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"I am underneath and oxygen is running out": Suicide as Genetically Inherited or as the Melancholy Identification with the Suicidal Mother in Alice Birch's Anatomy of a Suicide
Comparative Drama ( IF 0.1 ) Pub Date : 2022-02-17
Alireza Fakhrkonandeh, Yiğit Sümbül

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • "I am underneath and oxygen is running out":Suicide as Genetically Inherited or as the Melancholy Identification with the Suicidal Mother in Alice Birch's Anatomy of a Suicide
  • Alireza Fakhrkonandeh (bio) and Yiğit Sümbül (bio)

"Like its real-life counterpart, stage-suicide can express a wish for posthumous control over the lives and feelings of survivors. It can manifest a desire for oblivion or for reunion with the dead. It can gesture toward rebirth or even toward immortality."1

"By linking the mother to her mother, we have begun to introduce the idea of three generations to define a subject. Three generations are therefore needed to define the human subject."2

Introduction: "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"?

"On edge." No other phrase captures the precarious psychosomatic condition of the suicidal self as cogently as this. "I feel . . . I feel . . . I feel . . . I feel . . . I feel a little on edge"—so says the first suicidal character in Alice Birch's Anatomy of a Suicide (2017).3 And this familiar metaphor (used for indicating nervousness) is later literalized in her case when she commits suicide by jumping off the edge onto the railroad. "On edge"—between the theatrical stage and the auditorium, between reality and phantasy, between life and death—is also where we find the suicidal protagonist of Duncan Macmillan's People, Places and Things [End Page 490] (2018). "On edge" is, of course, a highly dramatic situation. But it is also a formidable challenge to any dramatist who tackles the issue of suicide, particularly because of the long-standing association of suicide (or suicidal attempt) with theatricality and self-theatricalization. Theatricality, in this correlation, is a double-edged term since it not only looks askance at the gravity of and manifold causes underlying suicide but also makes tacit ontological and moral judgments about theatre/drama, specifically by wedding theatre/drama with irresponsible frivolity, superficiality, inauthenticity, histrionics and, ultimately, hysteria. From such a problematic perspective, the very epistemological and ethical position of theatre/drama as a genre and cultural medium for the critical-clinical representation of suicide is partly undermined.

Suicide in Anglo-European cultural history has often been perceived not only as a site where moral, psychological or social-political crises are thrown into relief, but also as a critical juncture where the aporetic tensions and ties between the private and the public, the personal and the political, the individual and the state (or the family) surface. What distinguishes modern and contemporary engagements with the question of suicide is primarily the conception of suicide as a historical and social-cultural construct, a conception in which questions of biopolitics as well as racial, class, and gender politics determine not only the suicidal act but also social-cultural perceptions of its nature and dynamics. Equally crucial has been the self-reflexive approach of many artists and critics to the ethics as well as therapeutic efficacy of artistic/literary treatments of suicide; these artists and critics emphasize the role of narration (narrative medicine) and performance (role-playing) as a solution to the social and psychological aporias permeating the world of a play and its characters.

To writers, dramatists, practitioners in clinical-medical discourse, and the public at large, suicide has long been a compelling preoccupation. More notably, suicide has featured as a predominantly feminine act in the history of drama. Surveying the history of tragedy from ancient Greek to contemporary drama, a persistent thread is an association in the genre between female characters and transgression, liminality, spectrality, sacrifice, death, and a death-oriented or deadly desire. Margaret Higonnet cogently articulates the ambiguous status of suicide in dramatic literature: "Suicide," she writes, "like woman and truth, is both fetish and taboo."4 [End Page 491] Indeed, there has been an abundance of transgressive female characters who straddle Eros and Thanatos, heterodox and orthodox and victimhood and monstrosity, and suicide is one salient way of representing these cases of liminality on stage, from Sophocles' Jocasta and Antigone to Seneca's Phaedra; from Kyd's Isabella and Marlowe's Dido to Shakespeare's Ophelia and Cleopatra; from Strindberg's Miss Julie to Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.5 Contemporary...



中文翻译:

“我在下面,氧气快用完了”:作为遗传遗传的自杀或在 Alice Birch 的《自杀解剖》中与自杀母亲的忧郁认同

代替摘要,这里是内容的简短摘录:

  • “我在下面,氧气快用完了”:作为遗传遗传的自杀或在 Alice Birch 的《自杀解剖》中与自杀母亲的忧郁认同
  • Alireza Fakhrkonandeh (bio) 和 Yiğit Sümbül (bio)

“就像它在现实生活中的对应物一样,舞台自杀可以表达希望在死后控制幸存者的生活和感情。它可以表现出对遗忘或与死者团聚的渴望。它可以表示重生甚至不朽。 " 1

“通过将母亲与母亲联系起来,我们已经开始引入三代人来定义一个主体的想法。因此需要三代人来定义人类主体。” 2

导语:“不能说话,就必须沉默”?

“边缘。” 没有其他短语能像这句话一样中肯地捕捉到自杀性自我不稳定的心身状况。“我感觉……我感觉……我感觉……我感觉……我感觉有点紧张”——Alice Birch 的《自杀解剖》(2017 年)中的第一个自杀角色如是说。3这个熟悉的比喻(用于表示紧张)后来在她的案例中被字面化,当时她跳下铁路边缘自杀。“边缘”——在戏剧舞台和礼堂之间,在现实和幻想之间,在生与死之间——也是我们发现邓肯·麦克米伦的《人物、地点和事物》中自杀式主角的地方 [完第 490 页](2018 年)。当然,“边缘”是一个非常戏剧性的情况。但对于任何处理自杀问题的剧作家来说,这也是一个巨大的挑战,特别是因为长期以来自杀(或自杀企图)与戏剧性和自我戏剧化联系在一起。在这种相关性中,戏剧性是一个双刃词,因为它不仅对自杀的严重性和多种潜在原因表示怀疑,而且对戏剧/戏剧做出默认的本体论和道德判断,特别是通过不负责任的轻浮的婚礼戏剧/戏剧,肤浅,不真实,装腔作势,最终是歇斯底里。从这样一个有问题的角度来看,

在英欧文化史上,自杀往往不仅被视为道德、心理或社会政治危机得到缓解的场所,而且被视为私人与公众之间的绝症紧张关系和联系的关键时刻,个人与政治,个人与国家(或家庭)的表面。现代和当代与自杀问题的区别主要在于将自杀视为一种历史和社会文化建构的概念,在这种概念中,生命政治以及种族、阶级和性别政治问题不仅决定了自杀行为,而且以及对其性质和动态的社会文化认知。同样重要的是许多艺术家和评论家对伦理的自我反思方法以及艺术/文学治疗自杀的治疗效果;这些艺术家和评论家强调叙事(叙事医学)和表演(角色扮演)的作用,作为解决戏剧及其角色世界的社会和心理困境的解决方案。

对于作家、剧作家、临床医学实践者和广大公众来说,自杀一直是一个引人注目的当务之急。更值得注意的是,自杀在戏剧史上一直以女性为主。纵观从古希腊到当代戏剧的悲剧历史,一个持久的线索是女性角色与越界、阈限、光谱、牺牲、死亡以及以死亡为导向或致命的欲望之间的关联。Margaret Higonnet 有力地阐明了戏剧文学中自杀的模棱两可的地位:“自杀,”她写道,“就像女人和真理一样,既是恋物癖也是禁忌。” 4 [完第 491 页]事实上,有大量的越轨女性角色跨越爱神和塔纳托斯、异端和正统、受害者和怪物,从索福克勒斯的乔卡斯塔和安提戈涅到塞内卡的菲德拉,自杀是在舞台上表现这些限制性案例的一种重要方式。从 Kyd 的 Isabella 和 Marlowe 的 Dido 到莎士比亚的 Ophelia 和 Cleopatra;从斯特林堡的朱莉小姐到易卜生的海达高布勒。5当代...

更新日期:2022-02-18
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