the brilliance of the servant without qualities: bare life and the horde offstage

8/12/2019 The Brilliance of the Servant without Qualities: Bare Life and the Horde Offstage

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TheBrilliancef theServantwithout ualities:areifeand he horde ffstageABSTRACT KEYWORDSIn intsestigatinghenatureof plethora nd bare ufficimcyonstage, owardBarker HowardBarkerpursueshe imit case efweenhepossiblend the rnpossiblehathashauntedhe offstagetheatre ince he Attic tragedy This articleexploreshe ways n which the play- catastrophewrightmakes seof theoffstagepace s a repositoryfor theunknowablefuture, he GiorgioAgambenspatiallyexcludeds a sitefor the emporally xcluded.reada lesser-knownork bare ife -of Barker's, he Brillianceof the Servant,as thesacificeof bare ife to unknown potentialifypotentiality,where he eponymouserrsant ubmits o the tortureof a hordeofbarbarians ccupyingheffitage spaceLike hemessengerf theclassicalragedy,thisfigure traoersinghe borderbetweenhe scene nd obscme nnounces newkindof characterlessharacter, ithoutdesire ndzoithout biectioes,ut richwitha plethora f messages.

To experimentwith the nature of plethora and bare sufficienry n the thea-tre is to experimentwith the limits of what is possibleonstage; t is to askwhat we may consider he capacityof the theatreas an irrevocablyboundedspace.How many bodiesare oo many bodies,how little is too little?At eitherend of this continuumwaits the offstagespace, field rich with unarticulatedexcess,'rvherevery,thing nd nothing could urk in the wings.As this condi-tional qualification'could'remindsus, thesequestionsalsomakedemandsontemporalify,on what futuresare availableo a depictedworld.


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Apprehending what events are possible onstage and how far a charactermay stray from expectedpossibilitieshas been at the core of Howard Barker'sdramatic work at least since his decision n the late 1980s o Dursue a contemporary form of tragedy in his self-proclaimed Theatre of-atastrophe

It lsentirely appropriate that a theatre conversing with the tragic tradition wouldpursue the extent of the minimal and the maximal. According to Aristotle'sPoetics(1967) - the most influential of many attempts to encompass a genrethat itself escapesdelineation - tragedy is at its roots concerned with nego-tiating proportionalily: what are the appropriate consequences of an action,what is the sufficient punishment for one's guilt and how does the one standin for the many? Tragedy seeks to restrain the plethora of futures opened upby catastrophe o a bounded and manageablewhole. The Greek philosopherhails p1ot, or the organization of events into a set of plausible causai relations,as the most important element of the genre, requiring that whatever beginsmust find its suitable end. The scale of a plot that its events may be heldwithin the scope of a viewer's memory - determines the complexity a p1ay'sdramatic arc can encompass (Aristotle 1967: 30) In epic texts IIke The Bite of theNrghf (running more than five hours in performance), the EcstaticBible (eighthours in performance, but intended to unfold over a 24-hour period) or the2011 Aberystwyth production of The Forfu (directed by David Ian Rabey andas yet, unpublished), Barker presents a tragic work that cannot be containedin a single glance, in a single remembrance As a contemporary counterpoint,John Barton's ten-hour cycle of tragedies based on the Trojan War, Tantalus(2001),also tests he limits of a spectator'sattention Yet where Barton subdivides his epic into smaller parts and self-contained stories to provide handholds for attentiory Barker's performances swell beyond summary or splinterinto fragments that cannot be encapsulated.His plays proceedby catastrophicaccumulation rather than causalityAgainst tragedy's attempts to establish rational proportions on irrationalforces and events, catastrophe courts the disproportionate and the incom-mensurate.The OED defines catastropheas a sudden and widespread disas-ter', but further qualifies its application in regards to the dramatrc paradigmas 'the point at which the circumstances overcome the central motive, introducing the close or conciusion; denouement' Thus, catastrophe nhablts anunmarked time-space of open collapse that, through its dramatlc representa-tion, simultaneously instigates the marked beginning of an end Tragedy ls atheatrical apparatus or processinga central catastrophicevent into a sociallylegible meaning or product, to set an indeterminate middle on track to adeterminate end. Without the tragic to delimit it, the catastrophe reverber-ates through other bodies and events; the plague of Thebes in Oedipus Rex, orexample, casts ts blight on c rops, animals and humans alike, suspending thefuture and its unborn generations.By casting Oedipus as cause of the catastrophe, the tragedy also makes of him its cureOn a much smaller scale, he dramatic simllarly processes ittle catastro,phes o{ undisciplined motion into discrete and purposeful actions completewith names and recognizableshapes Peter Szondi places he restraint of thecatastrophic at the core of not only tragedy, but the dramatic theatre morebroadly conceived: The accidental enters the Drama from outside, but, bymotivating it, accident s domesticated; t is rooted in the heart of drama itself'(1987:10) Thls taming or domestication of accidentalmotion comes to us lnthe form of a named action, movement giveu an intention, name and shape.If drama is etymologically'the art of action', then it offers ts audience igures

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and objects that can be identified in terms of actions and function (presumedaction). Its representations are based not only on what has bem done, but alsowhat wiII be done. Drama presupposes a network of certain bounded pathsfor what may come next, a finite set of teleological projections streaming forthfrom a character that we may call the possible.Since the earliest works in hisTheatre of Catastrophe, such as the fittingly titled collection of short playsThe Possibilities (1986), Barker has replaced objective-based action with themoment of choice as the cornerstone of his art. He populates his worlds withcharacters on the verge of opening out into multiple forms and attachments.Caught in situations rife with historical and cultural upheaval, these charac-ters explore the many proper and improper courses suddenly made availableto them in the presenf when they do choose to act they favour the profaneand egregious outskirts of these possible actions more often than acceptableforms of behaviour. For example, when Anne Bradshaw, the heroine of Victory(1983), encounters the great John Milton blind and feeble in his garden, shedoes not offer him honour and acclaim, but a slap in the face. These charactersdisplay a remarkable skill at expressing desires in langue both sophisticatedand surprising, drawing these sacrilegious intentions into the compass of anever-expanding human community via the dramatic form. In this manner,Barker acknowledges the way in which the dramatic theatre inevitably incitesits audience to analyse character in terms of his or her plausible fufures, whilealso staging reconnaissance missions to the outer limits of that constraint. Weare repeatedly forced to reevaluate what a character could do in light of whatshe does.

And yet, there are occasional figures in Barker's elliptical plays that main-tain or even gather an inexplicable force by adhering to the barest form of lifeand refusing to give over to expression. For example, in a kind of counterpartto the earlier collection of short plays, The Possibilities, the thirteen discon-nected scenes that comprise 13 Objects (2003) each revolve around a seriesof objects that do not behave solely according to function, but become thenexus for ambiguous intentionality. The characters in these scenes relate tothe objects as if they, too, were live figures guarding secrets of their own: anold camera terrorizes a young man with the unfathomable memory of all theprevious photographs it has taken. a child's rattle maintains the capacity forspeech before and beyond any individual statement. Here the bare sufficienryof a singu.lar object opens out into the plethora of what we may call potmtial-ity, a factity or medium that does not express an individual statement, butinstead holds its ability to express in reserve. As the example of the waitingcamera or the silent rattle tells us, it is in the bare sufficiency of an obiect ora character that the plethora of the potential appears. Here we might followAristotle rnhis Metaphysics n imagining the block of stone before the sculp-tor's chisel has left a mark as containing within it a plethora of immanentfigures. Or we might tum to the blank page before the stroke of a pen and saythat this empty white field contains a plethora of future inscriptions. The bareappearance of a ground or medium suspends a host of worlds before us. Anyfurther addition would narrow the fullness of what may come, would limit thefuture to a smaller set of possibilities. But how can a human performer appearas a medium containing a plethora of characters or messages?One of Barker's lesser-known plays, The Brilliance of the Sercant, stages aparticularly effective version of this meeting of the minimal (bare sufficiency)and the maximal (plethora) and it is in this direction that I would like to orientthe remainder of this article. The tragic/dramatic apparatus' corralling of

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potentiality lnto a set of possibilities here confronts an alternative system oftheatrical production, always at work, but necessariiy excluded from the insist-ent boundaries of the stage tself: literally an offstage machine In the theatre anempty stage may already show too mucLg may already exceed the bare suffi-cienry of performance (for what stage is ever truly empty?) - perhaps theminimal ground of the theatrical medium appears at the site where nothingcan be seen: in the blackout behind the curtain, off in the wings where whoknows what \urks. The Brilliance of the Seroant figures this unseen multiplic-ity as an encroaching horde of barbarians, holding any number of terrifiTinglyunknowable futures in reserve. The play centres upon a singular figure thatoccupies a position of bare sufficiency or bare life onstage, a blank slate of afigure that goes forth to meet the plethora of the offstage, and returns with itsinexplicable power in tow Consummated in this fashion, this liminal pres-ence announces a kind of characterless character, without directed desire andobjectives, ut repletewith potential i ty.The Brilliance of the SelTant is set in the ruined hall of a great house asa cataclysmic war rages on, the proverbial barbarians at the gate. As in somany of Barker's plays, we are in the midst of revolution and political unrest,the action centred on a time between regimes when hierarchies of powerare in disarray. Plays like Hated Nightfall, Victory, The Power of the Dog andThe Gaoler'sAche for the Nearly Dead return to historical moments of suchcatastrophe; The Last Supper, Ursula and Judith look to apocalyptic transl-tions from the myths of Christianlty; here there is not a specific historicalrupture, but the upheaval at the apex of any war, any time. As the quintes-sential bourgeois groom-to be Taxman remarks to Camera, the lady of thehouse and mother of his fianc6e, 'this war will finish off your entire classand bring about a New morality It is my misfortune to be straddling - like aburglar impaled on a fence - Two eras' (Barker 2001: 92, original emphasis).A-11 f the characters are, like Taxman, impaled on the fence of history caughtin a catastrophe without end, an event that refuses to get on with it They areburglars, criminals transgressing the order of the past and whatever order thefuture may bring.The overarching action concerns an attempt to counter this catastropheby realizing a marked historical action. At the top of the p1ay, we are toldthat a wedding is to take place, that in spite of the obstacles that the inva-sion presents (no priests, no guests), the bride-to-be, Sunetra, is adamantthat her wedding continue: '\Arhen the walls of culture fall. Practise culture '(Barker 2001: 104). The wedding ceremon, perhaps the most commonlyutilized denouement in the annals of theatre history, also functions as theconsummate speech act confirming societ;/s continuation Every weddingannounces 'I do' not only as a promise to a partner till death do them part,but as a promise to keep this culture and world alive, to keep this languagealive Against Sunetra's attempt to resolve this civilizing action, the dramaticevent par excellence, the encroaching barbarians present an opposing appan-tus that threatens the amorous jockeying of the onstage characters. This alter-native machinery is comprised of a series of intricate torture devices loomingin the offstage space, accumulating more and more terrible force as the playprogresses.Death or great pain waits in the wings, recalling classical ragedy's frequent palring of wedding ceremony and funeral rite (as n Aeschylus'Agamemnonand Sophocles' Antigone) The play thus stages a conflict befweenthe civilizing possibilities of onstage drama and the catastrophic potentialityof offstageobscenepower

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As the audience to this conflict, our only access o the barbarians, machin-ery is verbally relayed by the onstage characters or indicated by offstage soundeffects Early in the play we are told of a machine used to cut the lips off of pris-oners as a means of negating both beauty and speech n a single, cleanstrokeInvented by the barbarians o process he vast number of conquered peoplesin an efficient manner, it would produce bodies identically marked by therrinability to enter the human world or, at the ieast, handicapped within therealm of its dramatic counterpart where speech and appearance determine useor value. Later, we are told how the barbarlansattach limbs to bent saplings,allowing the force of the tree to dismember the victim - echoing the manner inwhich Pentheus, the sacrificial victim in Euripides' Bacchae,s treed and thentorn to piecesby the possessedhorde of women in that prototlpical tragedy.But these inventive devices of visible disfigurement are not the one whosejourney and eventual assembly just offstage forms the primary counterpoint tothe onstage action. Instead, the barbarians have brought their most exquisitedevice, their crouming achievement, to the great house for the sole purposeof selecting a marq,r from the dramatic world. If the '1ip' machine acts as afactory for mass-producing dentically unspeakablebodies, n a sense makrngthe unspeakableequivalent n its silence, hen this latter construction - a port-able 'ca1vaq,/according to one character - is devoted to producing the singu,lar sacrifice. The excluded plethora and the singular bare life share a commonspace offstage, marking with a brutal imagined machine the outside limit ofthe human community that the drama represents Occupyrng a state of excep-tion, included by their exclusion, hey (do not) show where the representableends Convention assumes that the representable stands in stark oppositionto the unrepresentable;one is either included in the sceneor excluded fromits premises. However, following Carl Schmidt, Giorgio Agamben has arguedthat it is in the decisionbetueen nclusion and exciusion, he determinatlon ofa limit casebetween one and the other, that one most powerfullv encountersthe extent of both thought categories.Neither one nor the othea the state ofexception delimits and defines the human and the horde.The classical ragic martyr can protest and lament his or her fate, even chooseto willingly face death, but he or she must - with a few notable excep-tions - die offstage.As Jean Genet writes in The Blacks:'Greek tragedy, mydear, decorum. The ultimate gesture is performed offstage' (1960: 84) Theworkings of the machines are as inaccessible or incommunicable to theonstage charactersas they are to the audience. During his preparations forthe wedding, Taxman observes one of the barbarians' horrific acts outside,but he cannot name the action he has seen Later, one of the servantwomendescribeswitnessing another device offstage that looks like a cat,s cradlesuspending an oid man in its lines, evincing gruesome cries, yet its exactmanner of operation also remains a mystery: 'I can't exactly see what - whyit hurts - [ ] why does t hurt?' (Barker 2001: 108) Later still, when he firstintroduces the arrival of the consummate sacrificial machine, the head serv-ant Shoulder describes t as an unseen, infuitive menace: 'No one has seenit, though many testify to its existence. t is as if its coming is announced, rtspresence experienced, through the nerves, and its materiality rather intuitedthan perceived' (Barker2001: 118) In order to resist the objective nterests of

the dramatic state with its subjects, the machine must remain out of sight,lts exact processand construction unknown, but assertinga force that pres-sures a1lonstage,makingits presence elt through the nerves. All thesemachinescounter the analytic contract between the spectator and the performance,s

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production of meaningful possibilities discussed above. The offstage barbar-ians carry with them an unnamed threat that can take any form in the future:'All things that have been imagined will occur [...] every malicious thoughtwill be someone's ordeal' @arker 2001:99). They incite not the particular-ity of fear, with its negative relation to a certain possibility (this Ihreat, tLtatdanger), but institute a field suffused with unarticulated anxiety where dreadsuffuses all surroundings spatial and temporal. At any moment, somethinghorrible may come from some place. They offer a plethora of tortures to theimagination.

Expanding upon the conception of the nomadic war machine proposed byDeleuze and Guattari, theorist Gerald Raunig writes that 'the martial dimen-sion of the war machine consists in the power of inventiory in the capacity forchange, n the creation of other worlds' (2010:58). The barbarian's machines aresuch inventions in both sensesof the word: as material/technological construc-tions and as the machinations of deception and manipulation. The offstagemachines also recall lhe deus ex machina, the contraption offstage that wouldallow the enhance of a god from above in classical theatre, or any numberof other theatrical inventions devoted to producing supemafural appearances(the fog machines of the Italian Renaissance or the architectures of mirrorsused to project image), but remaining behind the scenes.This machinery usedin the classical heatre'to resolve all the aporia that had emerged in the courseof the play' is, in the catastrophic theatre, used to manufacture uncertainty anddisruption rather than restrain it (Raunig 2010: 38).Coupled with the characters' panic-stricken retreat from the potentialityof the horde is a contradictory fascination with what can only be described asits seductive power. It is a seduction that promises to reveal the truth aboutthe self in all its particularity. For the prinlipal characters, to be sacrificed tothe machine is to be analysed to the core of one's being as an individual, sothat eventually each feels that the machine has come specifically to require hisor her martyndom. One may say that in tragedy the hero achieves his or herdestined meaning and individuality in becoming the chosen sacrificial subject.Such a figure becomes the centre of the drama and acquires a peculiar powerthat we will discuss below. Camer4 the head of the household and qrrrosureof a variety of amorous intentions, attests to the deepest understanding of themachine. She explains the device as follows:Do you not sense its anxiety? It is as if by virtue of its design, its manu-facture and assembly, it has acquired a will. It is self animated in someway, and utters. The peculiar silence that follows the tightening of theast bolt is replete with what - desire? Lack? It's almost tangible....(Barker"2001: 126-127)

If the machine desires its victim, then surely, as the object of so manyhuman desires, Camera is the intended victim. She continues: 'Unlike us, tnejoumeys of the machine are undertaken strictly in accordance with an end'@arker 2001: 127). Contrary to her claim, this mode of single-minded pursuit isentirely in line with the kind of future available in the dramatic world to whichCamera belongs. It thinks in terms of ends, objectives and the attachment toa desired object. If we are to beLieve Camer4 the offstage barbarians merelyrepresent the epitome of the economy (in its efrmological sense as 'householdmanagement') of desire wi*Lin which she s the queen of the castle.The machh-ery offstage mirrors her own striving for an 'ultimate gesture', a definite end.

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But the more we learn about Camera, the more suspect her tesn_mony appears. Immediately after shoulder has announced the approach ofthe machine that none have seery she claims contrarily that she has in factwitnessed it, but only in pieces. In other words, she can only conceptualizethe potential in a part-by-part segmentation, as a set of posibl" pieces. Asbefits her name, Camera presents herself as a woman set within a fixed pt,se,an arrangement to be seen (she asks her daughter: ,you think I pose, don,tyou? You think I say things lor effect?' [Barker 2001: 90]). She may state that'the consequencesof things .. have never interested me..., (Barker2001:gg),and soundly refuse to give apologies or hear them, but her daughter seesthrough the mask of indifference. It becomes apparent that, at oddi with herov,n avowals, Camera is most interested in the machine as a 'concentrationof moral intelligence' that will translate her intended sacrifice into a definitivejudgement or end. she, like all the other principal characters, desires self-recognition through painful apotheosis. Like sunetra and Taxman, Cameradesires that the machine choose her, that it authorize her character.

As the head of a dlng household - drama's spectatorial-analytical house -a classical ragedy would indeed elect Camera to submit to the sacrificialact. InBarkels world" however, it is the brilliant sewant of the play's title who ultimatelybecomesthe collective's substitute. \vhere Camera's indifference is a performecldisplay, intended to mask her own desire to meet this supreme endind look-ing'to [the machine] for some cruel kind of solace', shoulder is the most enig-matic of the characterg his intentionality almost entirely obscured throughout(Barker 2001: 131) Even at the moment when he announces his position asthe sacrfficia-lubject, t is unclearwhether this is an activechoiceor ihe passiveacceptanceof a decision voiced from without. He seemingiy exists outiide ofpersonal attachment and outside the law; ashe puts if it is my privilege to judgeno one'. Asked to give a speechbefore departin& to judge the othery shouldercan only offer his 'uncritical devotion' @arker2001:133).shoulder is a man without qualities, a man without a place, and thereforethe ideal vessel for the communi[/s blame. A blank slate, a tabula rasa,anyonecan write anything onto him. In other words, he is a messenger without amessage. To generalize greatry, in classical tragedy, the messenger clelivershis or her description of the offstage event with the least diversion or inflec-tion possible. He or she has no name, ideally, and arguably no character apartfrom the content of the message; he messenger does not appear onstage priorto this moment, nor stay beyond its calling. writing of the figure of Hermes,the dMne messenget Michel Serressuggests hat,the messengerappears .. .but he must also disappear, or rruritehimself out of the picture, in oider thatthe recipient hears the words of the person who sent the message, not themessenger' (1,997:99). he quintessentialmessenger s a person oino impor_tance with no end; announcing his or her own mediality as message,he oishedisappears into a pure means without end. The messenger takei possessionof the potentiality to do or expresswithout giving form to an action or state-ment vvhile most of Barker's characters pursue a desired object or other withfanatical conviction, here the playr,wight seems to present one that pursuesdesire without an object, not as a reward or end in itself, but as a way of tLrlnesuspended eiweendesireand fulf i tment.some distantdescendant f Chrisfshoulder loves without object and without selfish interesf he gives himselfover completely in his 'uncritical devotion'. To remind us of the correlationbetween these two mar$rrs, each time that Shoulder slaps Tamran across theface during the play, the groom exclaims 'Christl, again and again.

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As his own name suggests,Shouldermust carry the burden of thecommunity's ransgressions:he sexualescapades etween Cameraandmost prominent instance n a seem_pared or submission efore he ,port_hrist's crucifixion,he perfectlv,eilir"sferedby French heoristRen6 Girard.he of classical ragedyrepresents heriminal actscoliapsedifference o sucha degree hat it is necessaryo radicaly separate ,u..ifi.iur subjectn orderto reconstitute ociarorder.This subject, he tragichero, s heid responsi_ble for all dispersed egative iolenceand the ."rt of society eforms tselftn opposition o this other. His or her sacrifice emovescaiastropheromthe city, and so the subjectbecomesat once both the causeof uil dirr,rp_tion and its resolution.He or she s the pharmakonn both senses f theword: the poison and the cure.This duarstate- deprivedand fulL of fo*".at once - parailels the ambivalenceof the bare rife and sovereign. f barelife possesseshe most narrow of powerssufficrent o be called ive,and thesoverelgn ossesses plethoraof capacities, ne would assume hat thesetwo stand in strict opposition to one another.However, sharinga commonstate of exceptionas extraordinary igures, a radical ambivaleice overseesthem. we may saythat both exist ouiside the norm of the human commu-nity, so that the jurisdiction of human ordinancesdoesnot apply to eithercategory e.g. he death of either sovereignor barerife wourd noiquarify ashomicide).As Girardnotes, n manycultures he king is the onewho canbesacrificed, venmustbe sacrificed,n order o marntainstablesociar rder. tis this structure hat the ciassicalragedy epricates.n Sophocles, uintes-sential tragedyoedipus savesThebei from tne sphinx o.,ty to becJme hecauseof its plague;asmentionedabove,his exiiecures ne city and setshimwanderingasa kind of refugee rom city to city. In Oed.ipust totorrs, iy tt-retime he nearshis death,the cursedman hasbecomedivinely po_"rful '_hi,burial site will offer a sacredbressing o its host city. Tellingiy, this curmr-natingdeath akesplace^offstage,ts particurar ocationuns#n'even bythemessengerhat reportsOedipus,demise.As soon as Shoulderaccepts is mantle as scapegoat,he stageworldbegins to lloothly function.according o the possibiities of classilal trag_edy's sacrificialstructure.when thJ servantprepares o encounter herine, he othercharactersddress im.heother seryantspraisehis carriage,e with awe. This divinity has beenn Taxman,sepeated xclamations fother characters, ut by the electronof the world itself: here, the servant s left standing al.ne o*tug", i*_o,bile and'suddenly, a bright stream of light througl the missing"rooi iltrr_minates him. He feels it, laughs, @arkei 2001: I01). And whei Shoulderdisappearsrom sight to offei himself as victim, there is a sudden shift in

l l l : i , : : :On:re onstage s he ong-awaitedndwirhhetdweddingU"gnr,tne preuousry antagonisticand despairingcharactersembracing n nJarrybucoliccelebration."-r?-l1t- lllT"" attempts o watch Shoulderashe is greetedwith propriery::"-":-"1 krndness y the barbarians ffstage.t becomesncreasingly iificult::r loanan to describehe event hat is takingpracebeyond he triresholdofrnestaee:

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(strainingoseento thestreet).A4-rat,sappening. ?It's hard to sayexactly,my eyesare_Canyou-Peculiar...I wish my eyeswerebetter, _

I can't eli f he,s. what s he. .@arker2001:137)

He turns from thewindow, his attentiawareof the offstagescene.Durinq Ienced heir ow.n ecognition:Camerdaughter,not her rivaf even dressingor.r'n hehadpreviouslyhoped o usrTagedyhavefinally taken place, he nuptiarrebirth and the sacrificialdeath,the recognition and reversai.so that as we hear machine pu.k"J ,f u.,acarriedaway, t seems hat Shourder as beenprocessed y the tradiionaldramatic apparatus, hat history canreachedtsendand hepossibles reirShouder's"uppeurinc" nstage,with an oversizedvercoat r.,orJid .'My agony',he says, wasquitesirnpl ,athe world ... like rain ... the movementof the tides ..., @arker2001:140).This s the cruelnecessrlflzhat Nietzsche'sBirth of rragedy ide"rin* *'rn ,n"pessimismof a radicaily nhuman and,incomprene"riLte o.ta,-rh" pr;oruof the Dionysian.Crearly he machinehasoperateo n mannerquite differentfrom Camera'sexpectations:t doesnot providean intentionarpag"*;;t o.rationalizationof its chosen ictim.And, is the lady of the housJa"E ,ir"i i"for the spectator,when shepulls the overcoat rom his back n ,"u.J-oirtr"marks eft by the machine,shediscovers surfaceof smoothand unmarkedskin. Facing his blank canvasof a miance,Camera, he mistressof that o1dto reasserther own dramaticcredenticharacter...[.. . ] am clinging o myemphasis). o which Shoulder eplies,gone, wepidownsireamn a flood .@arker2001:142).Thatdeluge, hat catastrophe iscardinganendsandmoralintelligence, eavesa set of figures gatherei on Barker,s"st"g; ,il-;;;"pof refugeesbereftof their placeand dentity. A new agebegiis, herald"ed ythe unmarkedmessiahShourder.44ren he stagedirectionsdescribeCamerareleasing 'profound sobs, the heaving purri6', of bereaveme",; ig"rk",200.1:.143)as the lights dim, the questio-n f ,why?,or ,to what ..,a2, ."r.,ui.,entirely n the dark. In other words, n TheBriilianceof thesentant he tragicsacrifice- o longer tunctions as anticipatedby Girards th;;;"i; ir'"o,"u"agentof culturalrestitution.Thissacrificial ubjectdoesnot pro.tui--u-."tu.r.,

to a known role, to a characterwith knowablequaiities.If the spectatoriar rama/tragedywith its possible utures functions rikea torturing machine, hen it is one akin to that described " ru*J" t --tn,PenalColony.It is a deviceof extensiveand iniricate, but urtimate$,inite

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inscription.The stylus hat carvesat its victim's flesharrivesat an end,reavesthe body.markedby a moral and uridical statement, he revelationof a char_acter o the-analyticalgaze,even-if hatmeaning s, as n Kafka,sparable,onlylegrble o the judged and god above.We, in the spectator,s eat,get to playthe part of-sucha god and seea charactermade egibre.But Bark#s barbar-ians from the no-man's-randof the offstage pu." i-"urr"no trace; ather theyrefurn the body of the sacrificiar ubject niact and unscathed,"o io"g.. ,.*-g ?_.i:.:t - pe.rhaps o ionger a character t all _ and sacredoiy as theta,wa rasaoi a iife outside the realm of the possibre.The stagedirectionsdescribeshoulder watching the barbarians'departure rom the window, ,asif taking leaveof someoneprofoundly loved for whom no gesture s app.o-priate' @arker200I: 140).How *orrl,Co." stage his mom"ent,p".nup', tn"-:tt.l?*:.fuI in the play,with its gesture hat ii not a gesture?Sioulder hasestablished n inimitabreconnectionwith the horde, iing on their fi",}roruof cruelty- he full potential of a world,sunrealized magrnings.No glrtu.u o1,"_t:t]",9"{::e

this greatexpanse;here s no way of "ipr"rli.,g thJ protun_orry oI nrs rove,nothing to show of the horror endured.ThiJnaked back,displayng a shoulderas-onewourd dispray he ability or potentiarita .u.rya burdery s the baresufficienry _the oniy sufficienry oi ""p."rrirg suchamagnitudeof feeling.The classicalm


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States,Bert O. (1994),The Pleasure f the PIay, Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress.Szondi,Peter (1987),Theoryof Modem Drama(trans.M. Hays),Minneapolis:Universityof Minnesota.

SUGGESTEDITATIONSack,D. (2012),'TheBrillianceof the Seruantwithout qualities:Bare ife andthe horde offstage',Studiesn Theatre Performance2" 3, pp 257-267,doi:10.1386/stap.32.3.257LCONTRIBUTORETAITSDaniel Sack is AssistantProfessorof Theatre Studies at Florida StateUniversity. Prior to this appointment he was a Five College MellonPostdoctoralFellow in PerformanceStudies at Amherst College and theUniversity of Massachusetts. e is currently revising his book manuscript,TheFuturesof Performance:ossibility nd Potentialityn LiaeArt.E-mail [email protected] Sackhas asserted is right under the Copltighf Designsand PatentsAct, 1988, o be identified as the author of this work in the format that wassubmitted o IntellectLtd.

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the brilliance of the servant without qualities: bare life and the horde offstage

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