| Abstrakt: |
Anthony Neilson's Edward Gant's amazing feats of loneliness (2002) analyses how the human body separated from cultural practices in its own feats of loneliness becomes the epitome of the abject. In order to overcome this ecophobic fear of relational materiality, human beings separate themselves from material formations, announcing their superior positions as intellectual beings. Reminding one of one's mortality and animality, the body is thus a source of hatred and fear. Therefore, it is degraded into the status of the abject. Within this theoretical framework, I will mainly focus on the touching story of Sanzonetta, an Italian girl whose pimples contain small pearls. Such dramatization by Neilson shows that the abject becomes the substratum of appreciation when processed in accordance with human aesthetics and artistic prerequisites. By doing so, the play wittingly presents the intricate feeling in consequence of the encounter with the abject. Nonetheless, the reclamation of the disgusting back into the culture by means of a discursive institution (the pearl company) ensures the appreciation of the abject only when filtered corresponding to human practices of artistic creation and capitalist means. In this respect, the play depicts an absurd entertainment by reversing the material part denominated as disgusting to the aesthetical spectacle. The aim of this study is, thus, to tell the story of Sanzonetta's pimples that have become storied matter through which we might comprehend abjection of the body. Such comprehension also leads to an analysis of ecophobia embedded in humanity's fear of animality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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