When Time Thickens and Takes on Flesh: Chronotopic Exploration of Edward Bond’s Paris Pentad Plays
-
Archana Joshi
Abstract
This paper tries to explore the chronotopic implications of Edward Bond’s Paris Pentad Plays including Coffee (1996), The Crime of the Twenty-first Century (2001), Born (2006), People (2006) and Innocence (2009) in general and the recently staged play People in particular.1 None of these five plays is a ‘history play’ in the technical sense of the term. Yet, the ominous Auschwitz modality is the chronotopic backdrop of all these five plays. These plays operate by way of premise more than plot, staging events in World History ranging between the Nazi Camps, the Nuclear Holocaust down to the Abu-Gharib atrocities or the shock-and-awe techniques in the War-on-Terror to argue for their connections over times. The plays shift meaning from the characters that are tethered to specific times and places to events that are untethered to linear time and identifiable topos. Thus Bond’s dramaturgy manages to break out of the “folk-mythological time” chronotope to which Bakhtin relegates Drama (Dialogic 104). Rather, the paper argues, Bondian lack of ‘the sense of an ending’2 dovetails with Bakhtin’s chronotopic vision to underline the importance of Open Time and human agency. The plays bring home what Bakhtin calls “the state of non-alibi” in “the event of being”, the realization of which could be the only impulse towards assuming ethical responsibility (Towards 70).
Works Cited
Agamben, Georgio. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone Books, 1999. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Bakhtin M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Print.Search in Google Scholar
–––. Towards a Philosophy of the Act. Trans. Vadim Liapunov. Ed. Vadim Liapunov and Michael Hoquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. Print.Search in Google Scholar
–––. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Bond, Edward. The Hidden Plot. London: Methuen, 2008. PrintSearch in Google Scholar
–––. People. Plays 8. London: Methuen, 2006. Print.Search in Google Scholar
–––. The Crime of the Twenty-first Century. London: Methuen Drama, 1999. Print.Search in Google Scholar
–––. Coffee: A Tragedy. London: Methuen Drama, 1996. Print.Search in Google Scholar
–––. Plays 9. London: Methuen, 2011. Print.Search in Google Scholar
–––. “Commentary on the War Plays”. Plays 6. London: Methuen, 1998. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Carney, Sean. The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Print.10.3138/9781442663503Search in Google Scholar
Castillo, Debra. “Dehumanized or Inhuman: Doubles in Edward Bond.” South Central Review 3.2 (1986): 78–89. Print.10.2307/3189368Search in Google Scholar
Davis, David. Introduction. Edward Bond and the Dramatic Child. Ed. David Davis. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2005. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Ettinger, Bracha. The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Feldman, Allen. “On the Actuarial gaze: From 9/11 to abu Gharib.” Cultural Studies 19.2 (2005): 203–226. Print.10.1080/09502380500077763Search in Google Scholar
Katefiasz, Kate. Drama and Desire: Edward Bond and Jacques Lacan. Diss. University of Reading, 2011. Web. 16 May. 2013. ethos.bl.uk.Search in Google Scholar
–––. “Quarrelling with Brecht: Understanding Bond’s Post-structuralist Political Aesthetic.” Studies in Theatre and Performance 28.3 (2008): 237–251. Print.10.1386/stap.28.3.237_1Search in Google Scholar
Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Keunen, Bart. “The Chronotopic Imagination in Literature and Film: Bakhtin, Bergson and Deleuze on Forms of Time.” Bakhtin’s Theory of Literary Chronotpe: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives. Ed. Nele Bemong et. al. Gent: Academia Press, 2010. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Morson Gary Saul. “The Chronotope of Humanness: Bakhtin and Dostoevsky.” Bakhtin’s Theory of Literary Chronotpe: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives. Ed. Nele Bemong et. al. Gent: Academia Press, 2010. Print.Search in Google Scholar
© 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/München/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Theatre and Politics: Theatre as Cultural Intervention
- Articles
- Gender, Identity and Contemporary India: A View Through Two Plays by Mahesh Dattani
- The Value of the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama: Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain, Sam Shepard’s The Late Henry Moss, Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County
- The World Grasped as Picture: Subjective Vision and the Embodiment of Male Gaze in Sam Shepard’s Seduced
- History Will Eat Itself: Rory Mullarkey’s Cannibals and the Terrors of End-Narratives
- Borderless Borders: Guillermo Gómez Peña’s The New World Border
- When Time Thickens and Takes on Flesh: Chronotopic Exploration of Edward Bond’s Paris Pentad Plays
- Reviews
- Julia Boll. The New War Plays: From Kane to Harris. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 183 pp., £50.00.
- Eliane Beaufils, ed. Quand la Scène Fait Appel...Le Théâtre Contemporain et le Poétique. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014, 290 pp., € 34.00.
- Duška Radosavljević. Theatre-Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xi + 288 pp., $85.00 (hardback), $28.00 (paperback).
- Jenn Stephenson. Performing Autobiography: Contemporary Canadian Drama. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013, 224 pp., C$ 45.00 (cloth), C$ 45.00 e-book (EPUB format).
- Paula Deubner. “Into the Light” – Selbst und Transzendenz in den Dramen Sarah Kanes. CDE Studies Volume 22. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2012, 235 pp., € 27,50 (paperback).
- William W. Demastes. The Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, first published 2012, ix + 166 pp., £ 50,00 (hardback), £ 15,99 (paperback).
- Harvey Young. Theatre & Race. Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, v + 80pp., $ 10.00.
- Jill Dolan. The Feminist Spectator in Action: Feminist Criticism for the Stage and the Screen. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 248 pp., $ 80.00 (hardback), $26.00 (paperback).
- Sean Carney. The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013, 360pp., $34.95 (paperback), $75.00 (hardback), $34.95 (ebook).
- Harvey Young, ed. The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013, xix + 291 pp., $ 90.00 (hardback), $ 29.99 (paperback).
- Josephine Machon. Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013, xix + 324 pp., € 22,30.
- Liz Tomlin. Acts and Apparitions: Discourses on the Real in Performance Practice and Theory, 1990–2010. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, ix + 226 pp., £ 65.00.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Theatre and Politics: Theatre as Cultural Intervention
- Articles
- Gender, Identity and Contemporary India: A View Through Two Plays by Mahesh Dattani
- The Value of the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama: Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain, Sam Shepard’s The Late Henry Moss, Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County
- The World Grasped as Picture: Subjective Vision and the Embodiment of Male Gaze in Sam Shepard’s Seduced
- History Will Eat Itself: Rory Mullarkey’s Cannibals and the Terrors of End-Narratives
- Borderless Borders: Guillermo Gómez Peña’s The New World Border
- When Time Thickens and Takes on Flesh: Chronotopic Exploration of Edward Bond’s Paris Pentad Plays
- Reviews
- Julia Boll. The New War Plays: From Kane to Harris. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 183 pp., £50.00.
- Eliane Beaufils, ed. Quand la Scène Fait Appel...Le Théâtre Contemporain et le Poétique. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014, 290 pp., € 34.00.
- Duška Radosavljević. Theatre-Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xi + 288 pp., $85.00 (hardback), $28.00 (paperback).
- Jenn Stephenson. Performing Autobiography: Contemporary Canadian Drama. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013, 224 pp., C$ 45.00 (cloth), C$ 45.00 e-book (EPUB format).
- Paula Deubner. “Into the Light” – Selbst und Transzendenz in den Dramen Sarah Kanes. CDE Studies Volume 22. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2012, 235 pp., € 27,50 (paperback).
- William W. Demastes. The Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, first published 2012, ix + 166 pp., £ 50,00 (hardback), £ 15,99 (paperback).
- Harvey Young. Theatre & Race. Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, v + 80pp., $ 10.00.
- Jill Dolan. The Feminist Spectator in Action: Feminist Criticism for the Stage and the Screen. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 248 pp., $ 80.00 (hardback), $26.00 (paperback).
- Sean Carney. The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013, 360pp., $34.95 (paperback), $75.00 (hardback), $34.95 (ebook).
- Harvey Young, ed. The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013, xix + 291 pp., $ 90.00 (hardback), $ 29.99 (paperback).
- Josephine Machon. Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013, xix + 324 pp., € 22,30.
- Liz Tomlin. Acts and Apparitions: Discourses on the Real in Performance Practice and Theory, 1990–2010. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, ix + 226 pp., £ 65.00.
