Tag: Badiou

Essay on political theatre – part 1

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There are two ways of thinking about political theatre, two sentence beginnings: I. ‘Theatre is political because …’ or II. ‘Theatre is political if …’.

I. ‘Theatre is political because …’

Then general conditions would have to be outlined which theatre as a whole fulfils in all possible variations and which justify the qualification as political.

II ‘Theatre is political if …’

a) descriptive

This sentence structure seems to introduce a description of a genre of theatre, a purely analytical statement that names the conditions under which a certain type of theatre can be described as political. There would then be a kind of theatre that is not political and one would have to name the difference between political and non-political theatre.

b) normative

Often, however, this ‘if …’ seems to be heading towards a value judgement. The condition is actually a wish or a demand. Theatre ought to be political. It is characteristic of the discussion in theatre criticism and theatre studies that this ought to is not explicitly formulated, but only insinuated.
How is this ought to justified?

aa) In Hegelian terms: it follows from the concept or basic structure of theatre that it is political, and only if it fulfils this concept it is theatre in the full sense. If not, is it somehow inferior? So, as with I., one would have to define the concept or basic structure of theatre more precisely. And explain how an ‘ought’ emerges from this ‘being’ of theatre.

bb) Or is the demand for a political theatre simply a moral demand like any other? Theatre should be political because it then promotes the interests of the greatest possible number of people? It would be more than just a demand that theatre meets the requirements of politics (‘politically correct’), but that it makes a morally valuable contribution to politics. The theatre would therefore not be autonomous, but subordinate to politics, which in turn would be subordinate to morality.

I.+II. Politics or the political

For both analyses, the question arises as to whether the quality ‘political’ refers to politics or to the political (in  English often polity). For in the philosophy of politics and also in the discussion of theatre theory, the distinction between ‘politics’ (la politique) and ‘the political’ (le politique) has become established. So does political theatre refer to the realm of politics or to the political or both? So what is the relationship between the noun ‘politics’, the attributive adjective ‘political’ and the substantivised adjective ‘the political’ in the case of theatre?

In her encyclopaedia article ‘Politisches Theater’1 Erika Fischer-Lichte distinguishes between four conceptual understandings:

1. structural politicality of theatre, 2. anthropological impact of theatre as political, 3. thematic politicality of theatre, 4. new politics of the aesthetic.

Conceptual understandings 1 and 2 are of the type ‘theatre is political because …’ (I.) and are aimed at theatre as a whole, at its structure (1) or its effect (2). 3. is a definition of a certain type of theatre, i.e. II a), but often also II b) bb). However, Fischer-Lichte’s term no. 4 is the most interesting because it has occupied the theatre studies debate in recent years.

In the following, the questions arising from I, II a) and b) as well as Fischer-Lichte’s No. 4 will be examined, in each case with reference to the philosophical or theatre studies literature and occasional references to current theatre practice.

I. ‘Theatre is political because …’

1 Alain Badiou

From Alain Badiou, the French philosopher who has always been politically active to this day and who was also present in the theatre as an author, one could expect an answer.2

For Badiou, there is a ‘formal analogy’ between theatre and politics (‘la politique’)3 He also calls this relationship of similarity ‘isomorphism theatre/politics’. It is not based on thematic congruence, but on structure. However, he also sees a distance between politics and theatre, which he calls ‘figurative’4. To show the analogous relationship between theatre and politics, he lists the elements of both areas:

‘So: place, text, director, actors, set, costumes, audience are the elements of theatre that can be deduced a priori. And organisations, textual speakers, thinkers, proper names, the state, different points of view and eventful masses are the mandatory ingredients of a political situation.’ 5

For Badiou, politics is nothing permanent, ‘politics takes place’ and so does the theatre: ‘The performance takes place.’6. For Badiou, theatre and politics (‘la politique’) have the complete precariousness of time in common. For Badiou, ‘substantial’ theatre, unlike cinema and commercial ‘theatre’, is a matter for the state and therefore requires subsidies.7.

‘Of all the arts, theatre is the one that most persistently leans towards politics (or presupposes it).’ 8

For Badiou, events produce truths, both in art (and thus in theatre) and in politics. For Badiou, truth is the process of fidelity to an event.9

This conception of politics10 can be criticised because it does not take into account the antagonistic element of politics11. But regardless of his political theory, it can also be said that even Badiou does not claim an identity between politics and theatre. For Badiou, the sentence ‘Theatre is political because …’ could not be continued in this way. It should read: ‘Theatre is similar to politics because …’.

With his definition of the relationship between theatre and politics as a relationship of proximity without identity, Badiou hits on a point that other theories of political theatre also consider.

Oliver Marchart, for example, also states

‘a certain similarity of theatrical and political action’, “a fundamental comparability of the boards that mean the world with the public space of politics.”12

Marchart examines two of the prime examples of political theatre, the occupation of the Theatre Odéon in Paris in 1968 and the re-enactment of the Russian October Revolution in 1920 in St. Petersburg by the director Nikolai Evrejnoff. However, Marchart uses these examples to show the fundamental unrepresentability of antagonism, which is the essence of politics. For him, there is therefore only a rough approximation, a ‘passage à l’acte’ to antagonism. For him, the genre of theatre that most closely corresponds to the antagonism of politics is melodrama (whereby he is referring to the French and British stage melodramas of the 18th and early 19th centuries, not the musical genre). However, because he can hardly recommend melodrama to contemporary theatre as a future-oriented model for political theatre, he leaves the conclusion for future theatre to the English theatre scholar Janelle Reinert:

“In casting my comments within the discourse of what might be called ‘democratic civics’, I am attempting to theorize a theatrical space patronized by a consensual community of citizen-spectators who come together at stagings of the social imaginary in order to consider and experience affirmation, contestation and reworking of various material and discursive practices pertinent to the constitution of a democratic society.” 13

For Marchart, political theatre seems to be possible without all theatre being political for him or theatre being part of the political or of politics. Only an approach to politics is possible.

It is therefore impossible to find a valid reason why all theatre is political per se. The sentence ‘Theatre is political because …’ remains unfinished.

2 Jens Roselt

A completely different philosophically based definition of the structure of theatre can be found in Jens Roselt’s habilitation thesis ‘Phänomenologie des Theaters’ 14. It does without any reference to politics. However, Roselt does examine the particular structure of the community that a theatre performance creates. He analyses the theatre situation between performer (actor/actress) and audience (spectators) as a we, without any reference to politics.

Unlike Badiou, he does not parallel audience (theatre) and ‘eventful masses’ (politics), but rather defines the specificity of theatre closely oriented to the manifestations of contemporary theatre. Its audience is constituted in the ‘interplay of seriality and dissidence’15. Seriality is the interdependence of a collective, but one that is purely external, without individual reciprocal influence. On the other hand, a theatre audience is not completely determined by this seriality; everyone can reclaim their individual freedom at any time (by heckling, booing, leaving the auditorium, etc.). As an audience, one acts ‘together in individual difference’16.

Following the phenomenologist Aron Gurwitsch, Roselt distinguishes between three dimensions of we-experiences: partnership (“Partnerschaft”), community (“Gemeinschaft”) and covenant (“Bund”). All three can characterise the situation of a theatre performance:17 the encounter in a role (partnership), the experience of affiliation (community), emotional fusion (covenant). However, Roselt cites the Living Theatre’s production ‘Paradise Now’ (which was shown in January 1970 at the Berlin Akademie der Künste) as an example of this seemingly antiquated terminology from the 1930s18. Roselt can thus analyse the effect of the avant-garde theatre of the 1960s ‘as a new form of social experience’ 19 without declaring it ‘political’, although the Living Theatre explicitly saw itself as a political theatre in the radicalised succession of Erwin Piscator20. Roselt thus shows through precise analysis that new experimental theatre forms that overcome the traditional ‘viewing and listening arrangement’ of the theatre and offer an ‘exploration of the situational aspect’21 of theatre, do indeed make new forms of social experience possible for the audience, but these do not have to be equated with a political experience.

Or in the words of Oliver Marchart:

‘Not every social practice is a political practice.’22.

II ‘Theatre is political when …’

a) descriptive

1 Erwin Piscator

Erwin Piscator coined the term ‘political theatre’ in the 1920s. He was referring to his own  theatre, the Piscator Theatre. The term therefore originated from the perspective of the theatre makers, not as an analytical term of theatre observation. Because by ‘political theatre’ Piscator meant his theatre, which he created as a director and theatre manager, ‘political’ was not a descriptive term for him either. For him, political theatre is therefore necessarily a ‘proletarian-political theatre.’23. For him, the necessity of this theatre was based on the present, in which he developed his theatre in the 1920s and 1930s.

‘A time in which the relationships between the general public, the reorganisation of all relationships are on the agenda, can only see man in his position in society, as a political being.”24

Conditions that make every expression of life a political one also require a political theatre.

For Piscator, there is also non-political theatre, but only if a ruling class wants to keep theatre out of the power struggles of a society. For Piscator, the sentence would therefore be: ‘Theatre is political when it is necessary.’

2 Siegfried Melchinger

This view that political theatre is a special subspecies of theatre, alongside entertainment theatre, commercial theatre, children’s theatre, etc., is rarely held today. A prominent example of this view in the 1960s and 1970s, when the concept of ‘political theatre’ came back into the discussion, is Siegfried Melchinger’s comprehensive ‘Geschichte des politischen Theaters’25.

Melchinger’s account of theatre history is of little use for today’s discussion because, despite his knowledge of Living Theatre and Bread and Puppet Theatre, it only refers to theatre texts, to plays, and only to those that were still being performed in 1970. For him, theatre is always an object of politics. But politics is also a subject of theatre (plays).

‘Politics is an important and at times urgent theme of the theatre. But it has never been the only one, and it will and can be as little so as in life.”26.

For Melchinger, not all theatre is political, but his definition of the difference between political and apolitical theatre remains imprecise:

‘Political theatre sets up situations, processes that are important for many, most, perhaps all. It shows possible forms of behaviour in these situations; it shows them critically and appeals to criticism. To the criticism of the audience. Only when political theatre succeeds in involving the audience in the situations and events does it create the public sphere that is its most distinctive feature.’ 27.

The criterion of publicity applies to all types of (contemporary) theatre, as long as they are not private events. This also means that theatre tries to be important ‘for everyone’ – which it can never achieve in full. The counter-image of apolitical theatre is only pejoratively labelled with common terms such as ‘sentimental emotion’, ‘strange identification’, ‘beautiful or uplifting illusion’28.

Melchinger’s initially descriptive concept of political theatre becomes more normative in the course of his presentation. Not only should political theatre be critical, it should not serve the ‘intentions of ruling systems’ 29, but there should always be political theatre. Despite the ineffectiveness of political theatre, which Melchinger states at the end of his passage, he demands:

‘Now that nothing has been achieved, the task remains: to intervene in the arrogance of politicians through political theatre.’ 30

Melchinger’s ‘History of political theatre’ is written from the perspective of a theatre critic, and any critic cannot refrain from making judgements.

Preliminary conclusion:

There does not seem to be a truly descriptive concept of ‘political theatre’. But why?

To be continued

  1. Erika Fischer-Lichte, {Lemma} ‘Politisches Theater’ in: Erika Fischer-Lichte e.a. (ed.), Metzler Lexikon Theatertheorie. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler 2nd ed. 2014, pp. 260-262 ↵
  2. Badiou was a leading member of the ‘Union des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste’ UCF-ML from 1969-1985. In 1974, he was the leader of the group ‘Foudre’ (Lightning Strike), which blew up film screenings by throwing paint bags at the screen, and which also disrupted Ariane Mnouchine’s performances because it considered her work with immigrants to be wrong. He is the author of a tetralogy of plays ‘Le Cycle Ahmed’, his dialogue ‘La Républic de Platon’ was performed at the Avignon Festival in 2015. Detailed references to Badiou’s plays and their reception can be found in note 6 of Bruno Bosteel’s foreword to the English edition of Rhapsodie pour le théâtre {Alain Badiou, Rhapsody for the theatre. Edited and introduced by Bruno Bosteels. London: Verso, 2013 p.X-Xi}. This volume also contains an English version of a text by Badiou on his ‘Ahmed’ tetralogy {ibid. p.139-159}. The original French version of this text, including the play text of ‘Ahmed le subtil’ on the occasion of the performance in Reims and Avignon in 1994, can be found at numilog.com. ↵
  3. Alain Badiou, Rhapsodie für das Theater.  Eine kurze philosophische Abhandlung. Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 2015. p.49 ↵
  4. ‘Isomorphism {of theatre} with politics (taking into account the figurative distance).’ ibid. p.36 ↵
  5. ibid. p.33 ↵
  6. ibid p.34 ↵
  7. ibid. pp. 38, 43 ↵
  8. Ibid, p. 49 ↵
  9.  Oliver Marchart, Die politische Differenz. Zum politischen Denken bei Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, Laclau und Agamben. Suhrkamp, 4th ed. 2019, p. 169 ↵
  10. An English version of his essay on justice ‘Philosophy and Politics’ from 1999 is available on the Internet ↵
  11. Marchart, p. 177: ‘Badiou is led to his ethical narrow-mindedness because he does not want to understand politics as a space of immanence of intertwined forces {…}, but wants to maintain a strict separation between the state and a politics of truth in his two-world doctrine.’ trsl. G.P. ↵
  12. Oliver Machart, “On the stage of the political. The Street, the Theatre and the Political Aesthetics of the Sublime” {2004} https://transversal.at/transversal/0605/marchart/de ↵
  13. Janelle Reinelt, ‘Notes for a Radical Democratic Theatre: Productive Crises and the Challenge of Indeterminacy’, in: Jeanne Colleran and Jenny S. Spencer (eds.), Staging Resistance. Essays on Political Theatre, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 1998, p. 286. cited in German translation in: Marchart 2004 ↵
  14. Jens Roselt, Phänomenologie des Theaters. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2008 ↵
  15. Roselt p. 333 ↵
  16. Roselt p. 330-333 ↵
  17. Roselt p.345 ↵
  18. In my memory, it was a chaotic mess on stage that barely touched the audience, who were seated in two blocks on the two long sides of the stage in the middle. ↵
  19. Roselt p. 355 ↵
  20. Judith Melina: ‘Without question, the Living Theatre was always a political theatre. That was also always Piscator’s view.’ Erika Billetter, The Living Theatre. Paradise Now. Ein Bericht in Wort und Bild. Bern: Rütten + Loening, 1968, p.15f ↵
  21. Hans-Thies Lehmann, ‘Wie politisch ist postdramatisches Theater?’, In: H-Th.L., Das Politische Schreiben. Essays on theatre texts. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2002 {= Recherchen 12; first in: Theater der Zeit, October 2001}, p.35 ↵
  22. Oliver Marchart, book presentation Conflictual Aesthetics.University of Applied Arts Vienna ↵
  23. Erwin Piscator, Theater der Auseinandersetzung. Ausgewählte Schriften und Reden. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1977, p. 17. This formulation can be found in an article that Piscator published in the ‘Rote Fahne’, the party newspaper of the KPD, on 1 January 1928 ↵
  24. Piscator p.26 ↵
  25. Siegfried Melchinger, Geschichte des politischen Theaters. Velber: Friedrich Verlag, 1971, developed from a series of lectures at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts in 1970/71 ↵
  26. ibid. p.9. From today’s perspective, Melchinger’s addition is amusing: ’There is no doubt that the dismantling of constraints and taboos that we are experiencing in this area also has a political relevance. But nobody will be so silly as to relegate the fact itself, the division of the human race into two sexes that relate to and mate with each other, as such to the responsibility of the politician.” trsl. G.P. ↵
  27. ibid. p. 17 ↵
  28. ibid. p. 17 ↵
  29. ibid. p.18 ↵
  30. ibid. p.418 ↵

Truth in Theatre – Part 1 Art

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The primal scene

It was in 2002, in the mirror tent of the Berlin Theatertreffen, where the audience discussions following the performances took place at the time:

“This juror has no idea what truth is”1

the universally revered Ivan Nagel exclaimed from the auditorium. It was the evening after the performance of Luk Perceval’s production of Jon Fosse’s then new play “Dream in Autumn.” The Munich Kammerspiele were guests at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele with Dagmar Manzel and Stephan Bissmeier. And it had been my turn to present the reasons for the jury’s selection of this production2.

“What is truth?” asked Pontius Pilate in a famous trial, and then rendered the most momentous miscarriage of justice in Western history. That bumbling juror on the podium was indeed somehow barking up the wrong tree, but he wasn’t quite as clueless as he seemed, even then. The tumult in the mirror tent and Franz Wille’s eloquent defense of my position prevented Ivan Nagel from explaining further what exactly he understood by truth. So what could Ivan Nagel have meant by truth in the theatre?

The concept of truth

Truth on the Theatre  is different from ordinary truth. The concept of truth, when used by theatre people, has a completely different meaning than in science. With the theories of truth in contemporary philosophy – semantic or representative concept of truth, evidential, consensual, or coherence theory of truth3 – it has nothing to do. In any case, modern philosophy of science gets along largely without the concept of truth.4 The concept of truth in theatre (and theatre theory) comes more from the Plato-Hegel-Heidegger-Adorno-Badiou line of tradition than from the Aristotle-Thomas Aquinas-Kant-Wittgenstein line.

There is no treatise on truth in Nagel’s writings; only once does he mention Alfred Kerr’s enthusiastic exclamation in the face of a guest performance of Stanislavsky’s production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” in 1906.

“It is the truth – the truth!” 5

It is obvious to assume that Ivan Nagel, as a student of Adorno, referred to his academic teacher’s concept of truth. But Adorno’s concept of truth must also be placed in the context of Hegel’s and Heidegger’s theories of truth in order to understand what the concept of truth can and cannot mean in its application to theater. This essay is not just a ridiculously vain effort to wipe an old slate clean, but also to shed some light on the current discussion of authenticity and representation in the theatre.

The truth of art

In order to be able to say something about truth in theatre, one must first clarify the concept of truth, then its application to art, and finally one must consider the special conditions of theatre as an art form. The following account is certainly simplified in layman’s terms and does not take into account the widely differing basic assumptions of the various philosophers, and remains on the surface of what is of interest to theatre theory, but is thereby perhaps understandable the general public.

The most common concept of truth is that first formulated by Aristotle:

“To say of something that is that it is not, or of something that is not that it is, is false; whereas to say of something that it is, and of something that is not, that it is not, is true.”6.

This correspondence concept of truth, or this adequation theory of truth, limits the application of the concept of truth to propositional sentences. From Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and Ockham to Kant, there is agreement that truth is propositional truth, correspondence of thought and object. The circularity of this definition is noticed only in the 20th century and leads to various attempts to save (Tarski) or to replace (Habermas) this correspondence theory. Art has nothing to do with this business.

From Plato to Hegel

Plato, on the other hand, had related the concept to a higher reality: the ideas (forms) are true for him because they have a higher form of reality than empirical reality7. It is to this ontological-gnoseological concept of truth that Hegel links8 (following Fichte) when he devalues the correspondence concept of truth to mere “correctness” 9 and truth defined as “agreement of a content with itself.”10. For Hegel, truth is only the spirit that has come to itself, agreement of the absolute spirit with itself. So only the whole is the truth11, not a proposition, but the whole self-developing apprehension of reality.

In this process of the spirit’s coming to itself, art has a decisive role. Through the correspondence of the concept of a work of art with its concrete Dasein, through its combination of complete freedom of the parts and necessity of their correspondence, a work of art (“the beautiful”) has truth.

“For according to its essence, in the beautiful object both its concept, its purpose, and the soul of it, as well as its external determinateness, diversity, and reality, must appear as effected by itself and not by others, in that, as we saw, it has truth only as an intrinsic unity and as correspondence of determinate existence and genuine essence and concept. {…} Both must be present in the beautiful object: the necessity that its particular sides belong together which is set by its concept,  and the appearance of freedom of its particular parts as being produced for themselves and not only for the unity of the whole. {…} Through this freedom and infinity, which the concept of the beautiful bears in itself as well as the beautiful object and its subjective contemplation, the the area of the beautiful is wrested from the relativity of finite relations and elevated into the absolute realm of the idea and its truth.”12

Here, then, art receives a function in a process whose goal is truth, and only because it is part of this process can there be talk of the end of art in Hegel, namely when, in this process of self-development and self-understanding of the absolute spirit, art cedes its role as “front man” to pure reflection, i.e. philosophy.

From Heidegger to Adorno

This emphatic concept of truth, that truth is the whole and cannot be attributed to a single proposition, will – in spite of all Nietzsche’s polemics against the concept of truth13 – be crucial to philosophical aesthetics and art theory in the 20th century . Both Heidegger and Adorno see the task of art in this process of unfolding a truth. The similarities are striking despite all political, and stylistic contrasts, despite all different basic assumptions – if one reduces them to the aspect of the relation of art to truth – and ignores what the two great thinkers each understand by truth14.

The work of art relates the individuals, the recipients of art, to something super-individual. The reception of a work of art is not only an individual experience, not only a process of excitation in the consciousness of the recipients, but the mediation of a connection to something supra-individual, which both Heidegger and Adorno call “truth.”

Heidegger:

“…does not degrade the work into the role of an catalyst of excitement. The preservation of the work does not isolate people to their experiences, but engages them into affiliation of the truth happening in the work….” 15

Adorno:

“The truth of the work of art, however, cannot be imagined in any other way than that in the subjectively imagined An sich something trans-subjective becomes legible. Its mediation is the work.” 16

For Heidegger as for Adorno, truth is nothing static, nothing existing. For both, art is a becoming, a happening, and truth then a Gewordenes, something that has happened:

Heidegger:

“Art is the establishing of truth setting itself up in the form (Gestalt).{…} So art is the creating preservation of truth in the work. Then art is a becoming and happening of truth.” 17

Adorno:

“Art is interpretable only by its law of motion, not by invariants. It determines itself in relation to what it is not. {..} Axiomatic for a reoriented aesthetics is the insight, developed by the late Nietzsche against traditional philosophy, that what has evolved can also be true. The traditional view demolished by him would have to be turned upside down: Truth only exists  as something that has evolved (Gewordenes).” 18

Both Heidegger and Adorno emphasize the ambiguity, the paradox of art’s relation to truth:

Heidegger:

“To the essence of truth as the unconcealed belongs this denial in the manner of the twofold concealment.”
“The essence of truth is in itself the primordial dispute, in which that open middle is contended for, into which being enters and from which it withdraws into itself.” 19

Adorno:

“Art is true insofar as that which speaks from it and it itself is ambivalent, unreconciled, but this truth is granted to it when it synthesizes the split and thereby determines it only in its irreconcilability. Paradoxically, it has to testify to the unreconciled and at the same time tend to reconcile it; this is possible only to its non-discursive language.” 20

Because truth is not simply present in art, it depends on the right way of dealing with works of art in order to unfold truth. Heidegger calls this unfolding of the truth of the work of art “preservation”; for Adorno it is “philosophical reflection” and “critique.”

Heidegger:

“To follow this dislocation means: to transform the habitual references to the world and to the earth and henceforth to hold back all familiar doing and valuation, knowing and looking, in order to dwell in the truth happening in the work. […] To let the work be a work, we call the preservation of the work.” 21 Das Werk ein Werk sein lassen, nennen wir die Bewahrung des Werkes.“ Heidegger op. cit., p.53.]
“The very reality of the work, on the other hand, comes into play only where the work is preserved in the truth that occurs through it.” 22

Adorno:

“The truth content of the works of art is the objective resolution of the riddle of each individual work. By demanding the solution, it points to the truth content. This can only be gained through philosophical reflection. … No statement could be squeezed out of Hamlet; its truth content is therefore no less.” “Grasping the truth content postulates criticism. Nothing is apprehended whose truth or untruth is not apprehended, and that is the critical business.” 23

Here, from the point of view of theater criticism, in search of the instruction manual for dealing with the artworks of theater, lies the crucial difference: according to Heidegger, the artwork is to be “preserved” in its reception; according to Adorno, it is to be critically reflected upon.
In Adorno’s “Early Introduction” to his Ästhetische Theorie, there is a passage that perhaps captures what Ivan Nagel would have wanted to reproach the uninformed juror back then in 2002, had he been allowed to finish:

“Works of art are understood only where their experience reaches the alternative of true and untrue or, as its preliminary stage, that of right and wrong. Criticism is not external to aesthetic experience, but immanent to it. Understanding a work of art as a complexion of truth brings it into relation with its untruth, for there is none that does not participate in the untruth apart from it, that of the world age. Aesthetics, which does not move in the perspective of truth, slackens before its task; most often it is culinary. Because the moment of truth is essential to works of art, they participate in cognition and thus the legitimate relation to them (participates in cognition).” 24

Badiou’s scheme

Alain Badiou has attempted to organize theories about the relationship between art and truth into three schemes:

  1. The didactic schema (Plato): art cannot produce truth. It is only the deceptive appearance of truth. Truth exists only outside art. Therefore art must be regulated.
  2. the romantic scheme: truth exists only in art (and in philosophy, but art truth is the completion of philosophical truth by embodiment).
  3. the classical scheme (Aristotle): there is no truth in art, but that is not bad. It has other tasks.

Against this Badiou puts his own theory of truth25. There is no such thing as truth, only truths. Truth, for Badiou, is not a property of a judgment, but a process in reality through which something new emerges. There are four different truth processes: Science, Politics, Love (!) and Art. The truths of art are immanent to it, found only in it, and they are singular, existing nowhere else26. For Badiou, however, it is not the artworks themselves that are the truths, but:

“A work of art represents an inquiry into the truth that is actualized in the work of art as its locus, or whose finite fragment it is.” 27

For Badiou, artistic truth is also not the individual work, but an “artistic configuration” that goes back to a triggering event, an upheaval. By configuration, Badiou means something like an artistic paradigm, an epoch, or a dominant style. He cites as examples of modernism: “serialism, romantic prose, the age of poets, a break with pictorial representation.” 28

For Badiou, Heidegger’s theory of art clearly belongs to the Romantic schema. This should also be true for Adorno’s theory, if one wants to follow Badiou’s somewhat crude scheme. After all, for Adorno, philosophical reflection is only an aid to disentangling the truth content of the work of art.

Interim result 1

Preliminary result thus: Ivan Nagel had a Romantic-Adornite conception of truth and now wanted to demand of the critic that he justify the selection of the production as one of the most “remarkable” of the vintage with its “truth.”

  1. In the following annotations you will find English translations of the German original, which are my own, followed by the original quotation in German. ↵
  2. Franz Wille called it a scene of “Homeric power” and took it as the occasion for his season essay in the yearbook of “Theater heute”: Franz Wille, „Im Auge des blinden Flecks. Über das Theater der Repräsentationen und seine Matrix, über Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit von Nietzsche bis Nagel und manche andere Perspektive.“ Theater heute Jahrbuch 2003, pp. 102-113 ↵
  3. For a clear, brief account of modern theories of truth, see Thomas Grundmann, Philosophische Wahrheitstheorien. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2018. Grundmann considers the clarification of the concept of truth to be an urgent political task. A more detailed, older account is L. Bruno Puntel, Wahrheitstheorien in der neueren Philosophie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983. The main basic texts can be found in Gunnar Skirbekk (ed.), Wahrheitstheorien. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1977. ↵
  4. Karl Popper does hold to the “idea of absolute truth,” but only as a limiting concept to refer to our infinite fallibility: “The idea of absolute truth is necessary so that we live incessantly in the consciousness of our fallibility.” Karl Popper, „Interview mit l’Express“ 1982, dt. in: Aufklärung und Kritik 2/1994, pp. 38ff ↵
  5. „Manchmal, {…} sagt man sich: nun ja, die einzelnen sind Darsteller, bescheidene Einzelwerte … aber das Ganze gefaßt, glaubt man, wie der Diable boiteux in abgedeckte Häuser zu blicken … Es ist die Wahrheit – die Wahrheit.“  English: “Sometimes, {…} one says to oneself: well, the individuals are performers, modest individual values … but the whole taken together, one thinks one is looking, like the Diable boiteux, into covered houses … It is the truth – the truth.” Alfred Kerr, “Ich sage, was zu sagen ist” Theaterkritiken 1893-1919 (Werke Bd. VII.1) ed. Günther Rühle. Frankfurt/M: S. Fischer 1998, p.267 ↵
  6. „τὸ μὲν γὰρ λέγειν τὸ ὄν μὴ εἶναι ἢ τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι ψεῦδος, τὸ δὲ τὸ ὂν εἶναι καὶ τὸ μὴ ὂν μὴ εἶναι ἀληθές” „Von etwas, was ist, zu sagen, dass es nicht ist oder von etwas, was nicht ist, dass es ist, ist falsch; hingegen ist wahr, von etwas zu sagen, dass es ist und von etwas, das nicht ist, zu sagen, dass es nicht ist.“ Metaphysics IV,7 1011b ↵
  7. Jan Szaif proves that even the late Plato formulated this correspondence concept of truth in his Sophistes: Jan Szaif, „Die Geschichte des Wahrheitsbegriffs in der klassischen Antike“ in: Markus Enders & Jan Szaif (Hg.), Die Geschichte des philosophischen Begriffs der Wahrheit. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2006, p.16f ↵
  8. “Hegel’s doctrine of truth thus appears at first glance as a dynamized variant of Christian Platonism.” „Hegels Lehre von der Wahrheit erscheint somit auf den ersten Blick als dynamisierte Variante des christlichen Platonismus.“  Herbert Schnädelbach, Antrittsvorlesung 26. Mai 1993. https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/18452/2275/Schnaedelbach.pdf?sequence=1 ↵
  9. “Correctness and truth are very often regarded as synonymous in common life, and accordingly the truth of a content is often spoken of where mere correctness is concerned. Correctness only refers to the formal agreement of our conception with its content, whatever else this content may be. Truth, on the other hand, consists in the agreement of the object with itself, i.e., with its concept.” “Richtigkeit und Wahrheit werden im gemeinen Leben sehr häufig als gleichbedeutend betrachtet, und demgemäß wird oft von der Wahrheit eines Inhalts gesprochen, wo es sich um bloße Richtigkeit handelt. Diese betrifft überhaupt nur die formelle Übereinstimmung unserer Vorstellung mit ihrem Inhalt, wie dieser Inhalt auch sonst beschaffen sein mag. Dahingegen besteht die Wahrheit in der Übereinstimmung des Gegenstandes mit sich selbst, d.h. mit seinem Begriff.” G.W.F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1970 (WA Bd.8), S. 323, §172 Zusatz ↵
  10. “In the philosophical sense, on the other hand, truth, expressed abstractly in general, means agreement of a content with itself. {…} Untrue then means as much as bad, in itself inappropriate. {…} the bad and untrue in general consists in the contradiction that takes place between the determination or the concept and the existence of an object.” „Im philosophischen Sinn dagegen heißt Wahrheit, überhaupt abstrakt ausgedrückt, Übereinstimmung eines Inhalts mit sich selbst. {…} Unwahr heißt dann soviel als schlecht, in sich selbst unangemessen. {…} das Schlechte und Unwahre überhaupt besteht in dem Widerspruch, der zwischen der Bestimmung oder dem Begriff und der Existenz eines Gegenstandes stattfindet.“ G.W.F. Hegel, WA Bd.8, S. 86 §24 Zusatz 2 . Rainer Schäfer sets out the reasons for this change in the definition of truth. They lie in the idealistic basic conception of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Cf. Rainer Schäfer, „Das holistisch-systemische Wahrheitskonzept im deutschen Idealismus (Fichte-Hegel)” In: Enders & Szaif (eds.) op. cit. S. 251 ↵
  11. “The true is the whole…. But the whole is only the being completing itself through its development.” „Das Wahre ist das Ganze.. Das Ganze aber ist nur das durch seine Entwicklung sich vollendende Wesen.“ G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Einleitung. (WA Bd. 3) Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1970, p. 24 ↵
  12. “Denn dem Wesen nach muss in dem schönen Objekt sowohl der Begriff, der Zweck und die Seele desselben wie seine äußere Bestimmtheit, Mannigfaltigkeit und Realität überhaupt aus sich selbst und nicht durch andere bewirkt erscheinen, indem es, wie wir sahen, nur als immanente Einheit und Übereinstimmung des bestimmten Daseins und echten Wesens und Begriffs Wahrheit hat. {…} Beides muss im schönen Objekte vorhanden sein: die durch den Begriff gesetzte Notwendigkeit im Zusammengehören der besonderen Seiten und der Schein ihrer Freiheit als für sich und nicht nur für die Einheit hervorgegangener Teile. {…} Durch diese Freiheit und Unendlichkeit, welche der Begriff des Schönen wie die schöne Objektivität und deren subjektive Betrachtung in sich trägt, ist das Gebiet des Schönen der Relativität endlicher Verhältnisse entrissen und in das absolute Reich der Idee und ihrer Wahrheit emporgetragen.“ G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1970 (WA Bd. 13), p.156f ↵
  13. The hackneyed quotation may not be missing here: “So what is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations, which, poetically and rhetorically enhanced, have been transmitted, adorned, and which, after long use, seem to a people fixed, canonical, and binding: the truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are any, metaphors which have become worn out and sensually powerless.” „Was ist also Wahrheit? Ein bewegliches Heer von Metaphern, Metonymien, Anthropomorphismen, kurz eine Summe von menschlichen Relationen, die, poetisch und rhetorisch gesteigert, übertragen, geschmückt wurden und die nach langem Gebrauch einem Volke fest, kanonisch und verbindlich dünken: die Wahrheiten sind Illusionen, von denen man vergessen hat, dass sie welche sind, Metaphern, die abgenutzt und sinnlich kraftlos geworden sind.“ Friedrich Nietzsche, „Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außenmoralischen Sinne“, https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/nietzsch/essays/wahrheit.html ↵
  14. Heidegger deals extensively and repeatedly with the concept of truth, e.g. in “Being and Time” §44: “The statement is true, means: it discovers the being in itself {…} Wahrsein (truth) of the statement must be understood as entdeckend-sein (discovering).” „Die Aussage ist wahr, bedeutet: sie entdeckt das Seiende an ihm selbst {…} Wahrsein (Wahrheit) der Aussage muss verstanden werden als entdeckend-sein.“ Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 15th ed. 1979, p.218. Here Heidegger tries to ground the traditional correspondence-theoretical concept of truth existentially ontologically in the structure of human existence: “Truth in the original sense is the the state of being discovered of human existence, to which the discovering of the inner-worldly being belongs.” “Wahrheit im ursprünglichen Sinne ist die Erschlossenheit des Daseins, zu der die Entdecktheit des innenweltlichen Seienden gehört.“op. cit. S.223.
    Adorno refuses to define truth for good reasons. Even in his lecture “Philosophical Terminology” (1962/63) the term “truth” does not appear as a terminus of philosophy to be explained, but it is nevertheless constantly used. After all, there is a definition of philosophy: “This is how I would define {…} philosophy: as the movement of the mind whose own intention is truth, without imagining to have this truth as an already finished thing in one of its own propositions or in any shape of immediacy.” „So würde ich {…} Philosophie definieren: als die Bewegung des Geistes, deren eigene Intention Wahrheit ist, ohne dass sie wähnte, nun in einem ihrer eigenen Sätze oder in irgendeiner Gestalt der Unmittelbarkeit dieses Wahrheit als ein bereits Fertiges zu haben.“ Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophische Terminologie I und II, Hg.v. Henri Lonitz. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016, p.114. And a concise determination of the relationship between art and philosophy: “If in art the truth or the objective or the absolute becomes entirely expression, then conversely in philosophy expression, at least according to its tendency, becomes truth.” P. 113. Adorno, of course, is not uncritical of Hegel: “Spirit, which is supposed to be totality, is a nonsense.” Geist, der Totalität sein soll, ist ein Nonsens.“ (Adorno, Negative Dialetik. Jargon der Eigentlichkeit. Gesammelte Schriften Bd. 6, Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1984, p.199.) Adorno’s dialectic is the negative one, therefore, for him, “The whole is the untrue.” „Das Ganze ist das Unwahre.“ Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1980 (= Bibliothek Suhrkamp 236) Nr. 29, S. 57 The whole is the “spell, the negative” ( p.161): “The calamity lies in the conditions which condemn people to impotence and apathy and yet could be changed by them.” „Das Unheil liegt in den Verhältnissen, welche die Menschen zur Ohnmacht und Apathie verdammen und doch von ihnen zu ändern wären.“ (p.191). Against this only “determinate negation” (bestimmte Negation) helps ↵
  15. „…setzt das Werk nicht herab in die Rolle eines Erlebniserregers. Die Bewahrung des Werkes vereinzelt die Menschen nicht auf ihre Erlebnisse, sondern rückt sie ein in die Zugehörigkeit zu der im Werk geschehenden Wahrheit….“ Martin Heidegger, „Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes“ in: Holzwege. Frankfurt/M: Klostermann, 6th ed. 1980, p.54 ↵
  16.  „Die Wahrheit des Kunstwerks aber kann nicht anders vorgestellt werden, als dass in dem subjektiv imaginierten An sich ein Transsubjektives lesbar wird. Dessen Vermittlung ist das Werk.“ Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie. (=Gesammelte Schriften Bd. 7). Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1970, p. 421 ↵
  17. „Kunst ist das Feststellen der sich einrichtenden Wahrheit in die Gestalt.{…} Also ist die Kunst: die schaffende Bewahrung der Wahrheit im Werk. Dann ist die Kunst ein Werden und Geschehen der Wahrheit.“ Heidegger op. cit. p. 57. ↵
  18. „Deutbar ist Kunst nur an ihrem Bewegungsgesetz, nicht durch Invarianten. Sie bestimmt sich im Verhältnis zu dem, was sie nicht ist. {…} Axiomatisch ist für eine umorientierte Ästhetik die vom späten Nietzsche gegen die traditionelle Philosophie entwickelte Erkenntnis, dass auch das Gewordene wahr sein kann. Die traditionelle, von ihm demolierte Ansicht wäre auf den Kopf zu stellen: Wahrheit ist einzig als Gewordenes.“ Adorno op. cit. p. 12. ↵
  19. „Zum Wesen der Wahrheit als der Unverborgenheit gehört dieses Verweigern in der Weise des zwiefachen Verbergens.“
    „Das Wesen der Wahrheit ist in sich selbst der Urstreit, in dem jene offenen Mitte erstritten wird, in die das Seiende hereinstellt und aus der es sich in sich selbst zurückzieht.“ Heidegger op. cit., p.40f ↵
  20. „Wahr ist Kunst, soweit das aus ihr Redende und sie selber zwiespältig, unversöhnt ist, aber diese Wahrheit wird ihr zuteil, wenn sie das Gespaltene synthetisiert und dadurch erst in seiner Unversöhnlichkeit bestimmt. Paradox hat sie das Unversöhnte zu bezeugen und gleichwohl tendenziell zu versöhnen; möglich ist das nur ihrer nicht-diskursiven Sprache.“  Adorno op. cit. p. 251. ↵
  21. „Dieser Verrückung folgen heißt: die gewohnten Bezüge zur Welt und zur Erde verwandeln und fortan mit allem geläufigen Tun und Schätzen, Kennen und Blicken ansichhalten, um in der im Werk geschehenden Wahrheit zu verweilen. [… ↵
  22. „Die eigenste Wirklichkeit des Werkes kommt dagegen nur da zum Tragen, wo das Werk in der durch es selbst geschehenden Wahrheit bewahrt wird.“ Heidegger op. cit., p.55 ↵
  23. „Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Kunstwerke ist die objektive Auflösung des Rätsels eines jeden einzelnen. Indem es die Lösung verlangt, verweist es auf den Wahrheitsgehalt. Der ist allein durch philosophische Reflexion zu gewinnen. … Keine Aussage wäre aus *Hamlet* herauszupressen; dessen Wahrheitsgehalt ist darum nicht geringer.“ „Den Wahrheitsgehalt begreifen postuliert Kritik. Nichts ist begriffen, dessen Wahrheit oder Unwahrheit nicht begriffen wäre, und das ist das kritische Geschäft.“ Adorno op. cit., p. 193f. ↵
  24. „Verstanden werden Kunstwerke erst, wo ihre Erfahrung die Alternative von wahr und unwahr erreicht oder, als deren Vorstufe, die von richtig und falsch. Kritik tritt nicht äußerlich zur ästhetischen Erfahrung hinzu, sondern ist ihr immanent. Ein Kunstwerk als Komplexion von Wahrheit begreifen, bringt es in Relation zu seiner Unwahrheit, denn keines ist, das nicht teilhätte an dem Unwahren außer ihm, dem des Weltalters. Ästhetik, die nicht in der Perspektive der Wahrheit sich bewegt, erschlafft vor ihrer Aufgabe; meist ist sie kulinarisch. Weil Kunstwerken das Moment von Wahrheit wesentlich ist, partizipieren sie an Erkenntnis und damit das legitime Verhältnis zu ihnen.“ Adorno op. cit. p. 515f. ↵
  25. See also Badiou’s lecture “Event and Truth” at the symposium “Event in Artistic and Political Practices” (26-28 March 2013) in Amsterdam; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE97dwA8wrU (part 1; parts 2-4 also on YouTube ↵
  26. “What makes art unique among truth processes is that the subject of truth in it is taken from the sensuous.” “Was die Kunst unter den Wahrheitsprozessen einmalig macht, ist, dass das Subjekt der Wahrheit bei ihr dem Sinnlichen entnommen wird.” Alain Badiou, Dritter Entwurf eines Manifestes für den Affirmationismus. hg. und um ein Gespräch mit Alain Badiou erweitert von Frank Ruda und Jan Völker. a.d. Frz.v. Ronald Vouillié. Berlin: Merve, 2007, S. 26 ↵
  27. „Ein Kunstwerk stellt eine Untersuchung über die Wahrheit dar, die im Kunstwerk als ihr Ort aktualisiert ist oder deren endliches Fragment es ist.“ Alain Badiou, Kleines Handbuch der Inästhetik, Berlin: Turia + Kant, 2+2012 (first French 1998), p.25 ↵
  28. Badiou op. cit. p.29 ↵