After ‘Essay on Political Theatre – Part 5’ provisionally concluded that theatre productions specifically related to current politics were making a comeback after a phase in which theatre called itself political but explicitly turned away from current political content, it remains necessary to ask what the term “political” actually means in the expression ‘political theatre’.

Vollrath’s theory of the political

One could attempt to find an answer to this question using Ernst Vollrath’s theory of the political. Since the 1970s, Vollrath has followed Hannah Arendt’s¹ theory in developing his own philosophical theory of politics². Vollrath takes as his starting point the political difference between politics and the political initiated by Carl Schmitt³ and then, independently of Schmitt, by Ricoeur and Lefort ⁴.

For Vollrath, the political is a practice, i.e. a modality of experience (according to Michael Oakeshott). It is not a content-determined area, but an adverbial modality, i.e. a certain way of doing or experiencing something. Part of this modality is that the political requires decisions. Vollrath defines this type of decision as judgements according to Kant’s maxim of reflective judgement. Kant actually develops his theory of judgement based on aesthetic judgement⁵. Reflective judgement finds the general in a given particular (and certainly does not determine the particular from the general, as theoretical or determinative judgement does). For Kant, this process of judgement underlies aesthetic judgement. Aesthetic judgement, which for Kant consists of declaring something to be beautiful, is not a purely subjective judgement, but neither is it an objective judgement that would be universally valid. However, aesthetic judgement ‘urges’ (“ansinnen”) everyone to ‘agree’ with it. Kant calls this mediating relationship ‘subjective generality’. Vollrath now extends this definition to the political⁶. Subjective universality thus becomes interpersonal universality, because in political judgement all others are considered as persons. Political judgement follows the maxim of reflective judgement: ‘Think in the place of every other person’⁷.

“Reflective judgement can be used in its political quality to define a concept of the political. A judgement made on the basis of the principle expressed in its maxim – to think oneself in the place of each other in community and communication with people – and the operation of reflection following this maxim as a rule is designed in such a way that the basis for its validity is the potential agreement of all others. Those who judge in this way form an association by making their being-with-and-among-others the interpersonal universal practice of their association.”⁸

For Vollrath, this concept of the political is a yardstick that can be applied to all possible phenomena in order to measure their political quality. Because the political is an adverbial modality and not a distinct social sphere, anything can take on political quality as long as it meets this standard.

“Whether and in what way war or revolution or other phenomena are politically qualified and exist in political modality can very well be assessed on the basis of a concept of the political that does not encompass them as phenomena in terms of content, but rather assesses their qualification and modality politically, that is, it measures the extent to which these phenomena are politically determined or not.”⁹

Despite this function of the concept of the political as a yardstick for all possible social phenomena, for Vollrath the norm of the political is a specific type of constitution: the polity[¹⁰. For Vollrath, the political is not something that occurs in all human associations, but a specific type of socialisation invented by the ancient Greeks ¹¹.

“The constitution of a multitude of people from their centre, determined according to the principle of judgement and its reflective operation, should be called polity in order to characterise its authentically political character. If an association allows the centre of its formation and existence to be determined by the practice that is qualified according to the maxim of reflective judgement, then it is a polity.” ¹²

Vollrath has a precise idea of what this polity looks like in concrete terms, which largely corresponds to the model of a representative, pluralistic, constitutional democracy accepted in Western societies:

“In concrete terms, polity refers to the constitutional form of a group of people that is determined by the five elements of mandate, responsibility, time limit, restriction and limitation. … Politie can be realised in a constitutional and legal community based on representation and the separation of powers.” ¹³

Ultimately, for Vollrath, this type of constitution is the criterion for whether any social phenomenon can be called political in the full sense of the word. Politics is the institution that arises from the operation of reflective judgement, and all social phenomena that are called political are measured against the yardstick of their orientation towards this type of socialisation, namely politics.

‘The concept of politics as that of the political is a normative concept insofar as it measures the political quality and modality of phenomena.’ ¹⁴

If the concept of the political is to be the yardstick for the political character of various social phenomena, what is the procedure for determining this political character, the polity, of social phenomena? Vollrath remains rather vague and gives no examples:

“The concepts of the political are therefore concepts of judgement, concepts that determine and comprehend the phenomenon of the political and political phenomena from their cultural context and in relation to it, i.e. together with it, which is at the same time historically shaped. Once again: how should insight into these connections and contexts be achieved in concrete terms? Through distinctive comparison, by comparing one phenomenon with other phenomena against a cultural background, so that they form a context.”¹⁵

How can Vollrath’s concept of the political be applied to theatre?

The political in theatre

Through comparison and contextualisation. One would assume.

But at what level should the comparison be made? The fact that theatres are financed by political institutions is not what is meant by the concept of political theatre. It is obvious that publicly financed theatre has close ties to state political institutions (city, state, federal government).¹⁶. However, this does not necessarily follow that upholding the freedom of art will result in the political character of the product of its activity.

The phrase ‘doing  theatre politically’’, in which ‘politically’ is an adverb, refers to the production process of a theatre production. For example, Barbara Behrendt quotes director Joana Tischkau at a panel discussion at the Freie Volksbühne Berlin: ‘The debate is that it’s not so much about politics on stage, but about politics in the structural, in the working relationships, in how we treat each other.’ ¹⁷ Here, one could apply the standard of the maxim of reflective judgement. If the political in theatre is ‘how we treat each other,’ then the standard by which this is judged is ‘thinking in the place of every other person.’

But that is not what is meant when one replaces ‘making political theatre’ with ‘making theatre politically’. As Godard, who coined this phrase¹⁸, already made clear, this ‘political’ refers to the content or form of what is being presented, not to the production process. So that leaves the level of content or form. But how should its political quality be assessed? According to the intentions of the theatre makers? Then political theatre would be theatre with political intentions. In that case, it would not be possible to judge from the outside whether a theatre production can be called ‘political’ or not. An assessment of the political quality of theatre would have to take into account the entire event of a theatre performance, i.e. the stage and the audience and their relationship. Is there a way to assess the structure of a particular theatre production as “political” according to the definition of the term as defined by Vollrath? How could the maxim “think in the place of every other” be applied as a theatre structure?

Another hypothetical summary

Oliver Marchart defines the political as the dimension of the contingent foundation of societies, while for Ernst Vollrath it is an adverbial modality that applies to an activity when it corresponds to the maxim of ‘thinking in the place of every other’. Both theories agree on the definition of the basis of communitisation as contingent. Hume’s dictum “all government rests on opinion”¹⁹ is often quoted by Vollrath²⁰. Vollrath considers the form of government he calls ‘politie’ to be the one that takes this contingency into account and is truly “political” in this sense. ²¹ Marchart calls this form of constitution democracy, also because it takes into account the ‘abysmal nature of the basis’ of socialisation²²

Political theatre can therefore deal with this founding dimension of social association or with political issues that it measures against the standard of ‘thinking in the place of everyone else’. Not only in the place of one other person, which is what theatre that embodies characters always does and is a public training in empathy – also a prerequisite for ‘thinking in the place of every other person’ – but not political in the true sense of the word. Nuran Calis’ Cologne works with their structure of empathy exchange, e.g. ‘Die Lücke’ (The Gap) or ‘Mölln 92/22’, which apply to both sides, migrants and autochthons, can serve as examples. The criterion is therefore not objectifiable, but one that can only be applied in reception and is therefore applied differently by different recipients (=audiences).

‘It is important to develop a culture of the political’ ²³

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