Biopolitics, Materiality and Meaning in Modern European Drama

Hedwig Fraunhofer proposes a rewriting of modernity that challenges binary methodologies and reveals the performativity of theatre in its double sense. She addresses biopolitical exclusions and the totalitarian crisis point of modernity, highlighting the collapse of public and private, human and more-than-human, materiality and meaning in a common life.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 328 pages
Publication date: 31 August 2022
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Hedwig Fraunhofer challenges traditional modernisation theories by proposing a reimagining of modernity that transcends binary methodologies such as nature and culture, mind and matter, epistemology and ontology, critique and affirmative writing, and dramatic and postdramatic theatre. She specifically addresses the biopolitical exclusions that have shaped modern Western epistemology, leading to the totalitarian crisis point of modernity. Fraunhofer highlights the performativity of theatre in its dual sense as both a theatrical production and the intra-activity of a dynamic system of multiple relations between human and more-than-human actors, energies, and affects. In modern theatre, the boundaries between public and private, human and more-than-human, materiality and meaning collapse into a shared life.

ISBN-13: 9781474467445