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Chapter 6. Notes on Shakespeare, simulacra, and the aporias of ‘acting’

Abstract

The essay explores selected examples of theatrical and philosophical Italian responses to Shakespeare in relation to a diffused sense of crisis of representation, entailing a crisis of the subject, from the early 1980s to 2016. It investigates how after about more than three decades that sense of crisis is still present with us, and the different forms it has taken: from the inception of the ‘culture of simulacra’, to its magnification in the Berlusconi age, and to a belated postmodern awareness of a crisis extending globewise to entropy point. It discusses different uses of Shakespeare, contrasting strategies of intermedial appropriation as critiques of a culture of simulacra with allegorical forms of ‘hyperreal’ adaptations that by recuperating ideas of ‘transparent representation’ sidestep preoccupations about the hyperreal. Central to the discussion is a reading of Massimo Cacciari’s interpretation of Hamlet as the inaugural point of the ‘crisis of modernity’ viewed as a longue-durée historical category.

Abstract

The essay explores selected examples of theatrical and philosophical Italian responses to Shakespeare in relation to a diffused sense of crisis of representation, entailing a crisis of the subject, from the early 1980s to 2016. It investigates how after about more than three decades that sense of crisis is still present with us, and the different forms it has taken: from the inception of the ‘culture of simulacra’, to its magnification in the Berlusconi age, and to a belated postmodern awareness of a crisis extending globewise to entropy point. It discusses different uses of Shakespeare, contrasting strategies of intermedial appropriation as critiques of a culture of simulacra with allegorical forms of ‘hyperreal’ adaptations that by recuperating ideas of ‘transparent representation’ sidestep preoccupations about the hyperreal. Central to the discussion is a reading of Massimo Cacciari’s interpretation of Hamlet as the inaugural point of the ‘crisis of modernity’ viewed as a longue-durée historical category.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part 1. Identity crises
  7. Chapter 1. 1916 25
  8. Chapter 2. Waiting for Caesar 51
  9. Chapter 3. Fascist crises 95
  10. Part 2. Power games and the crisis of history
  11. Chapter 4. “A great crisis of identification and understanding of reality” 149
  12. Chapter 5. Allegorising and minoritising Richard III 175
  13. Part 3. Crises of representation
  14. Chapter 6. Notes on Shakespeare, simulacra, and the aporias of ‘acting’ 215
  15. Chapter 7. Narrating and unravelling Italian crises through Shakespeare (2000–2016) 245
  16. Afterword 277
  17. Index of Names 283
  18. Index of Subjects 291
Shakespeare and Crisis
This chapter is in the book Shakespeare and Crisis
https://doi.org/10.1075/sec.2.06big

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part 1. Identity crises
  7. Chapter 1. 1916 25
  8. Chapter 2. Waiting for Caesar 51
  9. Chapter 3. Fascist crises 95
  10. Part 2. Power games and the crisis of history
  11. Chapter 4. “A great crisis of identification and understanding of reality” 149
  12. Chapter 5. Allegorising and minoritising Richard III 175
  13. Part 3. Crises of representation
  14. Chapter 6. Notes on Shakespeare, simulacra, and the aporias of ‘acting’ 215
  15. Chapter 7. Narrating and unravelling Italian crises through Shakespeare (2000–2016) 245
  16. Afterword 277
  17. Index of Names 283
  18. Index of Subjects 291
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