Caryl Churchill’s Artificial and Orificial Bodies: Between Subjective and Non-Subjective Nobody’s Emotion or Affect

Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak

doi:10.1515/texmat-2017-0018

Authors

Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak University of Wrocław

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1515/texmat-2017-0018

Keywords:

Caryl Churchill, body, emotion, affect

Abstract

This article analyzes the shift from emotion to affect in Caryl Churchill’s writing for the theatre, a process which becomes prominent in the later seventies and culminates in the production of A Mouthful of Birds, a project designed jointly with the choreographer David Lan. The effects of the transformation remain traceable in The Skriker, a complex play taking several years to complete. It is argued that there is a tangible and logical correlation between Churchill’s dismantling of the representational apparatus associated with the tradition of institutional theatre - a process which involves, primarily, a dissolution of its artificially constructed, docile bodies into orificial ones - and her withdrawal from the use of emotional expression in favour of the affective. In the following examination, emotions are conceived as interpretative acts modelled on cognition and mediated through representations while the intensity of affect remains unstructured. Often revealed through violence, pain and suffering, affect enables the theatre to venture into the pre-cognitive and thus beyond the tradition of liberal subject formation.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak, University of Wrocław

Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak is Professor of English Literature and Comparative Studies at University of Wrocław and Associate Professor of English Literature at the Department of Modern Languages, Philological School of Higher Education in Wrocław, Poland. She is the author of The Visual Seen and Unseen: Insights into Tom Stoppard’s Art and the more recent book From Concept-City to City Experience: A Study in Urban Drama. Since 2012 she has been general editor of the journal Anglica Wratislaviensia and co-editor of Silesian Studies in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (Peter Lang). She co-edited several monographs including Spectrum of Emotions: From Love to Grief (2016). She has published over 50 articles and chapters in monographs covering the field of contemporary drama and urbanity in fiction and non-fiction in the English language. Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak is Head of English Literature and Comparative Studies (University of Wrocław), President of PASE (the Polish branch of ESSE) and member of The German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English.

References

Aldana Reyes, Xavier. “Gothic Affect: An Alternative Approach to Critical Models of the Contemporary Gothic.” New Directions in 21st-Century Gothic: The Gothic Compass. Ed. Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Donna Lee Brien. London: Routledge, 2015. 11–23. Print.
Google Scholar

Anderson, Ben. “Becoming and Being Hopeful: Towards a Theory of Affect.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24 (2006): 733– 52. Print.
Google Scholar

Arzumova, Inna. “‘It’s Sort of ‘Members Only’: Transgression and Body Politics in Save the Last Dance.” The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Popular Screen. Ed. Melissa Blanco Borelli. New York: Oxford UP, 2014. 166–81. Print.
Google Scholar

Aston, Elaine. Caryl Churchill. Devon: Northcote, 2001. Print.
Google Scholar

Babbage, Frances. Revisioning Myth. Modern and Contemporary Drama by Women. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2011. Print.
Google Scholar

Bailey Slagle, Judith. “Shadwell’s Volunteers through the Centuries: Power Structures Adapted in Scott’s Peverill of the Peak and Churchill’s Serious Money.” Thomas Shadwell Reconsider’d: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Judith Bailey Slagle. Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700 20 (1996): 236–46. Print.
Google Scholar

Baisnée, Valérie. “‘Songs of Innocence’ or ‘Songs of Experience’? The Construction of Childhood in Janet Frame’s The Lagoon and Other Stories.” Chasing Butterflies. Janet Frame’s “Lagoon and Other Stories.” Ed. Vanessa Guignery. Paris: Editions Publibook, 2011. 43–56. Print.
Google Scholar

Batiste, Stephanie L. “Affective Moves: Spaces, Violence, and the Body in RIZE’s Krump Dancing.” The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Popular Screen. Ed. Melissa Blanco Borelli. New York: Oxford UP, 2014. 195–224. Print.
Google Scholar

Battaly, Heather. “Acquiring Epistemic Virtue: Emotions, Situations, and Education.” Naturalising Epistemic Virtue. Ed. Abrol Fairweather and Owen Flanagan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014. 175–96. Print.
Google Scholar

Benamou, Michel. “Presence and Play.” Performance in Postmodern Culture. Ed. Michel Benamou and Charles Caramello. Maidson, WI: Coda, 1977. 3–7. Print.
Google Scholar

Boggs, Colleen Glenny. Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity. New York: Columbia UP, 2013. Print.
Google Scholar

Borowski, Mateusz, and Małgorzata Sugiera. “Preface: From the Realism of Representation to the Realism of Experience.” Fictional Realities/Real Fictions: Contemporary Theatre in Search of a New Mimetic Paradigm. Ed. Mateusz Borowski and Małgorzata Sugiera. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007. vii–xxviii. Print.
Google Scholar

Buchli, Victor. Material Culture: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences. Vol. 1. London: Taylor and Francis, 2004. Print.
Google Scholar

Chandan, Harish C. “Impact of Cultural Intelligence on Global Business.” Nationalism, Cultural Indoctrination, and Economic Prosperity in the Digital Age. Ed. Brian Christiansen and Joyce Koeman. Hershey: Information Science Reference (IGI Global), 2015. 83–105. Print.
Google Scholar

Churchill, Caryl. Cloud 9. London: Pluto Plays, 1979. Print.
Google Scholar

Churchill, Caryl. “Serious Money.” Plays: Two. London: Methuen Drama, 1996. 193– 309. Print.
Google Scholar

Churchill, Caryl. “Top Girls.” Plays: Two. London: Methuen Drama, 1996. 51–141. Print.
Google Scholar

Churchill, Caryl. “The Skriker.” Plays: Three. London: Nick Hern, 2005. 239–92. Print.
Google Scholar

Churchill, Caryl. and David Lan. “A Mouthful of Birds.” Plays: Three. London: Nick Hern, 2005. 1–54. Print.
Google Scholar

Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa” The Routledge Language and Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. Lucy Burke, Tony Crowley and Alan Girvin. London: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2000. 161–66. Print.
Google Scholar

Cohen, Robert. Working Together in Theatre: Collaboration and Leadership. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.
Google Scholar

Croggon, Alison. “Theatre Notes.” Theatrenotes.blogspot.com. 22 June 2014. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.
Google Scholar

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Continuum, 2004. Print.
Google Scholar

Dempster, Elizabeth. “Women Writing the Body: Let’s Watch a Little How She Dances.” The Routledge Drama Studies Reader. Ed. Alexandra Carter and Janet O’Shea. London: Routledge and Francis, 2010. 229–35. Print.
Google Scholar

Diamond, Elin. “Caryl Churchill: Feeling Global.” A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama: 1880–2005. Ed. Mary Luckhurst. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 476–87. Print.
Google Scholar

Diamond, Elin. “(In)visible Bodies in Churchill’s Theatre.” Theatre Journal 40.2 (1988): 188–204. Print.
Google Scholar

Diamond, Elin. “On Churchill and Terror.” The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill. Ed. Elaine Aston and Elin Diamond. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. 125–43. Print.
Google Scholar

Diamond, Elin. Unmaking Mimesis. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.
Google Scholar

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences. London: Taylor and Francis, 2005. Print.
Google Scholar

Foucault, Michel. This Is Not a Pipe. London: U of California P, 1983. Print.
Google Scholar

Gebauer, Gunter, and Christoph Wulf. Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society Trans. Don Reneau. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995. Print.
Google Scholar

Gibbs, Anne. “Mimesis as Mode of Knowing: Vision and Movement in the Aesthetic Practice of Jean Painlevé.” Angelaki. Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 20.3 (2015): 43–54. E-journal.
Google Scholar

Gross, Daniel M. The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle’s Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science. London: U of Chicago P, 2007. Print.
Google Scholar

Juszczak, Wiesław. Poeta i mit. Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2014. Print.
Google Scholar

Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. New York: Methuen, 1986. Print.
Google Scholar

Lacey, Stephen. “British Literature and Commerce, 1979–2000.” The Cambridge History of British Theatre. Vol. 3. Ed. Peter Thomson et al. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. 426–43. Print.
Google Scholar

Luckhurst, Mary. Caryl Churchill: Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists. London: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2014. Print.
Google Scholar

McCormack, Derek. “An Event of Geographical Ethics in Spaces of Affect.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 28.4 (2003): 488–507. Print.
Google Scholar

Massumi, Brian. “Notes on Translation and Acknowledgements.” A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Continuum, 2004. xvi–xix. Print.
Google Scholar

Massumi, Brian. Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002. Print.
Google Scholar

Martin, Mathew R. Tragedy and Trauma in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Print.
Google Scholar

Megson, Chris. Modern British Playwriting: The 1970s. Voices, Documents, New Interpretations. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. Print.
Google Scholar

Meldrum, Brenda. “The Theatre Process in Drama Therapy.” Process in the Arts Therapies. Ed. Anna Cattanach. London: Jessica Kingsley, 1999. 36–54. Print.
Google Scholar

Nelson, Victoria. Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2012. Print.
Google Scholar

Pile, Steve. “Emotion and Affect in Recent Human Geography.” Transactions with the Institute of British Geographers NS 35 (2010): 5–20. Print.
Google Scholar

Rilke, Rainer M. Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. Trans. Alfred Poulin Jr. Boston: A Mariner/Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Print.
Google Scholar

Rilke, Rainer M. The Duino Elegies. Trans. James Blair Leishman and Stephen Spender. 1939. Reocities.com. Web. 15 Sept. 2015.
Google Scholar

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Print.
Google Scholar

Schulze, Daniel. “Blood, Guts, and Suffering: The Body as Communicative Agent in Professional Wrestling and Performance Art.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English. Special Issue: Bodies on Stage 1.1 (2013): 13–125. Print.
Google Scholar

Shaw, George Bernard. “The Author’s Apology.” The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw. London: Archibald Constable, 1905. vii–xxxvi. Print.
Google Scholar

Terada, Rei. Feeling in Theory: Emotion after the “Death of the Subject.” London: Harvard UP, 2001. Print.
Google Scholar

Thrift, Nigel. “Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour.” The Affect Theory Reader. Ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth. London: Duke UP, 2010. 289–308. Print.
Google Scholar

Vermeulen, Pieter. Contemporary Literature and the End of the Novel: Creature, Affect, Form. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Print.
Google Scholar

Watson, Ian. Towards a Third Theatre: Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2005. E-book.
Google Scholar

Wetherell, Margaret. Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding. London: Sage, 2012. Print.
Google Scholar

Wolfreys, Julian. Victorian Huntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Print.
Google Scholar