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The Surveying of Hell. On Theatricality and Styles of Thinking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Helmar Schramm
Helmar Schramm
Affiliation:
Helmar Schramm is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Leipzig.
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Extract

In 1529 Agrippa von Nettesheim criticized the ‘futility and uncertainty’ of science. Indeed, the triumphant rise of European culture and science has always been accompanied by shadows of dissent. While, on the one hand, the rhapsodic shattering of reason was heavily criticized, on the other hand, equally sharp criticism was raised against the hermetic spirit of universal systems. The accepted authority of scientific knowledge was continually served a Lenten repast, and mighty edifices built on theory have bowed to the weight of doubt, crumbling into ruins of truths. The path which we call ‘progress’ is overlaid with traces of our own actions in the image of Sisyphus in Hades, who is condemned to push a huge boulder uphill. He is forever forced back to the beginning of his task, because of the perfidious nature of the stone.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 114 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1995

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References

Notes

1 Barthes, Roland, L'Aventure sémiologique (Paris: Seuil, 1985).Google Scholar

2 Galilei, Galileo, ‘Erste Lektion vor der florentinischen Akademie über die Gestalt, Lage und Größe von Dantes Hölle’ (Due Lezione all'Accademia Fiorentina circa la Figura, Sito e Grandezza dell'Inferno di Dante. Lezione prima), Galileo Galilei, Schriften, Briefe, Dokumente, ed. Anna, Mudry (Berlin, 1987), p. 50.Google Scholar

3 Ibid. p. 54.

4 A more elaborate description of this concept of theatricality can be found in Helmar Schramm, Carneval des Denkens. Studien zui Entfaltung theatralischer Perspektiven in philosophichen Texten des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Forthcoming.

5 Rusterholz, Peter, Theatrum vitae humanae (Berlin, 1970), p. 15.Google Scholar

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9 Lyotard, Jean François, ‘La peinture comme dispositif libidinal’, Lyotard, J. F., Des dispositifs pulsionnels, (Paris, 1973), pp. 227–68.Google Scholar See also, in the same collection of essays, ‘La dent, la paume’, pp. 89–98, and ‘Plusieurs silences’, pp. 269–90.

10 Feuerbach, Ludwig, ‘Zur Kritik der Hegelischen Philosophie’ (first published in Hallesche Jahrbüchei füi deutsche Wissenschaft und Kunst, 1839), ed. W., Harich, W., Schufenhauer, Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 9, Kleinere Schriften II, (Berlin, 1970), p. 18.Google Scholar

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13 As Norbert Bolz put it in Die Welt als Chaos und Simulation. Munich 1992, p. 29.Google Scholar See also Bolz, , Eine Kurze Geschichte des Scheins (Munich 1991).Google Scholar

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17 Ibid., p. 61.

18 Ibid., p. 59.

19 Ibid., p. 127.