In this article, I will reflect on a question that was posed in the announcement of the conference, on which this volume is based (“Poetic critique – is that not an oxymoron?”) by shifting (it) to the field of theater, where the intersection between the “poetic” and “critique” takes place in a specific way, and in each of the ‘elements’ of the question, the poetic and critique. In what follows, I will consider theatrical practice that takes a distance from itself, is divided in itself, and thereby, as the critical reflection on theatrical (re)presentation, interrupts it and allows for “critical stances” (kritische Stellungnahme[n]) (Benjamin 1939, 538).1 I will make use of concepts from Walter Benjamin, referring to notions from his essays on Brecht’s theater (Benjamin 1931b and 1939), and, where it seems apt or necessary, I will also address Friedrich Schlegel (as well as Benjamin’s readings of Schlegel). In reading Benjamin’s essay(s) “Was ist das epische Theater?” (“What is Epic Theater?”) – one version of which was stopped in print in 1931 and the second of which was published anonymously in 19392 – I will focus in particular on the notions of ‘gesture,’ ‘interruption,’ and ‘citability.’3 These terms mark central tenets of Benjamin’s philosophy, that is to say of his readings, and they have a particular relevance for theater (and not only that of Brecht).
Benjamin explicitly relates what he sees Brecht’s theater to achieve to the concept of romantic-ironic self-distancing (of form) and thereby to critique as the (self‐)reflection of form in/on itself. Benjamin does this, on the one hand, when he accounts for epic theater’s “awareness of being theater” in interrupting its (re)presention with the old phrase: “an actor should reserve for himself the possibility of falling out of character artistically” (Benjamin 1939, 538).4 Thus, Benjamin brings the concept of parekbasis and thereby the paradigmatic figure of ‘romantic irony’ into play, which he, on the other hand, immediately rejects as a flawed analogy for the epic/gestural theater.
According to Benjamin’s doctoral dissertation, Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik, the “critique of a work [die Kritik des Werkes] is […] its reflection” (Benjamin 1920, 78/159), which “drives [its form] out of itself” (73/156).5 This is the case, because the form of the work ‘is’ self-limitation, and therefore ‘is’ not, but rather remains bound to what is excluded, what is external to it (Benjamin speaks of the ‘contingency’ [Zufälligkeit] to be excluded). Therefore, in order not to remain ‘limited,’ it must relate itself to its own constitution and refer to the formlessness from which it has emerged, which it excludes while delimiting itself. Thus, the “criterion” (Maßstab) of “immanent critique/criticism” is the “immanent tendency of the work,” the reflection of its form on its form(giving) (77/159). “Critique fulfills its task by” “resolving […] the original reflection” of its form (form as “the work’s own reflection”) “into a higher one and continuing it in this way,” since this deferral out of itself always attains form again (73/156).6 Tieck’s comedies are well known as examples of the romantic irony of form.7 His Puss in Boots, to which Benjamin explicitly refers in the second text from 1939, is a case of reflection of the play in/on itself. The play performs what Benjamin refers to as the most ‘evident’ “technique” of a “play within the play” in The Origin of the German Trauerspiel: “the stage itself” “is set up on the stage, or the spectators’ space is incorporated within the space of the stage,” which mirrors or folds the play and its framework into the occurrences on stage (Benjamin 1928a, 261/69). In this play, the actors, in ‘falling out’ of character, assert themselves ‘beside’ the dramatic figures, thereby establishing a duality between actors and dramatic figures.
Parekbasis as gesture, with which a figure on the stage turns away from the dramatic scene, had traditionally been chalked up as a failure of ancient comedy, because it interrupts the dramatic illusion of what is taking place on the stage8 in addressing the audience. Friedrich Schlegel not only re-evaluated this gesture of speech9 but also defined romantic irony tout court as “a permanent parekbasis.”10 The reflection of the play – this is what makes it paradoxical – performs the constitution of what may become presented by means of its delimiting (folded into the play and its framework)11 in that it presents the processes of constitution, which must continually be carried out as figural separations between that which belongs, between form, between what is ‘actually presented,’ and the digressions, additions, or marginal occurences, what is merely contingent or not meaningful: without reaching a conclusion and thereby a ground or a separation of form or figure from the formless or (the figure’s) ground. In the potentiated (potenziert, a concept from early German Romanticism)12 displacement or transgression of delimited form and its framework in/to play, the limit/border that decides about form becomes always again and still uncertain,13 becomes always again and still unrecognizable, its contours diffuse in an undecidable manner.
But Benjamin states with unusual clarity that it would be “erroneous” (irrig) to recognize the “old Tieckian dramaturgy of reflection” within the Brechtian praxis of theater (Benjamin 1931b, 529/11, cf. 522/4; 1939, 538 – 539/307). The latter performs the theatrical presentation’s taking a distance (from/to itself) in a different way, as its interruption taking place in presentation: as “gestural theatre” (Benjamin 1931b, 521/3).14 The theatrical presentation’s “awareness of being theater” is indeed a theatrical one: manifesting in gestures, its citability, and the interruptions they open up. According to Benjamin, epic theater thereby withdraws itself from ‘professional’ criticism and contests it and its failed standards.15 It does so with the distance the play takes from itself, by letting “intervals” into itself, which are to incite the audience to take a “critical stance” (kritische Stellungnahme):
Thus, intervals emerge which rather undermine the illusion of the audience and paralyze its readiness for empathy. These intervals are reserved for the audience’s critical stance toward the behavior of the persons and the way they are presented. (Benjamin 1939 [trans. 2006], 306)
So entstehen Intervalle, die die Illusion des Publikums eher beeinträchtigen. Sie lähmen seine Bereitschaft zur Einfühlung. Diese Intervalle sind seiner kritischen Stellungnahme (zum dargestellten Verhalten der Personen und zu der Art, in der es dargestellt wird) vorbehalten. (Benjamin 1939, 538)
Through his acting/playing, the actor has to demonstrate (in seinem Spiel auszuweisen [538]) the “intervals” as interruptions let into the...
