The homo sacer on Stage

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Julia Boll
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280847562

This research project focusses on the theatrical representation of a taboo figure which the philosopher Giorgio Agamben has called the homo sacer (or the bare life, 1998). In contemporary plays and performances, this figure often appears as a victim of war and conflict or as a person that has been legally ostracised from or have never been part of the polis, that is, of the political and social community of citizens who are granted civil rights. Further contemporary examples of the figure of the homo sacer are refugees, illegal immigrants, unlawful combatants, vagrants, and displaced and stateless persons. Agamben argues that Western society is founded on this taboo, on a ritual by which the boundaries of the polis are marked by those it includes and excludes (1998: 7). This project will determine how the homo sacer is framed theoretically and on stage, and what its function is in relation to the social and political structures that produce the emergence of this social taboo. This project will also examine how the political discussion of the homo sacer or these precarious, or wasted, lives can be read as parallel to the function of the scapegoat, which is rooted in ancient ritual and has developed into tragedy. Rendered taboo, the scapegoat is analogous to the homo sacer as an equally sacred life, stripped of all civil rights and defined by exclusion. In order to come to a comprehensive understanding of the implications of theatrical depictions of the homo sacer in the present day, the research will draw on the theatrical representation of this figure and the associated discourse originating in classical performance and thought. This kind of theoretical analysis will illuminate the historical trajectory and legacy of contemporary societys central concern with this taboo figure. It is a further aim of this project to uncover whether the theatre may be the public space in which it is currently possible to contemplate and to enact the relationship between the homo sacer and the community as both an ethical and a political question, by bearing witness to the Other. By drawing from a selection of plays from several countries and different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, it will be possible to trace patterns of the depiction of the homo sacer across the whole of the Western sphere, thus allowing for conclusions to be drawn about the parallels between the Western realm and the ancient polis as to their mutual policies concerning the consolidation of borders, citizenship based on exclusion, and a consensus about the human value of those excluded. Because it is concerned with ideas of visibility and representation, the theatre might be the most appropriate way to test ideas of the encounter with the bare life.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants