Wow! I saw a reading/rehearsal for Madness of Day and it truly blew me away. I really enjoy the text and I find it to be an amazing piece of literature and (obliquely) philosophical discourse. But I was honestly skeptical that it would work as a stage piece. I was optimistic, but skeptical. But skeptic no longer. The text moves beautifully through time as a dramatic work. Layers of meaning and nuance that simply do not exist on the printed page, became alive and filled with significance as the actor lunged towards the brink of madness and came back. Transformed.
We are running into some logistical issues as the piece is being sponsored, in part, by SVA. The space we were planning on performing in is undergoing contractual negotiations and may not be available to us for the previously scheduled time slot, so the dates may be pushed back to the Spring. That may in the end be best as late November is a tricky time to build momentum for an small Off-Broadway show, what with all the various holidays and so forth late in the calendar year.
The text of Madness of Day deals almost entirely with identity and the meaning and significance of Self. Yet that self is so elusive. It is never there, the place of self is a gravitational locus with no mass. It is a mystery around which various physical and psychological objects orbit, but does not itself exist in any tangible sense. They are, as we discussed after the reading, “fragmented landscapes across which consciousness travels.”
It is very clear that the text falls into the deconstructive tradition that results in the decentering of the Subject. The subsequent reconstruction finds the Subject to be almost a ghost in its intangible construction. We know all the elements that compose it, yet it can not be formed into a coherent story or narrative. That narrative of Self is found to be a fiction. A Fiction held up by the necessities of social negotiation. The text calls into question the very nature of Self.
These questions become imperative in an age when classic, modern and post-modern notions of Self are all inadequate to describe the phenomenon of identity. What is the “Self” in a time of social networking technologies where aspects of self are distributed across the globe on various computer servers in numerous guises. Is the physical self more real than the MySpace self? Is the consciousness inside the mind more real than the streaming links in del.icio.us? The whole notion of the real is called into question on a daily basis. When video games often look more “real” than the images we see of war on the news, which is more real? And what of the “soldier” in the game versus the soldier in the war? Are those quotation marks perhaps misplaced? What is the value of human life when a government leader asks for permission to hold potential innocents in secret prisons and torture them for information, all in the name of “Freedom”? Is Slavery really Freedom? What is the truth?
These are the questions Blanchot asks in Madness of Day. These questions are central and essential to our lives today. Without a knowledge of self we have no way of judging actions. Without that ability to judge actions, all becomes equal. It becomes acceptable to begin wars under illegal and fraudulent terms in order to accrue wealth and power because the purpose of power, is power. And power can only exist when it is given. And we give it away willingly every time we do not inquire into our own actions, our own Self. Each time we fail to explore our Self and truly Know the why and wherefore of our actions we cede power to those who do know what they want. Power.
Amid the full madness of the day we are subjected to a total and direct knowledge of Self. It is not possible to form a narrative from that. A single story can not be constructed from that knowing. Yet those who would take all the power they can must by necessity believe in that singular story, for power can only exist as a singularity. It fails when confronted with multiplicity. This is why China could never allow a thousand flowers to bloom. The multivalent constructs of identity become too much for Power to handle. Nuance, subtlety and complexity cannot be tolerated.
Perhaps, in the end, the social networking tools that at one level allow the watchers to seek out and easily find vast quantities of information about us will also be the final resistance to Power. Why else are totalitarian regimes so afraid of blogging? It not only allows for the distribution and dissemination of information, but it fragments the Self and allows the Ideational Self to continue its direct social influence even after the Physical Self has been tortured into submission.
This is the reality of the Day found in Madness.
Tags: actors, blanchot, identity, madness of day, negation, negotiation, self
