The Theatrical Model of Artaud’s Self-in-Flow

Abstract

The study examines Antonin Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, focusing on whether cruelty can be conceived as a process of self-knowledge observed from a third-person perspective. The dynamics of Artaud’s inner actualities, in constant motion, and the momentary modes of his selves are interpreted through a model of theatre that, in accordance with the Plessnerian conditio humana, enables the subject to create distance from itself. The analysis differentiates between the world stage, understood as the process unfolding between the self and the external world, and a private theatre, constituted by the inner performances enacted within the self—a theatre defined by the encounter of the self with itself. The articulable modes of Artaud’s consciousness—expressed through various characters, shifting masks, and identifiable components of the self—are situated within his mental theatre, which engages the horizontal plane of Artaud’s consciousness. To map even the inarticulable, elusive events within the Artaudian subject, the occurrences of his private theatre are analyzed across three planes of existence, analogous to the vertically arranged logic of early modern emblematic theatre. Throughout the analysis, particular attention is given to Artaud’s propensity for self-dissection and anatomization, a dominant force manifested consistently in both his writings and visual works. The following presents and develops this analysis.