Language, Ethics, and Identity in Postmodern Theater

• Main Author: نرگس منتخبی‌‌ بخت‌ور
• Format: Article
• Language: fas
• Published: Shahid Beheshti University 2017-02-01
• Series: Naqd-i Zabān va Adabīyyāt-i Khārijī
• Subjects: زبان، اخلاق، هویت، تئاتر پسامدرن، قدرت
• Online Access: http://clls.sbu.ac.ir/article/view/12782

Ethics has undergone huge changes in postmodernism as many playwrights of the era have tried to capture the deep interconnection between language and subjectivity. The present essay is an attempt to unravel the new ethical dicta set forth on the American and British stage from the 1960s to 1980s. The critical framework for this study relies on Giorgio Agamben’s thought and philosophical oeuvre. Agamben’s ethical renovations happen at the close proximity of language, ontology, and politics. He firmly asserts that experiencing the matter and being of language can be considered as an ethical act that questions cultural clichés imposed by power. Postmodern theater has witnessed an unprecedented shift in the role of language; it has forced the audience to venture the theatrical experience in order to be at the margins of communication and speech. This process can be deemed as ethical from Agamben’s point of view as it entices the viewers to see beyond and through the capitalist and ideological workings. Through such a limit experience, theater can find its true stance as a site for communality. The ultimate purpose of this study is to put forward the mechanisms through which performance can become an ethical gesture by installing the awareness of the fact that liminality of language can in itself be a new form of subjectivity.