Martin Crimp's Theatre: Collapse As Resistance to Late Capitalist Society (CDE Studies)

This book reads Martin Crimp’s __The Treatment__ (1993), __Attempts on her Life__ (1997), __The Country__ (2000), __Face to the Wall__ (2002), __Cruel and Tender__ (2004) and his adaptation of Chekhov’s __The Seagull__ (2006) in the context of contemporary, late capitalist societies of control or of ‘spectacle’, and explores how female collapse in particular works as a form of denunciation of the violence of globalized, technological neo-liberalism. The book contends that Crimp is a post-Holocaust writer, whose dramaturgy is pervaded by the ethical and aesthetic debates that the Holocaust has generated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Its main claim is that, by interpellating spectators through the defamiliarized language of collapse and testimony, Crimp invites spectators to contribute to detecting the seeds of ‘barbarism’ as they may detect them in their context, thus warning them about the introduction of violence in supposedly civilized relationships and thereby also contributing to overcoming the contemporary ethical impasse. The book finally argues that female characters who pass on their testimony are shown to the audience in the ‘process of becoming’ ethical bodies – namely, they are emerge as ethical out of the perceived necessity to integrate both the Other as essential parts of their beings, thus recovering an innate, Baumian sense of responsibility towards the Other. Acknowledgements I Preliminaries I: Introduction and Rationale II Preliminaries II: Martin Crimp’s Theatre, a Pedagogy of Resistance 1 Martin Crimp’s Context 1.1 Late Capitalism and Societies of Control 1.2 A Post-Holocaust Writer: Capitalism and Barbarism 2 The Semiotic Potential of Collapse on Stage 2.1 Collapse on Stage: What it is and how it Works 2.2 I Have Witnessed: Testimony and Audience Responsibility 2.2.1 Auschwitz and Testimony 2.2.2 Audience, Resistance and Testimony 3 Redefining Ethics: A Collapsing Body III Beginnings of a Dramaturgy: Violence, Memory and Retribution in The Treatment (1993) 1 Introduction: Collapse, ‘In-Yer-Face’ Theatre and the ‘Society of Spectacle’ 2 The ‘Spectacle’ Filled our Pockets: Duplicity, Sexism and the Market 2.1 La Dérive: Marginal Spaces of Resistance 2.2 ‘Like A Disapproving Person’: Collapse, Pretence and Alienation 3 The Point of Rupture: Collapse and Barbarism 3.1 Stopping the Technology: Détournement, ‘Luddism’ and ‘Terrorism’ 3.2 Clifford’s Eyes and the ‘Banality of Evil’ 3.3 A Rewriting and a Parable of Ambition 3.4 Audience and Violence: From Voyeurs to Active Witnesses 4 Conclusion: Towards Subjectivity and Ethics IV Postdramatic Plays: Attempts on her Life (1997) and Face to the Wall (2002) 1 Interpretation, Self-Regulation and Postdramatism 1.1 Crimp and Postdramatism 2 Short Circuits of Desire: Language and Power in Attempts on her Life 2.1 The ‘Camera’, Narcissism, and the ‘Society of Spectacle’ 2.2 ‘I Can’t’: A Body in Denial 2.3 Ready-mades, Language and Power 3 ‘The Stage, a Skull’: Male Collapse as Resistance in Face to the Wall 3.1 Fewer Emergencies (2005) and the Non-Hierarchical Theatrical Experience 3.2 ‘The Warm Metal - Thank You - of the Gun’: Interpretation and Violation 3.3 ‘Voyeurs in Bedlam?’: Re-Materializing the Audience V Dramatic Plays: Female Breakdown as Micropolitical Resistance 1 Stopping Time: Memory and Resistance in The Country (2000) 1.1 Introduction 1.1.1 Of Violence and Pathos 1.1.2 ‘Paper, Scissors, Stone’: A Narrative of Testimony and a Power Game 1.2 Collapse as Self-Awareness: Corinne’s Change 1.2.1 Collapse, Mercantilism and ‘Empire’ 1.2.2 Virgil, Collapse and Testimony 1.3 ‘It is Only the Flesh’: Rebecca’s Moral Imagination 1.3.1 Collapse as Violence 1.3.2 Madness as Reason’s Other 1.4 Patchwork of Voices, Swarm of Resistance 1.4.1 Outbursts of Solidarity 1.4.2 Community of Resistance 1.5 ‘Oh, to Reverse’: Spiralling Towards Full Time 1.5.1 Collapsing Boundaries 1.5.2 Stopping Time: An Ethics of Resentment 1.5.3 Testimony and Late Capitalism 1.5.4 Path of Discovery: the Ethics of Spectatorship 1.5.5 To Survive: Self-Creation and the Paring Down of Selfhood 1.6 Conclusion: Turning Towards Psychology 2 Oppression, Resistance and Terrorism in Cruel and Tender (2004) 2.1 Sophocles, Crimp and Bondy 2.2 Radical Ethics: The Body as Weapon, Insight and Image 2.2.1 The Cartesian Self: Verticality and the Word 2.2.2 Amelia’s ‘Embodied’ Tongue 2.3 Of Shamans and Cyborgs: From Bodies of Mastery to Bodies of Need 2.3.1 Invocation and Ritual 2.3.2 A Utopia of Mutual Dependency 2.4 Collapse and Testimony: Late Capitalism and Totalitarianism 2.4.1 Inequality, Auschwitz and the Collapsing Self 2.4.2 Opening a Space of Exteriority 2.4.3 The Inheritance of Resistance 2.5 Conclusion: Memory as Imperative and Yearning VI Testimony and World Inequality in Crimp’s Adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull (2006) 1.1 Introduction: Mirroring Fragments, Play-Within-a-Play 1.2 Testimony as Resistance: Crimp’s and Mitchell’s Play-Within-a-Play 1.3 ‘Cold, Blank, Distant’: Breakdown as Resistance VII General Conclusions: Martin Crimp’s Theatre: a Dramaturgy of Resistance VIII Works Cited Primary Sources Secondary Sources

This book reads Martin Crimp’s The Treatment (1993), Attempts on her Life (1997), The Country (2000), Face to the Wall (2002), Cruel and Tender (2004) and his adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull (2006) in the context of contemporary, late capitalist societies of control or of ‘spectacle’, and explores how female collapse in particular works as a form of denunciation of the violence of globalized, technological neo-liberalism.

The book contends that Crimp is a post-Holocaust writer, whose dramaturgy is pervaded by the ethical and aesthetic debates that the Holocaust has generated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Its main claim is that, by interpellating spectators through the defamiliarized language of collapse and testimony, Crimp invites spectators to contribute to detecting the seeds of ‘barbarism’ as they may detect them in their context, thus warning them about the introduction of violence in supposedly civilized relationships and thereby also contributing to overcoming the contemporary ethical impasse.

The book finally argues that female characters who pass on their testimony are shown to the audience in the ‘process of becoming’ ethical bodies – namely, they are emerge as ethical out of the perceived necessity to integrate both the Other as essential parts of their beings, thus recovering an innate, Baumian sense of responsibility towards the Other.

Main description: This book is a timely intervention in theatre studies which reads Martin Crimp's plays in the context of contemporary, late capitalist societies of control or of 'spectacle', and explores how female collapse in particular works as a form of denunciation of the violence of globalized, free-market economy. It contends that Crimp can best be understood as a post-Holocaust playwright, and it will be of interest to both specialists in Crimp and theatre studies, and to anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of Crimp's dramaturgy