Is postdramatic theatre political and if so how? How does it relate to Brecht's ideas of political theatre, for example? How can we account for the relationship between aesthetics and politics in new forms of theatre, playwriting, and performance? The chapters in this book discuss crucial aspects of the issues raised by the postdramatic turn in theatre in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: the status of the audience and modes of spectatorship in postdramatic theatre; the political claims of postdramatic theatre; postdramatic theatre's ongoing relationship with the dramatic tradition; its dialectical qualities, or its eschewing of the dialectic; questions of representation and the real in theatre; the role of bodies, perception, appearance and theatricality in postdramatic theatre; as well as subjectivity and agency in postdramatic theatre, dance and performance. Offering analyses of a wide range of international performance examples, scholars in this volume engage with Hans-Thies Lehmann's theoretical positions both affirmatively and critically, relating them to other approaches by thinkers ranging from early theorists such as Brecht, Adorno and Benjamin, to contemporary thinkers such as Fischer-Lichte, Ranciere and others

This book traces the significance that the modulations of sensory perception have had for thinking about aesthetics and art in the last two and a half centuries. Beyond a discussion of the philosophical significance of beauty, or of the puzzle of aesthetic representation, aesthetics is conceived broadly as a means of describing our relationship to the world in terms of the habits of perception, and indeed the overturning of these habits, as in the modernist aesthetic of defamiliarisation. In the light of the ideas of the contemporary German aesthetic theorist, Wolfgang Welsch, this book offers the first discussion of the theory and practice of art that operates at the poles of perception: sensory experience that exceeds conceptual organisation, and the imperceptible, or what Welsch calls the 'anaesthetic'. These seemingly opposite poles have many parallels: a comparable indeterminancy of meaning and a similar challenge to representation, but also a shared focus on the habits and modulations of sensory perception and a similar interrogation of the boundary between art and that which surrounds it. The author applies the categories discussed to art practice, in particular to the theatre of Peter Handke, Samuel Beckett and Heiner Muller.

The essays in this book investigate the complex and often contradictory relationships between aesthetics and modernity from the late Enlightenment in the 1790s to the Frankfurt School in the 1960s and engage with the classic German tradition of socio-cultural and aesthetic theory that extends from Friedrich Schiller to Theodor W. Adorno. While contemporary discussions in aesthetics are often dominated by abstract philosophical approaches, this book embeds aesthetic theory in broader social and cultural contexts and considers a wide range of artistic practices in literature, drama, music and visual arts. Contributions include research on Schiller's writings and his work in relation to moral sentimentalism, Romantic aesthetics, Friedrich Schlegel, Beethoven, Huizinga and Greenberg; philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Benjamin, Heidegger and Adorno; and thematic approaches to Darwinism and Naturalism, modern tragedy, postmodern realism and philosophical anthropology from the eighteenth century to the present day. This book is based on papers given at an international symposium held under the auspices of the University of Nottingham at the Institute of German and Romance Studies, London, in September 2009.

Is postdramatic theatre political and if so how? How does it relate to Brecht's ideas of political theatre, for example? How can we account for the relationship between aesthetics and politics in new forms of theatre, playwriting, and performance? The chapters in this book discuss crucial aspects of the issues raised by the postdramatic turn in theatre in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: the status of the audience and modes of spectatorship in postdramatic theatre; the political claims of postdramatic theatre; postdramatic theatre's ongoing relationship with the dramatic tradition; its dialectical qualities, or its eschewing of the dialectic; questions of representation and the real in theatre; the role of bodies, perception, appearance and theatricality in postdramatic theatre; as well as subjectivity and agency in postdramatic theatre, dance and performance. Offering analyses of a wide range of international performance examples, scholars in this volume engage with Hans-Thies Lehmann's theoretical positions both affirmatively and critically, relating them to other approaches by thinkers ranging from early theorists such as Brecht, Adorno and Benjamin, to contemporary thinkers such as Fischer-Lichte, Ranciere and others