From Deconstruction to Reconstruction: A Habermasian Framework for Contemporary Political Theatre

Abstract

Equally suspicious of old didacticisms and current relativisms, British political theatre has found a new assertiveness in verbatim plays, composed using direct quotations from testimonies and documents. Whilst the reliance on authenticity underpinning this form needs to be – and has been – problematized, the vigour of ‘real’ voices on stage radically tests the assumptions of postmodern theory. This article proposes an alternative framework, based on the philosophy of Jürgen Habermas, the leading figure of the Frankfurt School's second generation and a known challenger of postmodernism.

Habermas has elaborated a critique of modernity that retains those aspects of the modern project still offering a qualified promise of emancipation. This approach leads to a better understanding of the residual potential of political theatre in the present age. From the seminal notion of the ‘public sphere’ (the locus, distinct from state and market, where private individuals gather together as a public to debate matters of common concern) to the later emphasis on ‘reconstruction’ (an attempt to explain the presumably universal bases of rationality), Habermasian theory proves effective where deconstructive strategies show their limits.

This analysis revisits the concept of the public sphere as it has evolved and then applies it to recent verbatim productions by Out of Joint Theatre Company and the Tricycle Theatre, exploring both political and aesthetical elements. The author's contention is that verbatim theatre, in expanding the public sphere and promoting an intersubjective version of truth, is able to take political theatre beyond the confines of postmodernism.

Notes

Fallujah premiered in May 2007. Holmes's first quotation is taken from the programme of the symposium ‘Verbatim Practices in Contemporary Theatre’ (Central School of Speech and Drama, 13–14 July 2006). The second comes from his intervention in the symposium. When he claims that ‘Fallujah is not postmodern’ he refers to the siege of the city as a historical reality, not to his play's style.

Philip Auslander, Present and Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), p. 51 [emphasis in the original].

Thomas McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstructionism and Deconstructionism in Contemporary Critical Theory (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1991), p. 107.

David Hare, Lecture given at King's College, Cambridge (1978), reprinted as ‘The Play is in the Air’, in Obedience, Struggle and Revolt, by David Hare (London: Faber, 2005), pp. 111–26 (p. 118). Some critics consider Hare's current commitment to verbatim theatre as opportunistic. See, for instance, Brian Logan, ‘Why Do We Still Run with the Hare?’, The Times, 27 November 2006, pp. 14–15.

Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. by Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), p. 392; idem, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), p. 19.

Out of Joint is a touring theatre company dedicated to the development and performance of new writing, frequently co-produced with major London venues such as the Royal Court and the National Theatre. The Tricycle is a theatre based in Kilburn, North London, whose work usually reflects not only the cultural diversity of its local community (Irish, African-Caribbean, Jewish and Asian) but also general political concerns. Both companies have been at the forefront of the recent growth of verbatim theatre in Britain.

Craig Calhoun, ‘Introduction’, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by Craig Calhoun (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 1–48 (p. 2).

Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), p. 88. Feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser, who has developed one of the most comprehensive critiques of the public sphere from a moderate postmodernist perspective, rejects Habermas's three principles as masculinist and ideological. See her ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by Craig Calhoun, pp. 109–42. I contend, however, that these principles are still useful as idealizations against which the operation of public spheres can be measured.

Calhoun, ‘Introduction’, p. 28.

For a seminal Marxist critique, see Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere, trans. by Peter Labanyi, Jamie Owen Daniel, and Assenka Oskiloff (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). For an influential historiographical and feminist account, see Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1988). More recent approaches can be found in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by Craig Calhoun, Masses, Classes and the Public Sphere, ed. by Mike Hill and Warren Montag (London: Verso, 2000), and After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere, ed. by John Michael Roberts and Nick Crossley (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).

Jürgen Habermas, ‘Further Reflections on the Public Sphere’, trans. by Thomas Burger, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by Craig Calhoun, pp. 421–61 (p. 425) [emphasis in the original]. ‘Further Reflections’ evidences Habermas's ‘linguistic turn’ (which he takes from The Theory of Communicative Action onwards), looking away from history and ideology critique and towards the philosophy of language.

Ibid., p. 429.

Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. by William Rehg (Oxford: Polity, 1996), pp. 360, 361, 365.

Habermas, ‘Further Reflections’, p. 438. According to Pieter Duvenage, Habermas already presents ‘a more complex picture of the relationship between emancipation and consumption’ in comparison with the work of Adorno and Horkheimer. See his Habermas and Aesthetics: The Limits of Communicative Reason (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), p. 17.

Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 374 [emphasis in the original].

Ibid., pp. 363–64 [emphasis in the original].

Ibid., pp. 371–72.

Steve Waters, ‘The Truth behind the Facts’, Guardian, 11 February 2004.

John Durham Peters, ‘Distrust of Representation: Habermas on the Public Sphere’, Media, Culture and Society, 15 (1993), 541–71. See also Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, and Michael Warner, ‘The Mass Public and the Mass Subject’, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, by Craig Calboun, pp. 377–401. For a dissenting view, see Allison Weir, ‘Toward a Model of Self-Identity: Habermas and Kristeva’, in Feminists Read Habermas: Gendering the Subject of Discourse, ed. by Johanna Meehan (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 263–82.

Ken Hirschkop, ‘Justice and Drama: On Bakhtin as a Complement to Habermas’, in After Habermas, ed. by Roberts and Crossley, pp. 49–66 (p. 49) [emphasis in the original].

See Habermas, Structural Transformation, pp. 7–11, 195–206.

Peters, ‘Distrust of Representation’, pp. 562, 563.

Tracy C. Davis and Thomas Postlewait, ‘Theatricality: An Introduction’, in Theatricality, ed. by Tracy C. Davis and Thomas Postlewait (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 1–39 (pp. 17, 13). See also Davis, ‘Theatricality and Civil Society’, in Theatricality, pp. 127–55, for a view on theatricality in the historical public sphere.

Jon Erickson, ‘Defining Political Performance with Foucault and Habermas: Strategic and Communicative Action’, in Davis and Postlewait, Theatricality, pp. 156–85 (pp. 158, 161).

Habermas, Moral Consciousness, p. 18. Habermas utilizes the phrase ‘postmodern art’ here, but in a restricted meaning: art after modernism.

Derek Paget, ‘“Verbatim Theatre”: Oral History and Documentary Techniques’, New Theatre Quarterly, 3.2 (1987), pp. 317–36 (p. 317).

Ibid., p. 322.

Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 365 [emphasis mine].

Theatre Record (1–28 January 2004), 55–56. Hare's next play Stuff Happens (National Theatre, 2004), about the negotiations in the run-up to the war in Iraq, was certainly a more problematic mixture of quotations and invention. Donna Soto-Morettini argues that while this work cannot even partially be considered ‘verbatim’, because of the amount of mediation involved, it is not a ‘history play’ either (as Hare himself describes it), offering as it does a Romantic narrative that fails to engage with the complexity of history. See Donna Soto-Morettini, ‘Trouble in the House: David Hare's Stuff Happens’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 15.3 (2005), 309–19.

See Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 359–79.

Ibid., pp. 369–70 [emphasis in the original].

Ibid., p. 376.

Robin Soans, Talking to Terrorists (London: Oberon, 2005), p. 25. Soans has authored two other verbatim plays: A State Affair (also for Out of Joint Theatre Company, 2000) and The Arab Israeli Cookbook (Gate Theatre, 2004).

Theatre Record (2–15 July 2005), p. 919.

Soans, Talking to Terrorists, back cover.

Half the Picture: The Scott Arms to Iraq Inquiry (1994), Nuremberg: 1946 War Crimes Trial (1996), Srebrenica: UN War Crimes Tribunal (1996), The Colour of Justice: The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999), Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (2003) and Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry (2005).

First predicted for 2005, the Saville report is still in preparation.

Theatre Record (9–22 April 2005), p. 471 [my emphasis].

David Edgar, ‘Politics, Playwriting, Postmodernism: An Interview with David Edgar’ by Janelle Reinelt, Contemporary Theatre Review, 14.4 (2004), 42–53 (p. 48). Edgar also notes that Guantanamo is closer in style to Half the Picture.

Chris Megson, ‘“The State We're in”: Tribunal Theatre and British Politics in the 1990s’, in Theatres of Thought: Theatre, Performance and Philosophy, ed. by Daniel Watt and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007), pp. 110–26 (p. 116).

Ibid., p. 121.

From Thomas Wheatley's intervention in the symposium ‘Verbatim Practices in Contemporary Theatre’ (see note 1 for details of the symposium).

Wendy S. Hesford makes this point in relation to Guantanamo, whose ‘straightforward exposition is a departure from the reproduction of spectacular victim narratives that dominate popular discourse’: see her ‘Staging Terror’, TDR: The Drama Review, 50.3 (Fall 2006), 29–41 (p. 35).

Carol Martin, ‘Bodies of Evidence’, TDR, 50.3 (Fall 2006), 8–15 (pp. 11, 14).

Stephen Bottoms, ‘Putting the Document into Documentary: An Unwelcome Corrective?’, TDR, 50.3 (Fall 2006), 56–68 (pp. 59, 67, 61).

Thomas Irmer, ‘A Search for New Realities: Documentary Theatre in Germany’, TDR, 50.3 (Fall 2006), 16–28 (pp. 24, 26). Irmer is aware of the limits of deconstructive perspectives. Analysing Hans-Werner Kroesinger's 1996 piece on the interrogations of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, he declares: ‘It could have been politically inflammatory and even irresponsible for Kroesinger to use the Eichmann trial for a demonstration of theatrical deconstruction’(p. 21).

Erickson, ‘Defining Political Performance’, p. 158.

Janelle Reinelt, ‘Toward a Poetics of Theatre and Public Events’, TDR, 50.3 (Fall 2006), 69–87 (p. 83).

Habermas, Moral Consciousness, p. 10.

Ibid., p. 14 [emphasis mine].

McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions, pp. 33–34.