Abstract
During his period of exile in Scandinavia, Bertolt Brecht wrote “I don’t think the traditional form of theatre means anything any longer. Its significance is purely historic; it can illuminate the way in which earlier ages regarded human relationships […] [but] a modern spectator can’t learn anything from themz” (Brecht in Brecht on theatre: the development of an aesthetic. Trans. John Willett., Eyre Methuen Publishing, London, p. 66, 1964). To create a modern theatre fit for a modern audience, Brecht holds that not only would the content of plays have to change, but the experience of theatrical spectatorship itself. To fully capture how Brecht’s work differs from that of previous playwrights, a close analysis of spectatorial experience and perception is required. In this paper, I compare the aesthetic techniques used in Brecht’s epic theatre to the genetic phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Reading Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (or estrangement effect) through a Husserlian lens, I argue that Brecht mobilizes phenomenological methodology in order to suspend the audience’s preconceived notions of theatre and to cultivate self-conscious, critically aware, and socially motivated spectatorship. Just as Husserl describes phenomenology as a presuppositionless science, so too does Brecht offer epic theatre as a way to free “[…] socially-conditioned phenomena from the stamp of familiarity” (Brecht 1964, p. 192).
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Notes
Brecht (1964, p. 66).
Guenther (2019, p. 15).
Willett (1964, p. xiii).
Barnett (2015, p. 5).
Brecht (1964, p. 23).
Brecht (1964, p. 23).
Willett (1964, p. 23).
Brecht (1964, pp. 23–24).
The epistemic aspects of Brecht’s epic theatre are similar to Schopenhauer’s characterization of tragedy as giving us knowledge about the human condition. Unlike the hedonic compensatory view, Schopenhauer suggests “… the horrors on the stage hold up to [the spectator] the bitterness and worthlessness of life… thus in the depth of his being the consciousness is then stirred that for a different kind of willing there must be a different kind of existence also” (1958, p. 435). Perhaps we can view Brecht’s project as similarly departing from the hedonic compensatory view.
Brecht (1964, p. 34).
Brecht (1964, p. 34).
Brecht (1964, p. 37).
Brecht (1964, p. 192).
Brecht (1964, p. 192, my emphasis).
Squiers (2015, p. 244).
Gray (1976, p. 75).
If we conceptualize Brechtian estrangement as “the second step in the dialectic,” it may also be worth noting that Brecht later called epic theatre “dialectical theatre.” Because of this paper’s central focus on Brecht’s politics and phenomenology, however, I will not discuss Brecht’s Hegelianism at length.
Squiers (2015, p. 244).
Before reading Brecht through a Husserlian lens, it is perhaps necessary to briefly discuss the tradition of phenomenological Marxism. In the Italian journal Aut–Aut, for example, Enzo Paci published a number of articles synthesizing Husserlian and Marxist ideas. This continued in his text The Function of the Sciences and the Meaning of Man, wherein Paci describes “the phenomenology of political economy” and the value of a phenomenological Marxism for future studies in critical theory (1972, p. 447). In Phenomenology of the Alien, Bernhard Waldenfels articulates a phenomenological concept of alienation “as something which seeks us out in our own home by disturbing, enticing, or terrifying us, by surpassing our expectations and eluding our grasp” (2011, p. 3). Such a description will largely speak to Brecht’s aesthetic techniques as will be discussed in section two. From the French, we might investigate how Merleau-Ponty’s (2002) philosophical thought was inarguably shaped by Marxism, thinking perhaps about his attention to historical materialism and the acquisition of a critical class consciousness in the Phenomenology of Perception. Specifically relevant to this paper’s focus on theatrical methodology, though, Frank Tomasulo convincingly demonstrates how both Marx and Husserl approach consciousness as intersubjective and sociohistorical. From this, Tomasulo describes the dialectical perspective of the spectator, wherein “[…] the human subject is neither an absolute product of his/her environment nor an absolute producer of his/her fate, but a product and a producer, the locus where necessity can become material liberation” (Tomasulo 1988, p. 24).
Husserl (2014, p. 4).
Tomasulo (1988, p. 26).
Brecht (1964, p. 192).
Brecht (1964, p. 91).
It is important to note that Brecht’s citation of Chinese theatre remains contentious throughout the literature. In “‘Alienation-Effect’ for Whom? Brecht’s (Mis)interpretation of the Classical Chinese Theatre” Min Tian argues that Brecht’s use of Chinese acting as a foundation for his estrangement effect is largely based on misinterpretations of classical Chinese theatre. Tian challenges the techniques Brecht describes as estranging, citing cultural differences as reason for Brecht’s misapprehension. Addressing Brecht’s claim about Chinese theatre’s estranging lack of a fourth wall, Tian writes “it is true that there is no ‘fourth wall’ in the Chinese theatre that cuts the audience off from the stage and the actor. But it is precisely this absence of the ‘fourth wall’ that conditions the fact… [that] no devices are needed to demonstrate the absence of a fourth wall, because the Chinese conception of theatre never featured a fourth wall in the first place” (1997, p. 205). To Tian, the lack of a fourth wall in Chinese theatre is not estranging for the audience, because it is germane to Chinese audiences’ theatrical experiences. Brecht’s claim that Chinese spectators experience feelings of estrangement is suspect, then, as his own feelings of estrangement may be due to his specific unfamiliarity with Chinese theatrical customs that were (and are) familiar to Chinese audiences.
Brecht (1964, pp. 91–92).
Brecht (1964, p. 92).
Brecht (1964, p. 94).
Brecht (1964, p. 95).
Husserl (2001a, p. 24).
Husserl (2001a, p. 37).
Husserl (2001a, p. 39).
Husserl (2001a, p. 41).
Husserl (2001a, p. 41).
Brecht (1964, p. 277).
Husserl (2001a, p. 65).
Husserl (2001a, p. 65).
Husserl (2001a, p. 65).
One example of Brecht’s perceptive negation can be found in his 1941 parable play “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.” In it, Brecht describes the fictional rise of Arturo Ui, a Chicago mobster “who holds the entire vegetable trade in two cities to ransom” (Brecht 2016, p. xxvii). Manipulating members of the “Cauliflower Trust,” Ui creates an elaborate grocer’s racket by eliminating all of his competition. Satirically allegorizing Nazi Germany, the play is interspersed with large signs detailing Hitler’s rise to power. In the final scene, a large sign drops down across the stage, reading “on 11 March 1938 Hitler marches into Austria. An election under the Nazi terror results in a 98% vote for Hitler” (2016, p. xxiv). Through the use of these signs, Brecht disrupts the spectator’s ability to passively view the play and forces them to critically engage with what they have just witnessed.
Brecht (1964, p. 71).
Brecht (1964, p. 192, my emphasis).
Here, we might also think about how Brecht’s work lends itself to a generative phenomenological reading. As Anthony Steinbock explains, generative phenomenology “deals with the geo-historical, social, normative generation of meaning in home-worlds and alien-worlds as that meaning is generated over the generations” (2018, p. 2).
Shklovsky (1990, pp. 4–5).
In translating Shklovsky’s Theory of Prose, Benjamin Sher chose to translate ostranenie as “enstrangement” because the word is a neologism and does not appear in Russian dictionaries (1990, p. xviii). While Sher makes a compelling argument for this choice, in this paper I will proceed with other scholars’ translation of ostranenie as “estrangement” or “making strange” for the sake of clarity and continuity with my conversation on Brecht.
Shklovsky (1990, p. 6).
Also related to Shklovsky’s desire for a return to the senses is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work. For more, see The Phenomenology of Perception.
Husserl (2014, p. 4).
Husserl (2014, p. 33).
Husserl (2014, p. 56).
Husserl (2014, p. 56).
Shklovsky (1990, p. 10).
Shklovsky (1990, p. 6).
Brecht (1964, p. 192).
It is important to note that later in the Investigations, Husserl is going to trouble the status of communicative expressions as expressions in order to argue that “pure” expressions may only occur in solitary mental life. He then classifies communicative expressions as “indications.” Jacques Derrida discusses this shift at length in his work Speech and Phenomena, wherein he accuses Husserl of maintaining a metaphysics of presence (Derrida 1973, p. 27). Because I am using Husserl’s terminology to illuminate Brechtian estrangement and am not making any definitive claims about expressions vs. indications here, I will not engage with this debate at length.
For example, Husserl writes that the meaning of the objective expression “Löwe” (lion) does not differ depending on who says it. He does acknowledge that objective expressions may also vary in meaning, however, particularly in the case of enthymematic abbreviation (e.g. “man alive!”) (2001b, p. 221).
Husserl (2001b, p. 218).
Husserl (2001b, p. 218).
Husserl (2001b, p. 219, my emphasis).
An important distinction between Brecht and Shklovsky are their thoughts on the causes of this routinization. As Arno Kumagai and Delese Wear explain, for Brecht “… it is not [automatized] perception per se that dulls our ability to see the world as it is. Instead, it is the societal superstructures and disparities in power… that make injustices and inequalities appear to be part of the natural state of affairs” (2014, p. 973). Undoing these injustices will thus involve destabilizing normative ways of meaning-making.
Brecht (1964, p. 136).
Brecht (1964, p. 137).
What’s more, Brecht also recommends that the actor read stage directions aloud and in the third person (“he stood up and exclaimed angrily,” “he smiled, and said with forced nonchalance”) so as to further estrange the audience (Brecht 1964, p. 138).
Brecht (1964, p. 137).
Husserl (2001b, p. 218).
Brecht (1964, p. 277).
Brecht (1964, p. 277).
Brecht (1964, p. 21).
Barnett (2015, p. 4).
Husserl (2014, pp. 35–36).
Brecht (1964, p. 235).
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Kelly, M. Estrangement, epochē, and performance: Bertolt Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt and a phenomenology of spectatorship. Cont Philos Rev 53, 419–431 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-020-09507-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-020-09507-8