Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T23:34:16.938Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dramaturgies of Exile: Brecht and Benjamin ‘Playing’ Chess and Go

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2012

FREDDIE ROKEM
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In my book Philosophers and Thespians: Thinking Performance (Stanford University Press, 2010) I analysed four encounters between philosophers and theatre people – the thespians in the title – as a point of departure for presenting a typology based on the exploration of the complex border landscapes between the discursive practices of philosophy and performance/theatre. In this article, I take a closer look at one of these encounters, exploring the narrative strategies of Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin, as well as Franz Kafka, suggesting that they can be analysed on the basis of the games of chess and go. The differences between the rules of these two board games serve as the basis for a dramaturgical analysis where different aspects of performance/theatre and philosophy (practice and theory) are brought together. This hermeneutic ‘approach’ also reflects the basic pedagogic situation of studying and researching theatre and performance as well as many of the ethical concerns raised by our involvement with these artistic practices, along with those of philosophy.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 5 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1 Brecht, Bertolt, Life of Galileo, translated by Willet, John (London: Methuen, 1984), p. 7Google Scholar

2 Available at www.authorama.com/the-poetics-10.html [9:51 b], last accessed 27 August 2011.

3 Spoudaioteron also refers to the elite members of a society, who because of their influence must be taken more seriously than others. I want to thank Elizabeth Belfiore for drawing my attention to these nuances of the term. The quote is from her article ‘Aristotle's Concept of Praxis in the Poetics’, Classical Journal, 79, 2 (December 1983–January 1984), pp. 110–24, here p. 119, emphasis in original.

4 Plato, Symposium, in Complete Works, edited by M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1977), pp. 505, 223d.

5 The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910–1940, edited and annotated by Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1994), p. 443 # 235, emphasis in original.

6 ‘The game is played by two players who alternately place black and white stones on the vacant intersections (called “points”) of a grid of 19 × 19 lines (beginners often play on smaller 9 × 9 and 13 × 13 boards). Stones act as markers, representing one's occupation of a particular point. The object of the game is to use one's stones to surround a larger portion of the board than the opponent. Once placed on the board, stones cannot be moved, except in the case that they are captured. When a game concludes, the controlled points (territory) are counted along with captured stones to determine who has more points. Games may also be won by resignation – one may resign if one has fallen too far behind in total points.’ Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28game%29, last accessed 28 July 2011.

7 Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Massumi, Brian (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 352–3Google Scholar.

8 Kafka's story was first published in Ein Landartzt: Kleine Erzählungen (Munich and Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1919), pp. 88–9. Here quoted from Benjamin, Walter, ‘Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death’, in idem, Selected Writings (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1999), Vol. II, pp. 794–818, here pp. 812–13Google Scholar.

9 Benjamin, Walter, ‘Notes from Svendborg, Summer 1934’, in idem, Selected Writings, Vol. II, pp. 783–91, here p. 788Google Scholar.

10 Benjamin, Walter, ‘On the Concept of History’, in idem, Selected Writings (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2003), Vol. IV, pp. 389–400, here p. 389Google Scholar.

11 Brecht, Bertolt, Mother Courage and Her Children, trans. Mannheim, Ralph, in idem, Collected Plays (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), Vol. V, p. 340Google Scholar.

12 Benjamin, Walter, Arcades Project, trans. Eiland, Howard and McLaughlin, Kevin (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1999), [N2a,3] p. 462Google Scholar, added emphasis.

13 Walter Benjamin, ‘Franz Kafka’, p. 812. Benjamin, Walter, Gesammelte Schriften, II, 2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977), p. 433Google Scholar.

14 Benjamin, Walter, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. Osborne, John (London and New York: Verso, 1998), pp. 45–6Google Scholar. See also Hanssen, Beatrice, ‘Philosophy at Its Origin: Walter Benjamin's Prologue to the Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels’, MLN, 110, 4 (1995), p. 822Google Scholar, n. 27 for an illuminating discussion of this passage.

15 See www.kafka.org/index.php?id=162,172,0,0,1,0 (in Parables and Paradoxes, accessed 3 July 2008).

16 Kafka, Franz, The Complete Stories (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 390Google Scholar.

17 Walter Benjamin, ‘Franz Kafka’, p. 800.

18 Ibid., p. 804.

19 Quoted from ibid., p. 800.

20 Ibid., p. 801

21 Der Blaue Reiter, consisting of artists who were active as a group between 1911 and 1914, valorized horses and their movement. Wassily Kandinsky's and Franz Marc's paintings of horses are a direct expression of this paradoxical outburst of energy which frequently included the disappearance of the animal, also a central concern for Kafka as well as for Benjamin and Brecht.

22 See www.kafka.org/index.php?missingfragments (accessed 7 July 2008).

23 See www.kafka.org/index.php?missingfragments (accessed 7 July 2008).

24 Walter Benjamin, ‘Franz Kafka’, p. 801

25 Ibid.