Dark Thoughts about [Theatre] History

• Published in: Theatre survey 2004-11, Vol.45 (2), p.189-193
• Main Author: Scott, Virginia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: History; Novels; Theater; Writing
• ISSN: 0040-5574; 1475-4533
• DOI: 10.1017/S0040557404000134

Coetzee's nameless speaker, known only as “Mother,” is accused by her son of an excess of righteousness, and so might I be if I were to agree with her, at least in part, about that gang of thugs. Nonetheless, my hope for the future of the discipline does include the possibility that Clio will escape from the particular thug responsible for jargon and gibberish. Actually, nothing arouses darker thoughts in those of us who believe in lucid and stylish prose than sentences like “what is at stake here is the possibility that the cultural presence of the actor in theatre and in theatre history is delimited by material representational practices generated within a particular discursive site, and subject to the constraints of what can be enunciated about the self's contingent existence.” This may be perfectly clear to others, but I read it as a signal to a choir within which I do not sing, and I stop reading—a pity, since the topic is especially interesting to me and the author has important things to say. But, as Terry Eagleton says in his new book After Theory (the one presently receiving an international drubbing), “you can be difficult without being obscure.”