Staged: Show Trials, Political Theater, and the Aesthetics of Judgment

Minou Arjomand

Published by Columbia University Press 2018

Staged

Show Trials, Political Theater, and the Aesthetics of Judgment

Minou Arjomand

https://doi.org/10.7312/arjo18488

Overview
Contents

About this book

Minou Arjomand draws on a rich archive of postwar German and American performances to reveal theater as a place for forms of judgment that are inadmissible in a courtroom but indispensable for public life. Staged weaves together theater history and political philosophy into a powerful case for the importance of theaters as democratic institutions.

Author / Editor information

Arjomand Minou :

Minou Arjomand (PhD, Theater, Columbia) is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the translator and co-editor (with Ramona Mosse) of The Routledge Introduction to Theatre and Performance Studies by Erika Fischer-Licthe (2013) and has published articles in Modern Drama (2016), Maska: The Performing Arts Journal (2014), The Brecht Yearbook (2013), n+1, and Theatre Survey (2010).Minou Arjomand is an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reviews

Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard University:
In crystal-clear prose, Staged examines the unique relation between political thought and theater in German and German-American theater from the 1920s to the 1970s, one born from the historical experience of Nazism, the Holocaust, and their aftermath. I was struck by how much we can learn from this painful period of German and German-American theater and political thought. The book is very timely indeed.

Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University:
Theatricality is pervasive in courtroom scenes. So is the question about the relationship between ethical judgment and the law. Political theater has always exploited this conjunction. The show trial exemplifies the ambivalence between law and theatricality, while the trial play offers a counterpoint. This is the constellation Minou Arjomand brilliantly explores, focusing on productions of trial plays, films, and TV courtroom series from Brecht and Piscator to Anna Deavere Smith, with Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy as a touchstone of the argument. A major intervention into the aesthetics of political theater.

Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley:
This is a brilliant work that gives us both a social history and critical theory of postwar theatre. One thinks about the show trial as a terrible miscarriage of justice, but Arjomand gives trial theatre another function: public deliberation and judgment on responsibility and political justice. Whereas much attention has been given to the theatricality of legal trials, Arjomand asks us to value the public function of theatre in enacting debates on justice and establishing a public practice of considered judgment. The history of postwar German theatre offered here engaged in critical theory and aesthetics in a new and engaging argument about aesthetics and politics and the public functions of art in a democracy.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
ILLUSTRATIONS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
Introduction: Show Trials and Political Theater Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter One. Hannah Arendt: Judging in Dark Times Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	22
Chapter Two. Bertolt Brecht: Poetic Justice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Chapter Three. Erwin Piscator: Theater After Auschwitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
Chapter Four. Trials in Nuremberg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
Conclusion. Archives, Law, and Theater Today Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Illustrations
- Other: 21 b&w illustrations

eBook

Published: September 24, 2018
ISBN: 9780231545730