![]() ![]() In her influential 1976 essay that opens his Selected Writings, Susan Sontag crystallized the tone of American Artaud scholarship, which is a celebration of messianism:īoth in his work and in his life, Artaud failed. The American Artaud comes into being with The Theater and Its Double. The French Artaud begins at the asylum in Rodez. Much French criticism takes Artaud's madness and uses it as a touchstone for discussion of his legacy. Derrida has argued that Artaud's projects, by their nature, by his nature, cannot succeed: They betray him the moment they begin to be articulated they cannot stand upright the minute they leave his body. ![]() The French school of criticism has plumbed the depths of the paradoxes of Artaud's oeuvre, examining the impossibility of reconciling the inadequacy of expression with the need to express. Each major trend in Artaud scholarship has reinforced the image of Artaud as a brilliant/mad theoretician and inspirational writer but a failed theatre practitioner-worse, one doomed to failure. Artaud's work has occupied a cultish space in both French and English criticism for several decades. It is ironic that the works of Antonin Artaud, who called for the rejuvenation of theatre as such, come to us today not on their own, but through an unusually dense filter: a peculiarly persistent critical/theoretical apparatus doubles his own writings and practice. "Theatre happens on stage, not in manuscripts." "We speak too often of Artaud's madness, forgetting the extraordinary exuberance of his poetic genius during the years he consecrated to the theater." Considerable thanks also to Jody Enders for her enormous help with this piece and to James Harding for his insightful reading of earlier drafts. This research was supported by faculty research funds granted by the University of California, Santa Cruz. ![]()
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