Papers by Klaas Tindemans
Magnificence in the Seventeenth Century, 2020
John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was the (in)famous "court wit" -courtier, poet ... more John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was the (in)famous "court wit" -courtier, poet and libertine -of king Charles II during the Restoration era in England. He left a small but exquisite oeuvre of satirical poems, aphorisms, and other more undefinable texts. He wrote two dramatic texts, including Lucina's Rape, an adaptation of John Fletcher's Jacobean revenge tragedy The Tragedy of Valentinian.1 The plot of Fletcher's play remains more or less the same in Wilmot's version, but the focus changes significantly. The cruel Roman emperor Valentinian rapes Lucina, the wife of the brave army officer Maximus, and she commits suicide. Maximus carries out a complex plan of revenge, manipulating and abusing his friend Aëcius, an army general of immaculate virtue but also unconditionally loyal to the emperor. Maximus is chosen as the new emperor, but he is finally killed, poisoned by Valentinian's widow. In his adaptation John Wilmot does not focus on the fate of the debaucherous Valentinian; rather, rape as an extremely transgressive act, and its context, are his central concerns. The act of rape, taking place offstage, is 'hidden' by the noise of a court masque, both visually and musically. And the ending is open, with a dead emperor and a solitary Maximus, whose sole ambition consists in imitating the nihilism of Valentinian.2 In the crucial rape scenes, the iconic magnificence of the court masque, as a genre supposed to glorify a divine and generous kingship, is used to highlight royal hypocrisy in the most violent way. However, given Wilmot's libertine way of thinking, the play obscures, in a certain way, the moral accountability of this hypocritical attitude, clearly visible in Fletcher's version -with the exception of his bloody and chaotic ending. Is the materialist conviction of the emperor, his sadistic certainty that nature requires both mental and physical (sexual) submission, responsible for his aggression? Or is it Lucina's idealist chastity, her sublimation of hidden erotic desires ambiguously recognized, only ambiguously acknowledged -a
CÉRÉdI, 2016
Est-il possible de comparer, avec une certaine pertinence épistémologique, ce qui relèverait de l... more Est-il possible de comparer, avec une certaine pertinence épistémologique, ce qui relèverait de la dramaturgie dans deux types de discours que l'on tend à comparer trop rapidement et superficiellement, en l'occurrence la fiction politique et le discours politique réel ? Il est tentant de dire que ces deux discours sont « théâtraux », l'un par définition, l'autre par sa manifestation publique souvent spectaculaire. La mise en relation de ces deux discours, leur symétrie font l'objet de recherches depuis de longues années déjà. On pourra par exemple se référer aux travaux de Louis Marin 1 et de Jean-Marie Apostolidès 2 sur la théâtralité baroque du régime français au XVII e siècle, ou au travail de Robert Weimann 3 sur le rapport entre l'absolutisme de la reine Elisabeth et la représentation du pouvoir dans les tragédies « royales » de William Shakespeare. Nous nous proposons de faire des allées et venues entre ces deux types de discours, d'interroger les modalités de construction de fictions sur l'exercice du pouvoir -à l'écran et sur scène -et celles de la (re)construction de la réalité. Cela reviendra à interroger la différence entre 'is' performance et 'as' performance, selon la terminologie de Richard Schechner, c'est-à-dire entre une performance qui s'affirme comme telle et une performance qui ne se révèle comme telle que dans son analyse 4 . Ce va-et-vient nous permettra de dégager un ensemble de données structurelles à partir desquelles nous observerons et interrogerons un autre corpus, précis mais beaucoup plus vaste : la structure complexe des assemblées représentatives à Bruxelles,
L’événement politique le plus chargé de cruauté des deux dernières décennies est sans conteste le... more L’événement politique le plus chargé de cruauté des deux dernières décennies est sans conteste le génocide rwandais. Les massacres, perpétrés sous l’œil hagard et couard de la communauté soi-disant « internationale », ont largement démontré l’inanité d’une approche globalisante des droits de l’homme. Ces événements affectent par ailleurs l’idée même de représentation de la violence. Le génocide rwandais est le sujet de deux productions théâtrales « documentaires » importantes : Rwanda 94 de Jacques Delcuvellerie et Le Groupov (Belgique, 1999) et Rwanda Revisited de Hans-Werner Kroesinger (Allemagne, 2009).Cet article commence à l’intersection de deux hypothèses historiques et philosophiques : 1./ La rhétorique et le théâtre de la première Modernité sont la sublimation de la violence réelle des pratiques juridiques médiévales (Jody Enders) et 2./ La représentation théâtrale de la violence excessive constitue la condition nécessaire pour le développement du discours juridico-politique de la modernité (Anthony Kubiak). C’est au prisme de la « tragédie sanglante » – l’équivalent français de la revenge tragedy élisabéthaine – que j’examine ces productions théâtrales récentes. Ces deux dispositifs dramatiques – la tragédie sanglante et les pièces sur le Rwanda – mettent en question les éléments constitutifs d’une psyché collective et invitent à reconsidérer l’hypothèse de Kubiak selon laquelle la Loi – sur son double versant politique et psychique – est fondée sur la représentation d’une violence excessive.The cruelest political event of the last twenty years is, without discussion, the genocide in Rwanda. This massacre has shown abundantly the futility of global concern about human rights. Not in the least, these events have challenged the idea of representation of violence. The Rwandan genocide informed two important “documentary” theatre productions: Rwanda 1994 by Jacques Delcuvellerie and Groupov (Belgium, 1999) and Rwanda Revisited by Hans-Werner Kroesinger (Germany, 2009).This article builds upon two hypotheses: rhetoric and theatre in early Modernity is the sublimation of the real violence in Mediaeval legal practices (Jody Enders) and theatrical representation of excessive violence is a necessary condition for Modern legal-political discourse (Anthony Kubiak). It compares the early Modern tragédie sanglante—the French equivalent of Elizabethan revenge tragedy—with these contemporary theatre productions. Both dramatic discourses—tragédie sanglante and drama about Rwanda—question the fundamentals of a collective psyche and they invite both to reformulate Kubiaks assumption that “the Law”—as a political ànd as a psychic theme—is based on representation of excessive violence
BRILL eBooks, 2008
This paper is about discursive practices in early modern Europe. It explores the relationships be... more This paper is about discursive practices in early modern Europe. It explores the relationships between the conceptualization of political sovereignty-as a typically modern notion of political legitimacy-and elements of theatrical discursivity. 1 More specifi cally, it concentrates on the relationship between the origins of the concept of modern sovereignty in political theology-as Ernst Kantorowicz has outlined them in his monumental "pre-Foucauldian" 2 study of The King's Two Bodies, the strategies of 'theatricalization' in the political regimes that embraced, implicitly or explicitly, the ideology of the King's two bodies-i.e., France and England-and the theatre and drama practices that took place in these contexts. This subject being too vast, we shall focus on several examples of discursive, political, and theatrical practices, allowing us to formulate some hypotheses about political theatricality in early modernity. A theatricality that could be called 'tragic' in the sense of Benjamin's qualifi cation of the Trauerspiel-a play that mourns the ruins of divine utopias.
Brill | Fink eBooks, 2016
, with details of the nature of the infringement. We will investigate the claim and if justified,... more , with details of the nature of the infringement. We will investigate the claim and if justified, we will take the appropriate steps.
De betekenis van de hervormingen van Kleisthenes ... 2.4. Politieke identiteit als tautologie: vo... more De betekenis van de hervormingen van Kleisthenes ... 2.4. Politieke identiteit als tautologie: voorlopige conclusies 238 242 2.5. De inhoud van de É7rlra.cj)lOl: de oorsprong van Athene en haar politiek systeem. . 245 2.6. De dode 1r0À \TT} c; en de politisering van de tijd .
De uil van Minerva, Dec 6, 1998
BRILL eBooks, Nov 18, 2020
Documenta, Dec 19, 2023
Legal philosopher Hans Lindahl argues that the regulation of immigration is, above all moral cons... more Legal philosopher Hans Lindahl argues that the regulation of immigration is, above all moral considerations, a political issue. When one tries to assess the problem of territorial boundaries-and their transgression-as a question of distributive justice, political philosophers easily mix, not even surreptitiously, moral arguments with political and legal considerations. Lindahl refers to Michael Walzer, who asserts the primacy of the community and consequently bounded justice, and to Jürgen Habermas, who's idea of boundless justice makes the notion of a nation-state irrelevant: one world polity has, by definition, no boundaries and thus no immigration issues. But Lindahl replies that law, and immigration law in particular, is forced to create boundaries by its very nature. After all, law structurally defines diverse groups of interest, and the actions of individuals-belonging or not belonging to one group or another-are always placed or misplaced, i.e. situated inside or outside the realm of the law. Even a world legislature and a universal jurisdiction would have to decide who can claim her/his rights, or who cannot. But since law is also, by definition, contingent-it can be changed in any direction-climate disasters, and economical inequalities-and the challenges it poses for the affluent societies we are living in. Is it possible, or even meaningful, for theater-makers to try to relate their compassion-as a moral sentiment-to the frameworks of contingent policies and, subsequently, to the strict taxonomies of legislation?
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Papers by Klaas Tindemans