The Political Potential of Autonomous Time Generation in Jean Genet's The Balcony
Abstract
With the development of timekeeping machinery in the late Middle Ages, time became publicly visible on mechanical dials. This way of spatializing time aimed to crystallize the flow of time and experience into eternity at a single moment, reaching its peak in the 19th century. The natural rhythm of time and the discrete temporality of personal experience were strictly unified into a series of points, distributed along a historical timeline that never turns back. This unidirectional arrow of time remains evident in the study of The Balcony. Research on The Balcony has primarily focused on its political expressions in space, often overlooking the potential of theatrical temporality. This indicates that studies of the political aspects of The Balcony are overly focused on the dimension of visibility, neglecting the exploration of theatrical invisibility. This article will utilize textual data and analysis, based on Deleuze's theory of Aion time, to develop a discussion on the pure formal time in Genet's theater, incorporating relevant political concepts to explore its autonomously generated political potential further, focusing on the characteristics of theatrical time that continuously provoke questioning and ambiguity.
Downloads
References
Bersani, L. (1994). The gay outlaw. Diacritics, 24(2/3), 5-18.
Boisseron, B., & Ekotto, F. (2004). Genet's The Blacks: ‘And Why Does One Laugh at a Negro?’. Paragraph, 27(2), 98-112.
Bougon, P. (1998). Translation, Tradition and Betrayal: From Political Commitment to Literary Freedom in Genet’s Les Paravents preceded by a reflection on what remains of the Larousse dictionary in colonial politics. Parallax, 4(2), 129–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/135346498250334
Clark, V. S. (1980). Character change in the major plays of Jean Genet [Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia]. Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0094780
Creech, J. (1997). Outing Jean Genet. Yale French Studies, 91, 117–140. https://doi.org/10.2307/2930377
Day, G. (1999). Allegory: between deconstruction and dialectics. Oxford Art Journal, 103-118. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1360685
De Gennaro, M. (2003). What Remains of Jean Genet? The Yale Journal of Criticism 16(1), 190-209. https://doi.org/10.1353/yale.2003.0004
Deleuze, G. (1990). The logic of sense.New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G. (1993). The fold. The University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition. Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G. (2006). Nietzsche and philosophy. Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2005). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. The University of Minnesota Press.
Dort, B. (1979). Genet: The struggle with theater. trans. Ruth Goldfarb. In P. Brooks & J.Y. Halpern (Eds.), In Genet: A Collection of Critical Essays (pp.114-128). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Durham, S. (2004). The Divided Event: The Aesthetics and Politics of Virtuality in Funeral Rites. Paragraph, 27(2), 59-76.
Eldridge, L. (2005). Genet’s The Maids: performativity in performance. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 25(2), 99–114. https://doi.org/10.1386/stap.25.2.99/1
Finburgh, C. (2006). ‘Micro-treatise on a Mini-politics’: Genet, Individualism and Collectivity. In C. Finburgh, C. Lavery & M. Shevtsova (Eds.), Jean Genet: performance and politics(pp.79-91). Palgrave Macmillan.
Genet, J. (1966). The Balcony. (B. Frechtman, Trans.). New York. Grove Press.
Hardt, M. (1997). Prison Time. Yale French Studies, 91, 64–79. https://doi.org/10.2307/2930374
Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Blackwell.
Jones, D. A. (2001). Building Genet's bodies: Bodies and their representation in the works of Jean Genet. [Doctoral dissertation, The University of Wisconsin-Madison]. Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Koth, K. C. (2000). Crossing the line: Transvestism and the subversion of identity constructs in the theatre of Sand, Genet and Benmussa. [Doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University]. Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics (Vol. 8). Verso Books.
Lavery, C. (2009). Reading The Blacks through the 1956 Preface: Politics and Betrayal. In Finburgh,C., Lavery, C.& Shevtsova, M.(Eds.), Jean Genet: performance and politics(pp.135-148). Palgrave Macmillan.
Lavery, C. (2010). The politics of Jean Genet’s late theatre: Spaces of revolution. Manchester University Press.
Lavery, C., & Woodward, P. (2006). Jean, Ron, Franko and Me: Genet, body art and abjection. In C. Finburgh, C. Lavery & M. Shevtsova (Eds.), Jean Genet: performance and politics(pp.117-127). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Meehan O'Callaghan, S. (2020). The trauma of the body in the drama of Artaud, Beckett and Genet: a paradox of the speaking being [Doctoral dissertation, Dublin City University]. Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Melia, M. (2007). Architecture and cruelty in the writings of Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett. [Doctoral dissertation, Kingston University]. Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Millett, K. (2016). Sexual politics. Columbia University Press.
Mouffe, C. (2011). On the political. Routledge.
Mouffe, C. (2013). Agonistics: Thinking the world politically. Verso Books.
Nield, S. (2006). There is another world: Space, theatre and global anti-capitalism. Contemporary Theatre Review, 16(1), 51–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/10486800500451005
Pietrobruno, S. (1992). Myths of the body: performing identity in Genet. [Master’s thesis, McGill University]. Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/hm50ts846
Rancière, J. (1999). Disagreement: Politics and philosophy. University of Minnesota Press.
Rancière, J. (2004). The flesh of words: The politics of writing. Stanford University Press.
Rancière, J. (2022). Modern Times: Temporality in Art and Politics. Verso Books.
Shevtsova, M. (1987). The consumption of empty signs: Jean Genet's The Balcony. Modern drama, 30(1), 35-45. https://doi.org/10.3138/md.30.1.35
Stephens, E. (2006). Corporeographies: The Dancing Body in ‘adame Miroir and Un chant d’amour. In C. Finburgh, C. Lavery & M. Shevtsova (Eds.), Jean Genet: performance and politics, Jean Genet: performance and politics(pp.159-168)Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230595439_13
Watts, P. (1992). Political Discourse and Poetic Register in Jean Genet’s Pompes funèbres. French Forum, 17(2), 191–203. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40551645
