Artaud-- essay in progress (sorta)

I've been thinking a lot about how to apply Theatre of Cruelty (Théâtre de la Cruauté) to the writing of effective inter-subjective poetry.  As Scarry explains, and I've reiterated in previous posts, "one's own physical pain" can be effortlessly grasped, while "another person's physical pain" is effortlessly not grasped (4).  That is to say it comes naturally to me to be aware of and perceive my own pain, whereas it comes naturally to others to be unaware of and/or not perceive the same pain as an outside body (outside my body).  Yet, it will be my argument in my thesis equivalent that the perception of others' pain is not only important but necessary to the curing not of physical pain but cultural apathy towards the pain of others.  This is a distinctly U.S.-based study, with recognition of certain realities, such as extreme lack of American aid to other countries as related to our GDP (recession notwithstanding).

The lack of empathy for the pain of others is not at all insignificant; while it seems that my study has thus far been treated as a mere trifle among some members of the academy, there are obvious and well-known historical accounts of apathy leading to subjugation and mistreatment.  In particular, consider the bases for slavery and the treatment of slaves in the U.S.  The idea of seeing one's slaves as akin to one's animals merely draws from the same argument that neither people of color nor animals are capable of feeling pain.  In this belief, comes the implication that neither has a soul.  I often draw upon the arguments of Descartes in a harsh refute of the still popular French philosopher, for his essay "L'homme" was not only the basis for the mind/soul (espirit) - body distinction, but also vivisection (surgical experimentation on live and historically not sedated or numbed animals).

Descartes most famous cogito ergo sum in Discourse on Method includes a similarly worded concept:

From this I knew that I was a substance the whole essence or nature of which is simply to think, and which, in order to exist, has no need of any place nor depends on any material thing. Thus this “I,” that is to say, the soul through which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body and is even easier to know than the body, and even if there were no body at all, it would not cease to be what it is (19).

In his essay "Thought's Measure," Charles Bernstein refutes this idea and the dismissal of bodily importance, particularly in the creation of the I.  He explains:

As the body is to a person, so language is to the world; to speak of a 'soul' is then to speak of a projection cast by the body.  In this sense, to discount the pervasiveness of language- to be so accustomed to its presence that its constituting power over the values and objects of the world is disregarded- is to avoid the body and with it the materiality of time and space (63).

This quote is followed by an excerpt from Ted Greenwald's "Off the Hook":

    He is gone now
    Taking his body with him
    When all the time
    I thought it was
    The beauty of his mind
    I loved

I suppose it is no wonder that Descartes abandons the importance of the sexual self in the creation of the I; he was certainly under a lot of pressure from the Church.  Yet, if Pope had trouble with Galileo supporting heliocentrism, why shouldn't he have had trouble with Descartes disregarding the bodily suffering of Christ (the Passion), so important in Catholicism?

What is more troubling for me, however, is why, if the mind is so almighty and superior (at some point, I fear I may have to read The Interpretation of Dreams to refute all of Freud's ego-centrism, pun intended) to the body, why can it not then grasp the pain of others?  In a truly empathetic mind, the act of torturing should be an act of torture against oneself, yet this obviously is not the case.  In sooth, can we not say that my questions look into the very nature of a solution to the problem of war?

But his body doesn't care a whit what
his mind is up to. Pretentious intelect-
ual, it thinks, as it goes about its business
eating everything in sight, saying yes
to whatever guilty pleasure comes along,
the mind the monotone in the body's song.
(Wallace 70)

In any event, my argument is that using language to describe one's pain is not only important but essential in the effort to create a culture of empathy in the United States (and beyond, though I do not wish to imply that my examples or considerations are universal in scope).  Bernstein speaks of breaking down the differentiation between thinking (creating) poetry and writing poetry on the page, and by doing this eliminating the fabricated mind-body distinction.  While it is recognized that poetry exists as more than words on a page, the physical element is often neglected-- the reality of the hand traveling across the page or tapping madly on the keyboard in construction of the poem.  I do not mean to suggest that all poetry is constructed in this manner-- I think, for example, Milton's tongue and his daughter's hand would both be physical acts in the creation of Paradise Lost and his other works.  And it is this physical component of poetry creation that I would like to consider.  In fact, in his An Inquiry into the Good, Nishida considers Goethe's "intuitive composition of a poem while dreaming" (7) an example of pure experience, one which the distinction between perception and sensation is revealed to be false.  In this case, Goethe simply acts as the physical participant in poetic creation-- he is a scribe who merely marks down the words of "God" (Nishida's term) as recognized in a true experience.  The act of transcribing is all important in true poetic creation.

This concept is similar to many of the elements explained in Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty'" in Theatre and its Double.  In this essay, he speaks of a "unique language halfway between gesture and thought" (89).  While Artaud specifically considers stage theatre in his work, I would like to consider the implications of his theatre philosophy on poetry making.

(continue!-- spectacle, activating the senses and awakening audiences versus creating diversion-- deemphasizing words themselves.  How can spectacle be brought to the page?  What are the implications of his Spurt of Blood and other works as impossible to actually perform?  Is this, in fact, poetry?)




Works Cited

Artaud, Antonin. Theatre and Its Double. Trans. Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Press Inc., 1958.

Bernstein, Charles. Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2001.

Descartes, René. Discourse on the Method for Conducting One’s Reason Well and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., 1998.

Nishida, Kitaro. An Inquiry into the Good. Trans. Masao Abe and Christopher Ives. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1987.

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.

Wallace, Ronald. The Uses of Adversity. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P,  1998.