A debate about a new era in the history of the Earth has been under way for almost two decades, but it has focused merely on an adequate naming and scientifically verifiable dating of that period. What has been written about the Anthropocene lays bare specificity of methodologies and approaches of various research fields, but above all demonstrates locality and situatedness of knowledge produced within each of them. The article starts with recalling a few remedies to catastrophic after-effects of the techno-scientific progress proposed by Isabelle Stangers, Donna Haraway, and Bruno Latour, who refer to chthonic powers. Although they give these powers the same name Gaïa, each of them differently defines an open-ended and emergent system of symbiotic relationships which was described by the British physiologist James Lovelock in the late 1970s. Next, the article presents the most important concepts of the new era that compete with the term “Anthropocene”: Capitalocene (Jason W. Moore), Necrocene (Justin McBrien), and Plantatiocene (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing). Finally the article focuses on Donna Haraway’s idea of prospective and speculative fabulation (Staying with Trouble, 2016). Haraway outlines a future after the Anthropocene, speculating about how to salvage naturecultural variability. She offers a radical redefinition of relationships between humans and others critters, biotic and abiotic agencies. She does not focus extensively, however, on holobionts in border area of biology and modern technologies which emerge in such contemporary projects as Species Series of an Corean artist Wonbin Yanga (2012), analysed in the paper.
Contagion is more than an epidemiological fact. The medical usage of the term is no more and no less metaphorical than in the entire history of explanations of how beliefs circulate in social interactions. The circulation of such communicable diseases and the circulation of ideas are both material and experiential. Diseases and ideas expose the power and danger of bodies in contact, as well as the fragility and tenacity of social bonds. In the case of the theatre, various tropes of contagion are to be found in both the fictional world on the stage (at least since Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex) and in many theories defining the rules of interaction between theatre audiences, fictitious characters and/or performers. In consequence, the historically changing concept of contagion has in many respects influenced how mimesis was conceived and understood. The main goal of my article is to demonstrate how the concept of contagion has changed over the last few decades and how it may influence our understanding of the idea of mimesis and participation in performative arts. This will be achieved in two steps. Firstly, I will compare the concept of contagion as the outbreak narrative that had influenced, among others, Antonin Artaud’s The Theater and the Plague with the more recent and dynamic concept of epidemic structured around the tipping point. Secondly, I will look for performative art forms with similar structure of audience responses, analyzing Mariano Pensotti’s project Sometimes I Think, I Can See You (2010), in order to demonstrate new forms of performativity and (re)presentation.
Introducing a new term, “Syndemiocene,” this article looks closely at a few chosen names of the new age in the Earth’s history. Many of them criticize the monolithic discourse of the Anthropocene, choosing the multiplicity of approaches and perspectives instead. The article explains why this is so important and provides a close reading of two novels: Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) and Chuck Hogan’s The Blood Artists (1998). Both not only subvert the medicalizing approaches to defining and fighting off epidemics but also perform two subversive narrative models of the Moderns, revealing how they have disseminated various anthropogenic discourses and practices.
PL
Wprowadzając termin syndemiocen, artykuł proponuje przegląd najbardziej znanych nazw nowej epoki w dziejach Ziemi. Przynajmniej część z nich podważa zasadność absolutyzacji dyskursu na temat antropocenu, proponując wielość perspektyw i ujęć. Dlaczego to istotne, pokazuje analiza dwóch powieści o epidemiach: The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) Amitava Ghosha i The Blood Artists Chucka Hogana (1998). Nie tylko odnoszą się one krytycznie do medykalizujących definicji i strategii zwalczania epidemii. Subwersywnie realizują także podstawowe wzorce narracyjne Nowoczesnych, wskazując na ich udział w upowszechnianiu antropogenicznych dyskursów i praktyk.
Contagion is more than an epidemiological fact. The medical usage of the term is no more and no less metaphorical than in the entire history of explanations of how beliefs circulate in social interactions. The circulation of such communicable diseases and the circulation of ideas are both material and experiential. Diseases and ideas expose the power and danger of bodies in contact, as well as the fragility and tenacity of social bonds. In the case of the theatre, various tropes of contagion are to be found in both the fictional world on the stage (at least since Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex) and in many theories defining the rules of interaction between theatre audiences, fictitious characters and/or performers. In consequence, the historically changing concept of contagion has in many respects influenced how mimesis was conceived and understood. The main goal of my article is to demonstrate how the concept of contagion has changed over the last few decades and how it may influence our understanding of the idea of mimesis and participation in performative arts. This will be achieved in two steps. Firstly, I will compare the concept of contagion as the outbreak narrative that had influenced, among others, Antonin Artaud’s The Theater and the Plague with the more recent and dynamic concept of epidemic structured around the tipping point. Secondly, I will look for performative art forms with similar structure of audience responses, analyzing Mariano Pensotti’s project Sometimes I Think, I Can See You (2010), in order to demonstrate new forms of performativity and (re)presentation.
In Bildbeschreibung (Description of a Picture, 1984) Müller deliberately fails to match up with the basic tenets of the theatricality typical of a dramatic text. Simultaneously, however, he equally deliberately posits a challenge to the theatre and puts into question the dominant idea of the dramatic text and its stageability. The aim of this essay is to raise questions about the methods and principles of inscribing the author's intentions in the text and the possibility of recognizing the text's destination and stage potential. I attempt to answer these questions, reading Bildbeschreibung as a borderline case in the context of Strindberg's To Damascus and Brecht's Massnahme in order to point to the basic relationship between the texts written nowadays for the stage and the modern stage practice, since without addressing this issue it is impossible to lay grounds for a new methodology of text analysis and interpretation.
Taking as its starting point Timothy Morton’s theory of hyperobjects, the article posits pandemic conceptualized as a hyperobject as a useful approach to recently published novels on pandemic which has been fabulated in the context of climate change. The article comes back to Priscilla Wald’s Contagious (2008) which bagged the inadequacy of outbreak narratives premised on detective logic to narrate epidemics in our century already in 2008 in order to support the author’s claim by offering a close reading of three recent novels – Stephen King’s „The Stand” (1990), Lawrence Wright’s „The End of October” (2021), and Oana Aristide’s „Under the Blue” (2021). Each of the novels not only depicts its fictional pandemic as a kind of hyperobject but also searches for an adequate way of fabulating this phenomenon beyond human perspective and scale.
Introduction to the essay cluster Performativity as an AttitudePperspective. The guest editor recalls the Polish discussions on the relationship between theater studies and performance studies that have taken place since 2006. She emphasizes that in these discussions performativity was most often associated with theater/performance and human agency. In contrast, the articles that make up the cluster – following Karen Barad – focus on the agency of matter and more-than-human relations. Consequently, performativity is understood in them as a perspective and attitude in which responsibility and care for what happens to and around us are at the forefront.
PL
Wstęp do bloku tematycznego Performatywność jako postawa/perspektywa. Redaktorka gościnna przypomina polskie dyskusje na temat relacji między performatyką a teatrologią, które toczyły się od 2006 roku. Podkreśla, że performatywność była w nich najczęściej wiązana z przedstawieniem/performansem oraz z ludzką sprawczością. Artykuły składające się na blok proponują – za Karen Barad – objęcie kategorią sprawczości materii oraz skupienie się na relacjach więcej-niż-ludzkich. Performatywność zaś jest w nich rozumiana jako perspektywa i postawa, w której na pierwszym planie są odpowiedzialność i troska o to, co się dzieje z nami i wokół nas.
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