Von Held, Phoebe Annette; (2001) Alienation and theatricality in Brecht and Diderot. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

My research re-evaluates the Brechtian concept of alienation through the dramaturgical and literary thought of Denis Diderot. This project consists of a theoretical dissertation as well as a theatre production of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew, performed at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 1998, and documented in an attached video. Although the Brecht-Diderot connection has been established in previous studies, most notably by Roland Barthes, my aim is to show that we can enlarge and differentiate our understanding of alienation as a dramaturgical concept by focussing on the conceptual shifts emerging from a comparison between both writers. Rather than interpret Diderot as a historical predecessor of Brecht, as it has been proposed in the past, I have explored conceptual difference and contrast in the framework of two separate historical contexts, thereby calling into question the ideological positivism underlying Brecht's concept of alienation. The outcome of my examination suggests that Brecht's theory of acting as self-alienation does not necessarily lead to its intended effect of alienated detachment on the part of the spectator. In opposition, Diderot concludes from the actor's self-alienation an empathetic response in the spectator, placing this theory at the core of eighteenth- century bourgeois theatre ideology. Moreover, if Brecht's concept of alienation is explicitly antagonistic to the notion of subjectivity, an analysis of Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau shows how alienation relies on subjective experience. Alienation leads to an effect of recognition once the spectator has recognised himself caught in a situation of aesthetic delusion. Contrary to Brecht's Marxist concept of alienation which aims to sharpen the spectator's political consciousness, thereby instigating resistance to the alienated conditions of capitalism, we can observe in Le Neveu de Rameau the strategic employment of alienation as an epistemological means of questioning the precepts of moralism, introducing a notion of critique dependent on ethical self-interrogation.

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