritual and material means to accomplish my goals. I feel deeply grateful for my parents, Maroula and Yiannis, as well as my grandparents, Despina and Kostas, who have given me unconditional love and support. My brother and best friend, Diamantis, has always been there for me, believing in me and cheering me up at times when I felt my courage failing. As for my husband, Vangelis, for his enduring love, endless affection, and sunny optimism, I thank him deeply: You have been my trusted companion on this entire amazing journey. viii Abstract This doctoral dissertation seeks to construct a theoretical context that will accommodate the aesthetics of the unpresentable in contemporary cancer-related performance. The idea of the unpresentable in performance refers to an art event, broadly defined as avant-garde or postmodern, whose explorations exceed containment in given formal aesthetic frameworks. Employing a Kantian philosophical lens, Jean-Francois Lyotard associates the unpresentable in postmodern art as an essentially sublime experience, which does not please the spectator by way of its beauty of form, but rather gratifies the spectator’s effort to come to terms with the terror, awe, and abjection such a spectacle evokes. Departing from the American critic Susan Sontag’s theoretical position and her argument against the possibility of extracting any aesthetic outcome from the experience of cancer, expressed in her treatise, Illness as Metaphor, this study aims to deconstruct such a long-held assumption that has extensively affected criticism regarding the diseased body in performance. This study further aims at proving that Sontag’s objections to making art out of cancer are situated in her personal struggle to come to terms with her repeated bouts with cancer, a fact that interestingly elucidates many of her critical inconsistencies, as these surface in her various works of criticism from the 1960s until prior to her death in 2004. To this end, in this study I am attempting a comparative reading of a number of seminal philosophical and theoretical perspectives: Kantian aesthetics of the sublime, Martin Heidegger’s existential and aesthetic explorations of authenticity, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language games, Lyotard’s aesthetic and rhetorical postulations regarding the unpresentable; Elaine Scarry’s pain inexpressibility and Judith Butler’s performativity are complemented with Hans Thies Lehmann’s and Erika Fischer Lichte’s performance theory studies. Sontag’s several other critical works and interviews are also considered, while Scarry’s position regarding the linguistic inexpressibility of pain is partially refuted. It is to be understood that it is not my intention to provide an exhaustive reading of the above-mentioned philosophers but simply to use for comparative reasons certain highlights from their works that directly
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