A quest beyond enlightenment: Buddhism as counter -enlightenment and modernity's other being in the practices of Antonin Artaud, John Cage, Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno, and Xingjian Gao
Item
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Title
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A quest beyond enlightenment: Buddhism as counter -enlightenment and modernity's other being in the practices of Antonin Artaud, John Cage, Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno, and Xingjian Gao
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:3b86470c3578:10189
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identifier
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10328
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Creator
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Lin, Ivy Yu-Shian,
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Contributor
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David Savran
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Date
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2009
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Religion | Philosophy of Religion | Buddhism | Enlightenment | Modernity | performance | (post)Modernism | Theatre Theory
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Abstract
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I use this idea that a single term (Enlightenment) can incorporate contradictory meanings, to argue that counter-enlightenment inspiration is itself the imbedded "other being" of modernity and had already emerged not only in the East but also in the West. In this project, I use examples from the works of Artaud, Cage, Butoh, and Gao, in order to argue that although they originated in different contexts of modernity, West and East, and studied the philosophy of Enlightenment rationalism, all these theatre artists have pursued an Enlightenment "beyond" and realized and practiced insights of oriental religious thinking, similar to or exactly be Buddhist transcendent illumination and Zen enlightenment as the token of redemptive awakening that is cross-genre and trans-cultural. The theories and practices of Artaud, Cage, Butoh, and Gao concerning transcendence are at the same time similar to yet different from each other. The chief similarity among these four cases is that they all endeavor to emancipate the ultimate poetic truth of the genuine theatre or essential aesthetic transcendentality of performance from the confinements of discursive logic, dramatic/literary representation, and explanatory linear narrative.;Chapters one and two provide the introduction of two different enlightenment backgrounds and ideas and sketch the historical contexts of diverse hermeneutics converging around the theme of "enlightenment." In chapters three through six, I have discussed that the mystical achievements these theatre artists have presented are re-oriented by Buddhist enlightenment philosophy and aligned with the truth of emptiness. The uniting thread of the theatre of Artaud, Cage, Butoh, and Gao is the manifestation of the true absolute, that is, the appearance of the profound, through their performing the physical phenomena of the spiritual/empty substance with subtlety and intricacy. Through performing the empty essence and ultimate reality, the agendas of Artaud, Cage, Butoh, and Gao reverberate with Buddhist spiritual revelation, because the crux of enlightenment--"on the outside, while within form, separate from form; on the inside, while within emptiness, separate from emptiness"--is perpetuated in their arts of "profane illumination." I conclude in noting that instead of integrating into their experiments oriental thoughts and religious traditions as mere elements or exotic artifice, their theatre shapes a particular form of performance language and a new philosophy/epistemology of performance.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Theatre
