But the theater itself is shaped and undermined by the profound evil of representation. It is
that corruption itself. For the stage is not threatened by anything but itself. Theatrical
representation, in the sense of exposition, of production, of that which is placed out there (that
which the German Darstellung translates) is contaminated by supplementary re-presentation.
The latter is inscribed in the structure of representation, in the space of the stage. Let us not be
mistaken, what Rousseau criticizes in the last analysis is not the content of the spectacle, the
sense represented by it, although that too he criticizes: it is re-presentation itself. Exactly as
within the political order, the menace has the shape of the representative.
In fact, after having evoked the misdeeds of the theater considered in the content of what it
stages, in its represented, the Letter to d’Alembert incriminates representation and the
representer: “Beyond these effects of the theatre, which are relative to what is
performed
[representées], there are others
no less necessary which relate directly to the
stage and to the
persons who perform [representants]; and it is to them that the previously mentioned
Genevans attribute the taste for luxury, adornment, and dissipation, whose introduction among
us they rightly fear.” 29 Immorality, then, attaches, to the very status of the representer
(performer). Vice is his natural bent. It is normal that he who has taken up representation as a
profession should have a taste for external and artificial signifiers, and for the perverse use of
signs. Luxury, fine clothes, and dissipation are not signifiers incidentally coming about here
and there, they are the crimes of the signifier or the representer itself.
Double consequence:
((305))
1. There are two sorts of public persons, two men of spectacle: on the one hand the orator or
preacher, on the other the actor. The former represents himself, in him the representer and the
represented are one. But the actor is bom out of the rift between the representer and the
represented. Like the alphabetic signifier, like the letter, the actor himself is not inspired or
animated by any particular language. He signifies nothing. He hardly lives, he lends his voice.
It is a mouthpiece. Of course the difference between the orator or preacher and the actor
presupposes that the former does his duty, says what he has to say. If they do not assume
ethical responsibility for their word, they become actors, hardly even actors, for the latter
make a duty of saying what they do not think:
The orator and the preacher, it could be said, make use of their persons as does the actor. The
difference is, however, very great. When the orator appears in public, it is to speak and not to
show himself off; he represents only himself: he fills only his own proper role, speaks only in
his own name, says, or ought to say, only what he thinks; the man and the role being the same
[being] [étant le même être], he is in his place; he is in the situation of any citizen who fulfils
the functions of his estate. But an actor on the stage, displaying other sentiments than his own,
saying only what he is made to say, often representing a chimerical being, annihilates himself,
as it were, and is lost in his hero. And, in this forgetting of the man, if something remains of
him, it is used as the plaything of the spectators (p. 187; italics added) [pp. 80-81].
It is the best possible situation: the actor accepts the role and loves what he incarnates. The
situation may be still worse. “What shall I say of those who seem to be afraid of having too
much merit as they are and who degrade themselves to the point of playing characters whom
they would be quite distressed to resemble?” [p. 81].
The identity of the representer and the represented may be accomplished in two ways. The
better way: by the effacement of the representer and the personal presence of the represented
(the orator, the preacher); or the worse way: it is not illustrated by the actor alone (representer
emptied of what he represents) but by a certain society, that of the worldly Parisians who
have, in order to find themselves there, alienated themselves in a certain theater, theater of a
theater, play representing the comedy of that society. “It is nevertheless solely for these people
that theatrical entertainments are made. They are represented by fictitious characters in the
middle of the theater, and show themselves in real ones on each side; they are at once persons
of the drama on the stage, and comedians in the boxes” (La Nouvelle Héloise, p. 252). * This
total alienation of the represented within
xxx fotnote start xxx
•
Eloisa: or, A Series of Original Letters, collected and published by Mr. J. J. Rous-seau,
Citizen of Geneva, translated from the French, 2d edition (London, 1761), z: 6o.
xxx fotnote slutt xxx
((306))
the representer is the negative aspect of the social pact. In both cases, the represented is
reappropriated when he is lost without reserve in his representation. In what terms should the
elusive difference which separates the positive from the negative aspect, the authentic social
pact from a forever-perverted theater, from a theatrical society, be defined?
2. The signifier is the death of the festival. The innocence of the public spectacle, the good
festival, the dance around the water hole, would open a theater without representation. Or
rather a stage without a show: without theater, with nothing to see. Visibility—a moment ago
the theorem, here the theatre—is always that which, separating it from itself, breaches
[entame] the living voice.
But what is a stage which presents nothing to the sight? It is the place where the spectator,
presenting himself as spectacle; will no longer be either seer [voyant] or voyeur, will efface
within himself the difference between the actor and the spectator, the represented and the
representer, the object seen and the seeing subject. With that difference, an entire series of
oppositions will deconstitute themselves one by one. Presence will be full, not as an object
which is present to be seen, to give itself to intuition as an empirical unit or as an eidos
holdingitself in front of or up against; it will be full as the intimacy of a self-presence, as the
consciousness or the sentiment of self-proximity, of self-sameness [propriété]. That public
festival will there-fore have a form analogous to the electoral meetings of a free and legiferant
assembled people: the representative differance will be effaced in the self-presence of