Central
to this
paper will be the argument that
theater and performative practices sketch out an ontological
background where knowledge
is not so much inherently liberating as it is naturally accepted by
the majority of people, and engaged in ethical issues and political
discourses in many writings.
In
“Über
das Marionettentheater” (On the Marionette Theater, 1810),
written by the German dramatist Heinrich von Kleist, one of the
interlocutors in a rather intense dialogue, a principal dancer at the
opera, argues that “puppets
have the advantage of being resistant to gravity. Of the heaviness of
matter, the factor that most works against the dancer, they are
entirely ignorant: because the force lifting them into the air is
greater than the one attaching them to the earth”.
According
to the dancer in Kleist’s essay, puppets
possess a certain grace that humans do not. But what if humans are
dependent on gravity and ironically, as Master puppeteers who control
the puppets by pulling their strings, fumble in their own movements?
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