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How Do You Make Yourself a Theatre without Organs? Deleuze, Artaud and the Concept of Differential Presence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2009

LAURA CULL
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Abstract

This article provides an exposition of four key concepts emerging in the encounter between the philosophical man of the theatre, Antonin Artaud, and the theatrical philosopher, Gilles Deleuze: the body without organs, the theatre without organs, the destratified voice and differential presence. The article proposes that Artaud's 1947 censored radio play To Have Done with the Judgment of God constitutes an instance of a theatre without organs that uses the destratified voice in a pursuit of differential presence – as a nonrepresentative encounter with difference that forces new thoughts upon us. Drawing from various works by Deleuze, including Difference and Repetition, The Logic of Sense, A Thousand Plateaus and ‘One Less Manifesto’, I conceive differential presence as an encounter with difference, or perpetual variation, as that which exceeds the representational consciousness of a subject, forcing thought through rupture rather than communicating meanings through sameness. Contra the dismissal of Artaud's project as paradoxical or impossible, the article suggests that his nonrepresentational theatre seeks to affirm a new kind of presence as difference, rather than aiming to transcend difference in order to reach the self-identical presence of Western metaphysics.

Type
Focus on Performance/Theatre and Philosophy
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , October 2009 , pp. 243 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2009

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References

NOTES

1 Copeland, Roger, ‘The Presence of Mediation’, TDR: The Drama Review, 34, 4 (1990), pp. 28–44, here p. 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Derrida, Jacques, ‘The Theatre of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation’, in Murray, Timothy, ed., Mimesis, Masochism and Mime: The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought (Ann Arbor Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1997)Google Scholar, trans. Timothy Murray and Eliane dal Molin, pp. 40–62, here p. 56.

3 Ibid., p. 57.

4 Ibid., p. 58.

5 Gilles Deleuze, ‘One Less Manifesto’, in Murray, Mimesis, Masochism and Mime, pp. 239–258, here p. 253.

6 Ibid.

7 See chapter 5 of Bell, Jeffrey, Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Difference (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Scheer, Edward, ‘I Artaud BwO’, in Cull, Laura, ed., Deleuze and Performance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 37–53Google Scholar; Dale, Catherine, ‘Falling from the Power to Die’, in Genosko, Gary, ed., Deleuze and Guattari: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 69–80Google Scholar; idem, ‘Knowing One's Enemy: Deleuze, Artaud, and the Problem of Judgement’, in Bryden, Mary, ed., Deleuze and Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 126–137Google Scholar; and idem, ‘Cruel: Antonin Artaud and Gilles Deleuze’, in Massumi, Brian, ed., A Shock to Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guattari (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 85–100Google Scholar. The Deleuze–Artaud connection is also addressed by Rex Butler, ‘Non-genital Thought’, in Scheer, Edward, ed., 100 Years of Cruelty: Essays on Artaud (Sydney: Power Publications and Artspace, 2000), pp. 23–57Google Scholar; by Bogue, Ronald, Deleuze on Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar; by Lopez, Alan, ‘Deleuze with Carroll: Schizophrenia and Simulacrum and the Philosophy of Lewis Carroll's Nonsense’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 9, 3 (2004), pp. 101–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and briefly by Morfee, Adrian, Antonin Artaud's Writing Bodies (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

8 Goodall, Jane, ‘The Plague and Its Powers in Artaudian Theatre’, in Scheer, Edward, ed., Antonin Artaud: A Critical Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 65–76, here p. 75Google Scholar.

9 Umberto Artioli, ‘Production of Reality or Hunger for the Impossibility?’, in Scheer, Antonin Artaud: A Critical Reader, pp. 137–148, here p. 145.

10 Deleuze, Gilles, ‘Capitalism and Schizophrenia’, in Lapoujade, David, ed. Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953–1974 (Los Angeles and New York: Semiotexte, 2004), pp. 232–241, here p. 240Google Scholar.

11 Umberto Artioli, ‘Production of Reality or Hunger for the Impossibility?’, p. 147.

12 Deleuze addresses Artaud in a great many of his works, most notably in Deleuze, Gilles, Difference and Repetition (London: The Athlone Press, 1994)Google Scholar, trans. Paul Patton; idem, The Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), trans. Charles Stivale and Mark Lester; in idem, ‘To Have Done with Judgment’, in idem, Essays Critical and Clinical (London and New York: Verso, 1998), trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, pp. 126–135; and in the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: The Athlone Press, 1984)Google Scholar, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane; and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Athlone, 1988), trans. Brian Massumi.

13 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Thirteenth Series of the Schizophrenic and the Little Girl’, in Scheer, Antonin Artaud: A Critical Reader, pp. 27–36, here p. 32.

14 Ibid., p. 31.

15 Ibid., p. 33.

16 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, pp. 151, 157.

17 Ibid., p. 153.

18 Ibid., p. 159.

19 Ibid., p. 160.

20 Ibid., p. 160.

21 Jacques Derrida, quoted in Bell, Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos, p. 157.

22 Ibid., p. 156.

23 Ibid., p. 158; emphasis added.

24 Ibid., p. 159.

25 Deleuze, Gilles, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (New York: Zone Books, 1990)Google Scholar, trans. Martin Joughin, p. 16.

26 Gilles Deleuze, ‘One Less Manifesto’, p. 242.

27 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 159.

28 Gilles Deleuze, ‘One Less Manifesto’, p. 249.

29 Ibid., p. 246.

30 Ibid., p. 248.

31 Ibid., p. 249.

32 Ibid., p. 244.

33 Ibid., p. 247.

34 At one point, the stage directions of The Spurt of Blood call for ‘Silence. Noise like a huge wheel spinning, blowing out wind. A hurricane comes between them. At that moment two stars collide, and a succession of limbs of flesh fall. Then feet, hands, scalps, masks, colonnades, porticoes, temples and alembics, falling slower and slower as if through space, then three scorpions one after the other and finally a frog, and a scarab which lands with heart-breaking nauseating slowness’. See Artaud, Antonin, The Spurt of Blood, in Schumacher, Claude, ed., Artaud on Theatre (London: Methuen, 1989), pp. 19–21Google Scholar, here p. 18. The directions later demand that ‘At a given moment a huge hand seizes the WHORE's hair which catches fire’. Ibid., p. 19. From such examples it is not difficult to imagine why the play remained unperformed in Artaud's lifetime. See Cohn, Ruby, ‘Artaud's “Jet de Sang”: Parody or Cruelty?’, Theatre Journal, 31, 3 (1979), pp. 312–318, here p. 315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Puchner, Martin, “The Theater in Modernist Thought”, New Literary History, 33, 3 (2002), pp. 521–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Gilles Deleuze, ‘One Less Manifesto’, p. 247.

37 Artaud, Antonin, ‘Last Letters (1947–48)’, in Sontag, Susan, ed., Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), pp. 575–588, here p. 577Google Scholar.

38 Antonin Artaud, ‘Oriental and Western Theatre’, in Schumacher, Artaud on Theatre, pp. 135–137, here p. 123.

39 As Schumacher reports, the radio programme was recorded between 22 and 29 November 1947 by Artaud and his collaborators. Originally commissioned by Fernand Pouey, the programme was censored by Wladimir Porché, the director-general of the radio station, on the day before it was scheduled for broadcast: 2 February 1948. The broadcast had two private hearings for Artaud's friends and colleagues. The first was held on 5 February 1948, in the hope of changing Porché's mind about the ban. Those who attended – including Jean-Louis Barrault and Roger Vitrac – passed a favourable verdict on the recording, but the ban was maintained, resulting in Pouey's resignation. The second private hearing was held on 23 February 1948 in a disused cinema. See Schumacher, Artaud on Theatre, p. 188.

40 Deleuze and Guattari Anti-Oedipus, p. 9.

41 Deleuze, ‘One Less Manifesto’, p. 247.

42 Deleuze, ‘Thirteenth Series of the Schizophrenic and the Little Girl’, p. 33.

43 Ibid.

44 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 93.

45 Ibid., p. 97.

46 Derrida, Jacques, Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), trans. Allison, David B., p. 15Google Scholar.

47 Deleuze, ‘One Less Manifesto’, p. 247 (italics in original).

48 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 101.

49 Ibid., p. 110.

50 Morfee, Antonin Artaud's Writing Bodies, p. 177.

51 Dale, ‘Cruel: Antonin Artaud and Gilles Deleuze’, p. 87.

52 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 139.

53 Ibid., p. 138.

54 Ibid., p. 139; first emphasis original, second emphasis added.

55 Bogue, Ronald, Deleuze and Guattari (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 78Google Scholar.

56 Antonin Artaud, ‘The Theatre of Cruelty – First Manifesto’, in Schumacher, Artaud on Theatre, pp. 112–117, here p. 105 (italics in original).

57 Ibid., p. 108.

58 Artaud, ‘Oriental and Western Theatre’, p. 122; original emphasis.

59 Artaud, ‘The Theatre of Cruelty – First Manifesto’, p. 109.

60 Artaud has a particular theatrical tradition in mind here. In the essay ‘Theatre and Cruelty’, Artaud argues that society has become unaccustomed to a theatre of presence as the forcing of thought, largely on account of ‘the damage wrought by psychological theatre, derived from Racine’. See Antonin Artaud, ‘Theatre and Cruelty’, in Schumacher, Artaud on Theatre, pp. 120–122, here p. 108.

61 Antonin Artaud, ‘Situation of the Flesh’, in Sontag, Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings, pp. 109–114, here p. 111.

62 Deleuze, ‘One Less Manifesto’, p. 252.

63 Dale, ‘Cruel: Antonin Artaud and Gilles Deleuze’, p. 91.

64 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, pp. 160–1.

65 Puchner, ‘The Theater in Modernist Thought’, pp. 526–7.

66 Ibid., p. 525.