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- Title
A MIRROR OF OUR OWN ANXIETY: CIVILIZATION, VIOLENCE AND ETHICS IN MARTIN CRIMP'S CRUEL AND TENDER.
- Authors
Aragay, Mireia
- Abstract
In the context of the ethical aim that has gained ground in contemporary thought since the 1990s, this article reads Martin Crimp's Cruel and Tender (2004), a rewriting of Sophocles's The Trachiniae (430 BCE), in the light of the historical and ethical rupture represented by the Holocaust and the long shadow it casts over contemporary Western civilization. Drawing mainly on the work of sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, which is, in turn, deeply informed by aspects of Emmanuel Levinas's thought, it is argued that Crimp's play, particularly his reworking of Sophocles' female characters Deianeira and Iole into Amelia and Laela respectively, unmasks the violence inherent to post-Holocaust, globalized Western civilization. At the same time, like Bauman and Lévinas, the play posits the need to re-activate the pre-societal ethical core in individuals that will enable them to become the recipients of each other's testimony and thus build bonds of mutual responsibility. Ultimately, it is claimed, through an 'aesthetics of response-ability', Cruel and Tender interpellates spectators themselves as ethical subjects, as 'double witnesses' both to the manifestations of violence and testimony in the play, and to themselves as they engage in the process of meaning-making.
- Subjects
CRUEL &; Tender (Play); CRIMP, Martin; BAUMAN, Zygmunt, 1925-2017; ENGLISH drama -- History &; criticism; LEVINAS, Emmanuel, 1906-1995; SOPHOCLES, ca. 497 B.C.-406 B.C.; TRACHINIAE, The (Play : Sophocles)
- Publication
Atlantis (0210-6124), 2011, Vol 33, Issue 2, p75
- ISSN
0210-6124
- Publication type
Literary Criticism