| Abstrakt: |
According to Benjamin the interruption ( I Unterbrechung i ) in Brecht's epic theatre 'consists in producing not empathy ( I Einfühlung i ) but astonishment ( I Staunen i )', and the 'task of the epic theatre, according to Brecht, is less the development of the action than the representation ( I Darstellung i ) of situations' (Benjamin [5]: 304). And in 2013 they performed the I The Hebrew Notebook - and Other Stories by Franz Kafka i , emphasizing Benjamin's understanding of Kafka as a writer for the stage. In parallel, my book I Philosophers and Thespians: Thinking performance i (Rokem [7]) had explored this triangulation of Kafka/Brecht/ Benjamin, examining Benjamin's notion of the standstill in the context of Kafka's short story "The Next Village" about the rider who according to Kafka, regardless of the accidents that can happen on this journey, will due to the shortness of life itself never reach the next village. (Benjamin [4]: 801) Benjamin reads Kafka through Brechtian binoculars, applying the critical apparatus that he had already developed for his interpretation of Brecht's epic theatre to unlock the hidden secrets of Kafka's writings. [Extracted from the article] |
