Resisting the Plague: The French Reactionary Right and Artaud's Theater of Cruelty

Spreen, Constance

doi:10.1215/00267929-64-1-71

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 13 publications

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“…Artaud's advocacy of a 'poetry of the senses' and of a theatre in which a violent, excessive mise en scène takes precedence over the literary text was decidedly 'not French' according to the more conservative critics, who associated Artaud's destructive impulses with a 'barbarous' Romanticism and a 'deviance' borne of avant-gardism and Jewishness. 30 One must be mindful of the politics that may have informed the hostile reception of Artaud's play from some quarters, which is not to posit a conspiracy, but to caution against simply accepting the negative judgement of Artaud's production made by some of his critics.…”

Section: Fortunat Strowski Of the Paris-midi Wrotementioning

confidence: 99%

Cruel Vibrations: Sounding Out Antonin Artaud's Production ofLes Cenci

Curtin¹

2010

Theatre Research International

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This article examines the sonic elements of Antonin Artaud's 1935 production of Les Cenci, Artaud's infamous attempt to realize his proposed 'theatre of cruelty'. The aim is to qualify the critical opinion that Artaud was a failed theatre practitioner by analysing the conceptual complexity and potential effectiveness of the sound design for this production. Artaud utilized new sonic technologies and an aesthetic arguably derived in part from Balinese gamelan music to affect audience members on a physiological level, prefiguring the vibrational force and ultrasonic ambitions of modern sonic warfare. This analysis engages a range of primary and secondary materials, including an extant recording of music and sound effects used for the production, and is situated with reference to an estimated acoustic 'horizon of expectations' of Artaud's audiences and to neuroscientific conceptions of how the brain processes auditory input.

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Section: Fortunat Strowski Of the Paris-midi Wrotementioning

confidence: 99%

Cruel Vibrations: Sounding Out Antonin Artaud's Production ofLes Cenci

Curtin¹

2010

Theatre Research International

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Camus and the Theatre of Terror: Artaudian Dramaturgy and Settler Society in the Works of Albert Camus

Churchill

2010

Mod. Intell. Hist.

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This essay examines Albert Camus's considerable debt to Antonin Artaud. Camus was not only a dramatist, but he also employed dramaturgical techniques in his more famous fiction and essays. In this regard, Artaud's ideas on social reconstitution through aesthetic terror were crucial to the development of many of Camus's most famous works, written both in Algeria and in France before and after World War II. This article considers the ways in which aesthetic–political techniques adapted from Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty were employed to challenge fascism in Algeria and France, by simultaneously summoning Algerian settler myths of exile, destitution and regeneration. Camus's considerable sophistication in the use of these techniques, and the colonial context in which they were initially applied, have often been missed by scholars and critics who have sought to unproblematically situate his works within debates about the Cold War and more recently the “War against Terror”.

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Hearing Affectively: The Noise of Avant-Garde Performance

Curtin¹

2014

Avant-Garde Theatre Sound

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Resisting the Plague: The French Reactionary Right and Artaud's Theater of Cruelty

Abstract: Constance Spreen is Harper-Schmidt Collegiate Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. Her research engages issues of aesthetics and politics in France. She is preparing a book on the political dimensions of literary escapism in twentieth-century France.

Cited by 5 publications

References 13 publications

Cruel Vibrations: Sounding Out Antonin Artaud's Production ofLes Cenci

Cruel Vibrations: Sounding Out Antonin Artaud's Production ofLes Cenci

Camus and the Theatre of Terror: Artaudian Dramaturgy and Settler Society in the Works of Albert Camus

Hearing Affectively: The Noise of Avant-Garde Performance

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