This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. 1 Sight as Trauma: The Politics of Performing and Viewing the Body on Stage Panayiota Chrysochou Dedicated to my gran PhD Thesis University of Edinburgh March 2012 2 Contents Abstract List of plates Acknowledgments Introduction The gaze as motif The Eye/I and the Gaze of the Other Theatre as spectacle and site of resistance Aesthetics and the material body Enigmatic and visual signifiers Antiocularcentrism Eyes mediated through technology Scopic regimes and traumatic visions 1. The Fractured I/Eye and the Traumatic Gaze in Theatre 2. In Dread of the Wandering Eye: Oedipal Visions, Enucleated Eyes and the Scopic Regime of Malveillance in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex 3. The Horror of Oedipus’s Vision: Deathly (Re)visitations, Incest and Desire in Shakespeare’s Macbeth 4. Theatrical Space and the Subversion of Gender in Macbeth and Oedipus Rex 5. Orlan’s Gruesome Theatre: Religion, Technology and the Politics of Self- Mutilation and Violence as Gestus 6. Blood Play and Second Skins: Viewing the Cut in the Body and ‘Splatter’ in Franko B’s Dramatic Performances Conclusion Notes Bibliography 3 Abstract My thesis aims to partake in the controversial and theoretical debates surrounding sight which can be traced as far back as Plato. It seeks to provide an overview of the cultural history of the gaze in order to set up a triangulated and in- depth schema or triadic relationship between theatre, text and trauma through the lens of psychoanalytical, phenomenological and socio-theoretical frameworks. More specifically, it attempts to explore the various interactions, along the axis of representation, between theatrical metaphors and those of traumatic vision, as well as traumatic representations on stage of viewing and the multi-layered and socio- political implications of various ways of looking (or non-looking), which often trigger traumatic responses. By examining two canonical plays – Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Macbeth – as well as the modern performances of artists such as Orlan and Franko B, I hope to show how visual trauma can transcend time and space and how the stage, as well as dramatic performances, can function as a body or body politic upon which various visuo-spatial and traumatic themes can be inscribed and re(enacted). The shift in emphasis, beginning with Freud and onwards, from physical to psychological trauma has often led to a blurring and obfuscation of the question of sight and the various lines of inquiry related to it. It has unfortunately often been overlooked in trauma theory, together with the issue of how certain sights/sites can often lead to broken, baffled and even traumatic responses when there is a failure to adequately interrogate, interpret and subsequently assimilate various events both on and off-stage. 4 This failure is further compounded by various theoretical strands which view trauma as being non-representable. Thus by bringing trauma and vision to the fore, my research aims to inflect the cultural history of the gaze by showing how it contributes invaluably to a greater understanding of identity formation and hermeneutical activity in particular, as well as theatrical practices and even gender discourse analysis in general. By recourse to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, two canonical plays which draw heavily on notions of sight, blindness and the traumatic implications of viewing certain objects or events, as well as through an interrogation of various responses to the theatrical performances of more modern bodily-based performance artists such as Orlan and Franko B, who cut and refashion their bodies in front of a large audience, this work seeks to bring together various theoretical approaches ranging from psychoanalysis to phenomenology in order to shed light on how sight can lead to trauma both on and off the stage, thus contributing to the ongoing theoretical debates surrounding the body and the theatre. 5 List of plates 1.1 Un Chien Andalou – Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, 1929. Photo: Christian Stalley. 1.2 The Watching Eye – Frida Kahlo, 1934 1.3 Karma II – Frida Kahlo, 1946 1.4 Eye/Body – Carolee Schneemann, 1963 1.5 Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face – Barbara Kruger, 1981 1.6 ‘Never shake Thy gory locks at me!’ – Bob Peck as Macbeth, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1982 1.7 ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ – Aicha Kossoko, Amanda Harris, and Joyce Henderson as the three witches, Battersea Arts Centre, 2000 1.8 The Incredulity of St. Thomas – Caravaggio, c. 1601-2 1.9 Black Virgin Wielding White Cross and Black Cross No. 24, 1983. Photo: Jean- Paul Lefret. 1.10 Franko B, 'I Miss You', 2000. Photo: Manuel Vason Acknowledgments I would hereby like to take this opportunity to thank my supervisor, Dr. Olga Taxidou, for her patience and warm, enthusiastic support of my research. Without her critical comments and evaluations this work would not have been possible. I would also not have been in a position to write this piece of scholarly research without availing myself of the invaluable electronic and printed resources at the University of Edinburgh’s Library. A warm thanks should also be extended to my amazing family, who have supported me throughout the years and without whose financial sustenance this project would never have materialized. Finally, I would like to thank my partner, Alberto De Arriba Prieto, for his diligence and support throughout the writing of this piece. 6 Introduction The gaze as motif The question of the gaze has occupied a central position in both Western literature and philosophy since ancient times.1 René Descartes calls sight ‘the most comprehensive and noblest of [the senses]’ (65), whilst in his Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory Stephen Shaviro points out: ‘Nothing is more important to Western tradition than the clarity and truth of vision’ (5). There has been a repeated preoccupation with the interrelationships between vision, knowledge and perception, a preoccupation which can be traced as far back as classical Greece. Plato, for example, creates an analogy between the sun, as a bearer of light, and the human eye. In Timaeus he remarks that vision is the greatest blessing or boon to have been bestowed upon mankind (47b). Preoccupations with sight can be evidenced in Ancient Greek theatre as early as the 5th century AD. As Martin Jay points out in Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, Greek art idealised the visible form and this ‘accorded well with their love of theatrical performance’ (23). Indeed, the etymological linkage between theatre and theory, which meant ‘to look at attentively,’ has often been remarked in the literature. Since the Greek gods and goddesses were visible entities, religious effigies, sculptures and temples were created to honour them. It is perhaps this privileging of sight in classical Greece that is responsible for a trickling down effect into numerous religious systems which pay tribute to the sun, sun gods and the all-seeing eye. In medieval and early modern times, ‘the medieval metaphysics of light’ was ‘in large measure a religious adaptation of Platonic residues.’ Renaissance literature abounded 7 in ocular allusions. In France, for example, the powerful intersections between political authority, religion and sight could be traced in the lavish display of Louis XIV’s processions and his extravagant interior decorations. Louis XIV, known as the Sun God, was – like Apollo – ‘the God-like source of all light and the eye that could see everything, a figure of specular identity par excellence’ (Jay 44, 89).2 In Hegelian philosophy, the sun functions as the true source of illumination and even becomes a metaphor for philosophy itself. Whilst the focus on the power of the eye, together with its physical, tangible materiality, was a staple of the Renaissance era, it was during the Enlightenment, and in the wake of the Cartesian dualism or mind/body split, that the notion of an ‘inner eye’ really came into its own. In his search for knowledge and clarity, and via deductive reasoning, Descartes turned to the notion of ‘ideas’ and how these can refer to inner, mental representations. Whilst the split between the mental idea of an object and its physical representation was certainly not a novel idea – Plato had already postulated the notion that material objects were merely imitations of an abstract or transcendent Idea or Eidos – Descartes’s dualism moves away from Plato by positing ideas as subjective entities rather than external realities. In Descartes, it is the mind that actually sees rather than the eye – hence the expression of seeing, almost literally, with ‘the mind’s eye.’ This notion of a representational mind was to be contested by the French philosopher Henri Bergson in the late nineteenth century: ‘We maintain that the brain is an instrument of action, and not of representation’ (qtd. in Jay 149). At the same time, Bergson moves away from what he deems a simplistic model of contemplative or reflective understanding and firmly grounds the body as the site and locus of action; the body is a lived body that moves freely in the world and has the capacity ‘to 8 be a vehicle of human choice’ (193) even though it may not always be granted human agency.