The Open Constructed Public Sphere: Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women in a Version by David Greig

Abstract

This article looks at the 'public' 'place' of drama in Britain at present by offering an analysis of a contemporary version of an ancient Greek play by Aeschylus, entitled The Suppliant Women, written by David Greig, directed by Ramin Gray, and first performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh in 2016. Following an agonistic (Chantal Mouffe), rather than a consensual (Jürgen Habermas) model of the public sphere, it argues that under globalisation, three cumulative and interwoven senses of the public sphere, the discursive, the spatial, and the individual and his/her/their relation to a larger form of organisation, despite persisting hegemonic structures that perpetuate their containment, have become undone. This is the kind of unbounded model of public sphere Greig's version of Aeschylus' The Suppliant Women seems to suggest by precisely offering undoings of discourses, spaces, and individualisations. In order to frame the first kind of undoing, that is, the unmarking of theatre as contained, the article uses Christopher Balme's notion of 'open theatrical public sphere', and in order to frame the second, that is, the undoing of elements 'in' Greig's version, the article utilises Greig's concept of 'constructed space'. The article arrives then at the notion of the open constructed public sphere in relation to The Suppliant Women. By engaging with this porous model of the public sphere, The Suppliant Women enacts a protest against exclusionary, reductive models of exchange and organisation, political engagement, and belonging under globalisation.

Twitter as Public Sphere to Connect between Librarians and Library Users: A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Topics Trend Related to Twitter Usage and Library Service

“…They want to maintain the principle of cooperation by trying to not be immersed in virtual communication. Moreover, by conducting face-to-face communication and using real place as public sphere location, they believe that it will create an atmosphere of mutual understanding (Rodriguez, 2020).…”

“…With the existence of mass democracy, the public which was originally represented by a limited educated elite began to be joined by the majority of people who were not well educated (Wardhana, 2021a). The birth of social media that creates limitless room for discussion for many people regardless of the status and power is the new era for the public sphere (Rodriguez, 2020).…”