Politics or the Political

In the discussion about what political theatre is, the distinction between ‘politics’ and the ‘political’ plays an important role. What Fischer-Lichte calls ‘New Politics of the Aesthetic’¹ is based on this distinction. The separation of ‘politics’ from ‘the political’ makes it possible for an influential current in contemporary theatre to distance itself from a ‘political theatre’ that takes up political topics or content, and yet still see itself as political. Therefore, the development of this distinction will be briefly presented here. ²

a) Herodotus and Aristotle

The nominalisation of the adjective ‘political’ goes back to antiquity, to the peculiarity of the Greek language of enabling such nominalisations through articles, and to the tendency of Greek philosophy to formulate abstract concepts in such a way ³ The noun τὸ πολιτικόν first appears in Herodotus.

“καίτοι εἰ τὸ πολιτικὸν ὑμῖν πᾶν ἐστι τοιοῦτ”  (“and if  your political is as you describe it”)⁴

The Persian ruler Xerxes is discussing the fighting strength of the Greeks with Demaratus, a former Spartan king who has defected to the Persians, and is planning a campaign against them. Here, the political is equated with the polity, the city-state of Sparta.

Aristotle also uses the adverbial version of ‘politikos’ (πολιτικῶς). Ernst Vollrath relies on a passage in Athenaion Politeia (The Athenian State),

‘Πεισίστρατος … διῴkει τὰ κοινὰ πολιτικῶς μᾶλλον ἤ τυραννικῶς ‘ (14.3) ‘Peisistratos ruled the common – that is, the polis – in a political rather than a tyrannical way.’⁵

to show that the political is a practice.⁶ It means an ‘adverbial modality’, not a specific content or area.⁷ This adverbial use of the concept of the political will become even more significant for theatre in the 21st century.

b) Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt

Later, the concepts of politics and the political were largely equated⁸, until Carl Schmitt’s 1932 essay ‘Der Begriff des Politischen`(The Concept of the Political) provided the impetus to define the category of the political more precisely. For him, however, the conceptual opposition was between the state and the ‘political’. His fanfare-like opening was the sentence:

„Der Begriff des Staates setzt den Begriff des Politischen voraus.“ (The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.)⁹.

‘Politics’ is identified with the state. ¹⁰. While the ‘political’ is understood as a general term for a certain quality of human coexistence:

‘{The political} does not denote a separate subject area, but only the degree of intensity of an association or dissociation of people.”¹¹.’ Christian Meier, Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 2nd ed. 1989, p. 36]

Th the theoretical opponent of the later Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt was Hannah Arendt¹². For her, politics is the free association of people:

“The meaning of politics is freedom”¹³,

Not, as with Carl Schmitt, ‘the distinction between friend and foe’¹⁴. But Hannah Arendt also does not give an independent definition of the political that could be contrasted with politics. She uses the concept of the political for ‘the political sphere’ or the ‘space of the political’¹⁵.

c) Paul Ricoeur

A definitional distinction between politics and the political can be found at around the same time in Paul Ricoeur 1957:

‘Le politique est organisation raisonnable, la politique est décision {…}. Le politique ne va pas sans la politique.’ (“The political is reasonable organisation, politics, on the other hand, is decision. {…} Of course, the political does not exist without politics.”)¹⁶

Ricoeur is actually concerned with the demarcation between politics and economics. Soviet troops marching into Hungary in 1957 was the reason for his criticism of Marxism, because it ignored the autonomy of the political sphere and thus made Stalin’s despotism possible.¹⁷ But to do that, he needed a concept of politics that did not mean the respective actions, but the area in which political actions take place, namely the ‘political’.¹⁸ But to do that, he needed a concept of politics that does not refer to the respective actions, but to the area in which political actions take place, namely the ‘political’, ‘la politique’.

d) Jean-Luc Godard

In the aftermath of May 1968 in Paris, this distinction between politics and the political was further developed because the demand for political effectiveness remained, but the experience of the failure of the rebellion also had to be processed. ‘Politics’ became the realm of established state powers, ‘the political’ the realm of art. The statements of film director Jean-Luc Godard are one stage in this development. His in his 1970 manifesto ‘Que faire?’, he invented the momentous distinction between ‘political’ as an adjective and ‘political’ as an adverb. It is no longer about the artistic product as political, but about the process of creating the work of art as understood politically.

1 We must make political films. 2 We must make films politically. 3 1 and 2 are antagonistic to each other and belong to two opposing conceptions of the world. {…}

10 To carry out 1 is to remain a being of the bourgeois class. 11 To carry out 2 is to take up a proletarian class position. {…}

21 To carry out 1 is to give a complete view of events in the name of truth in itself. 22 To carry out 2 is not to fabricate over-complete images of the world in the name of relative truth.¹⁹

Godard’s distinction between ‘making political films’ and ‘making films politically’ is repeatedly cited against a theatre that takes up current political issues. Godard’s text was written in 1970 and reflects the political discussions of the time.

In thesis and antithesis, the two concepts (making political films and making films politically) are juxtaposed. But when you read how Godard tried to explain what he meant by ‘making films politically’, it becomes clear how little use this is today. For him, making political films means ‘describing the wickedness of the world’. On the other hand, political filmmaking means ‘showing the people in struggle.’ So there is a difference in content, in the material depicted in the film. And when he concludes by calling for ‘reading the reports of Comrade Kiang Tsing,’ it becomes clear that this is not an authoritative text that could be referred to today. (He probably means Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife at the time, who has not published any reports. After Mao’s death, she was convicted as a member of the Gang of Four who had pushed the Cultural Revolution.)

There is only one pair of theses in this manifesto that points to the future: thesis 21, making political films ‘means giving a complete view of events in the name of truth itself.’ And thesis 22, making political films means ‘not creating over-complete images of the world in the name of relative truth.’ By calling for incomplete images and emphasising the relativity of truth, he is opposing the dogmatism of the left at the time and pointing the way for his further aesthetic development.

e) Jean-François Lyotard

A further step in the direction of a theatre that rejects ‘political theatre’ but still sees itself as political is Jean-Francois Lyotard’s essay ‘The Tooth, the Hand’ from 1972.²⁰. In it, Lyotard attempts to refute the semiotic analysis of the theatre as a sign system by means of a complex argument. To do this, he goes back to Marx’s analysis of capitalism, in which the commodity relation is analysed as the interchangeability of everything with everything else. For Lyotard, this makes a meaningful sign relationship between representing signs and the represented signified impossible. Lyotard calls this a nihilism. He then turns against the agreement of the various elements of theatre, as demanded in the theory of Japanese Noh theatre. He wants ‘the independence, the simultaneity of sounds/noises, words, body figures, images.’²¹ He also criticises Brecht’s Marxist sign theory of theatre. He goes back to the surrealist painter Hans Bellmer, who, using the example of a hand cramped with toothache, questions the relationship between sign and signified. The hand does not signify pain. For the ‘movement of the libido’, both phenomena are equivalent, their relationship reversible. Lyotard pleads for an ‘energetic theatre’ in which there are no more sign relationships.

Lyotard’s essay is one of the first pieces of evidence that political representation in representative democracy is equated with the representation of the signified by and the signifying in theatre and is rejected in the same way. For him, categorically ‘no representation is justified.’ ²² In doing so, Lyotard equates political representation with ‘politics’, but his counter-concept is not yet that of the ‘political’ or ‘political theatre-making’, but rather that of ‘energetic theatre’, entirely in the sense of Antonin Artaud.

“9. Where the sign relationship and its gulf are abolished, the power relationship (the hierarchy) becomes the domination of the dramaturge + director + choreographer + set designer over the alleged signs and the alleged spectators impossible.
10. Alleged spectators, because the concept of such a person or function goes hand in hand with the predominance of representation in social life and especially with what the modern West calls politics.’”²³

To be continued