Tova Gamliel - The Theatrical Spectaculum An Anthropological Theory

This book series aims to publish explorations of new ethnographic objects and emerging genres of writing at the intersection of literary and anthropological studies. Books in this series will be grounded in ethnographic perspectives and the broader cross-cultural lens that anthropology brings to the study of reading and writing. The series will explore the ethnography of fiction, ethnographic fiction, narrative ethnography, creative nonfiction, memoir, autoethnography, and the connections between travel literature and ethnographic writing.

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In what follows, Tova Gamliel provides a stirring and profound meditation on the feeling of drama. It is written in a layered, complex, archeological prose that is Jamesian, moving upward and downward, back and forth, from abstraction and intellectualism to banal interviews with actors, observations of audiences, and dictates of directors. As with James, the effect of Gamliels intimate, subtle, implicative prose is to create a sense of the ultimate, of transcendence and its secular mystery, of a deep layer of sensation and metaphysical awareness underneath the prose. It as if reading itself provides an experience of the spectaculum, the experience that Gamliel posits as the ultimate ground base of theatre as compared to reading.

What follows is an anthropological essay. It is personal and metaphorical and often theological. Yet it is also filled to the brim, indeed generated by, years of intense fieldwork and minute empirical observation and interview.

Gamliel finds that actors view their actions as efforts to enact truthfulness. They strive to create an existential authenticity, the only sacred meaning possible in modern times, a sacrality stripped of metaphysics. As they seek to practice the art of bare honesty, actors purge themselves and their audiences of the performative pollution of modern life. Authenticity has happened is how an actor relates to Gamliel his performative success.

Not just actors but theatrical writers, directors, and technical staff aim to allow audiences to experience transcendence as if they were in the traditional world of the ancient Jews who received the Godly Revelation on Mount Sinai. The Ten Commandments, the ethical backdrop of western civilization, could never have passed to posterity if God had not scripted and Moses had not directed the sacral presence. BubersI-thou, a work that grows from but also goes beyond modern Jewish theology, translates the dramatic experience of transcendence at Mt. Sinai, performing the sacred that is modern acting.

It is not the theatrical text, theological or secular, but the experience of the darkened theatre and the blaze of arc light that illuminate emotions and meanings of actors on the stage and create the experience of theatrical sacredness. One can become alienated from a theatrical text, but not from the experience of theatre. This is why the ethical survives at the center of drama, no matter postmodern critique. Theatre is Barthes third, the oblique experience outside of the text that is phenomenological, inchoate, and primordial, a sensation of the other that warrants the suspension of disbelief.

Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropologypublishes explorations of new ethnographic objects and emerging genres of writing at the intersection of literary and anthropological studies. Books in this series are grounded in ethnographic perspectives and the broader cross-cultural lens that anthropology brings to the study of reading and writing. By introducing work that applies an anthropological approach to literature, whether drawing on ethnography or other materials in relation to anthropological and literary theory, this series moves the conversation forward not only in literary anthropology, but also in general anthropology, literary studies, cultural studies, sociology, ethnographic writing, and creative writing. The literary turn in anthropology and critical research on world literatures share a comparable sensibility regarding global perspectives.

Fiction and autobiography have connections to ethnography that underscore the idea of the author as ethnographer and the ethnographer as author. Literary works are frequently included in anthropological research and writing, as well as in studies that do not focus specifically on literature. Anthropologists take an interest in fiction and memoir set in their field locations, and produced by native writers, in order to further their insights into the cultures and contexts they research. Experimental genres in anthropology have benefitted from the style and structure of fiction and autoethnography, as well as by other expressive forms ranging from film and performance art to technology, especially the Internet and social media. There are renowned fiction writers who trained as anthropologists, but moved on to a literary career. Their anthropologically inspired work is a common sounding board in literary anthropology. In the endeavor to foster writing skills in different genres, there are now courses on ethnographic writing, anthropological writing genres, experimental writing, and even creative writing taught by anthropologists. And increasingly, literary and reading communities are attracting anthropological attention, including an engagement with issues of how to reach a wider audience.