Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Reconciling Art and Violence
- Contextualising Bond and His Plays
- Notes
- Chapter One: Theorising ‘Metaphorical Imagination’
- Notes
- Chapter Two: Creating ‘Patterns of Humanity’
- Notes
- Chapter Three: The Use of ‘Theatrical Drama’
- Notes
- Chapter Four: Bond and the ‘Objectivity Appropriate to Post-modernism’
- Notes
- Chapter Five: ‘Diabolonian Ethics’ and Violence Against Children
- Notes
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Edward Bond and the
Aesthetics of Violence
Chennai · Berlin · Bruxelles · Lausanne · New York · Oxford
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mukhopadhyay, Angshuman, 1976- author
Title: Edward Bond and the aesthetics of violence / Angshuman Mukhopadhyay.
Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, 2025. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2025008300 (print) | LCCN 2025008301 (ebook) | ISBN 9781803746340 paperback | ISBN 9781803746357 ebook | ISBN 9781803746364 epub
Subjects: LCSH: Bond, Edward--Criticism and interpretation | Violence in literature | LCGFT: Literary criticism
Classification: LCC PR6052.O5 Z77 2025 (print) | LCC PR6052.O5 (ebook) | DDC 323--dc23/eng/20250130
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025008300
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025008301
Cover image: Srirup Chatterjee
Cover design by Peter Lang Group AG
ISBN 978-1-80374-634-0 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-1-80374-635-7 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-1-80374-636-4 (E-PUB)
DOI 10.3726/b22809
© 2025 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne (Switzerland)
Published by Peter Lang Pvt Ltd, Chennai (India)
info@peterlang.com www.peterlang.com
Angshuman Mukhopadhyay has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
For
Baba (Prof. Bimal Kumar Mukhopadhyay)
and Maa (Mrs Manju Mukhopadhyay)
‘The act of killing doesn’t change, but its “value” does.’
(EDWARD BOND, ‘A TALK’, PLAYS 3: XXXI)
‘Art is not culturally dependent but it is culturally relative.’
(EDWARD BOND, ‘COMMENTARY ON THE WAR PLAYS’, Plays 6: 275)
Contents
Contextualising Bond and His Plays
Chapter One Theorising ‘Metaphorical Imagination’
Chapter Two Creating ‘Patterns of Humanity’
Chapter Three The Use of ‘Theatrical Drama’
Chapter Four Bond and the ‘Objectivity Appropriate to Post-modernism’
Chapter Five ‘Diabolonian Ethics’ and Violence Against Children
Preface
On March 3, 2024, when I was struggling to give shape to the manuscript of this book, Edward Bond passed away at the ripe old age of 89. Consequently, I felt a little clueless as the mainspring of my maiden venture was gone. On the 5th, The Guardian published a brief note written by Michael Billington, whose encomiastic lines reconfirmed the impact of the ‘theatrical firebrand who blew up his own career with his refusal to compromise his scorching poetic vision’. This reassured me that I should continue with the project focused on Bond’s treatment of violence, a concern that is as old as Bond’s dramatic career. However, despite several critical discourses contributing to the study of Bond’s plays and the element of violence in them, other than Peter Billingham’s chapter ‘Your Morality is Violence’ in his Edward Bond: A Critical Study, there is hardly any full-length work on the subject. The truth is, it is frequently touched upon but its complex fabric with its intricate warp and woof remains to be thoroughly explored. This monograph tries to venture into that domain with Bond’s drama/theatre in the context. It enquires about the relevance of art’s so-called inartistic engagement with violence, and how these couple of centuries have been deeply scarred by violence leading to a slew of theoretical disquisitions on the issue. Edward Bond, one of the most rebellious and iconoclastic figures in the late 20th-century British theatre world, not only lays bare through his plays an overwhelming amount of violence in the human world but also forges a suitable theatre technique to respond to it. The theatre aesthetics of Bond have been engaged in understanding the aesthetics of violence. My book focuses on this interface with the ambition of enriching the repository of Bond studies and appreciating once again the sheer brilliance of his aesthetic and moral vision.
Angshuman Mukhopadhyay
Acknowledgements
A book is born in the head of its author as an idea, and in their mind as a desire long before it sees the light of day. The author must nurture it to full growth within, give it birth, and stand apart since it is expected to have an independent life afterwards, earning praise or criticism according to its merit. Beyond this honest but overused trope lies a truth: the creative process, however solitary, is never bereft of others’ influences, some prominent and some subtle and even faint. My experience of adapting my research work for this monograph has made me realise it all over again; I am humbled and indebted to others for the intellectual and emotional support they extended to me during this creative and critical process. Other than the fount-head of all that I am, my parents and my family who have always been there for me, I am also grateful to the late Prof. Tapati Gupta for her constant support and inspiration, whose loss is irreparable, the late Prof. Dipendu Chakrabarty who introduced me to Edward Bond, and all the major thinkers whose thoughts stimulated me intellectually. My friend, Srirup Chatterjee, who has done the cover art that speaks a thousand words, my colleagues and the students who enriched me with their insightful comments and opinions have contributed to this intellectual endeavour, perhaps even unwittingly. My regards to the commissioning editor of Peter Lang, Ms Nandini Ganguli and the entire team for their timely feedback and regular correspondence. I am thankful to all of them.
Introduction
Reconciling Art and Violence
In whichever form it comes, art thrives on the aestheticisation of its subjects, the unpleasant and the ugly notwithstanding. Although there is hardly any consensus regarding the distinct methods by which art is expected to do so, in the end, it succeeds only when it can claim to have an abiding impact on its audience, achieved through aesthetic engagement among many other things. It intends to recreate and sustain the immediacy of actions, events and emotions through representation, though not always with impeccable success. Summarily, we may put it thus: ‘They reiterate. They simplify. They agitate. They create the illusion of consensus’ (Sontag 2003: 6). These words spoken by Susan Sontag about some photographs of violent deaths and destruction (and not art in general) are from her Regarding Pain of Others, the text that starts with an indulgent but unequivocal criticism of Virginia Woolf’s rather lucid anti-war views put forth in Three Guineas. Considering the artistic and revolutionary potential of the photographs that Woolf had mentioned in her 1938 text, of mangled bodies and war horror, Sontag opined how the art of photography was discovered to be way more complicated than merely relying on its immediate visual effect (2003: 28). All forms of art, including photography, witness an artistic intervention of an aesthetic agenda, which takes away the apparent naivety of humble representation by conferring depth of interpretation and style onto it. Furthermore, ‘Torment, a canonical subject in art, is often represented in painting as a spectacle, something being watched (or ignored) by other people’ (Sontag 2003: 42). In other words, Sontag’s claims about war photographs, paintings and art as such reconciling aesthetics with violence and suffering, locate the age-old concern of art’s relationship with something that is because of its unpalatable nature considered inartistic, in the experiential framework of all audiences of all times. Robert Buch’s appreciation of Bataille’s responses to photographs of Chinese punishment of ‘ling’chi’ in the similar vein deliberates how aesthetics and violence come to operate in the sphere of art through the reconciliation of violence and beauty, pain and sublimity, attraction and repulsion (2010: 27–8). The history of visual culture, which includes theatre among others, has potentially been doing the same across centuries whenever a confrontation between art and violence has taken place.
The centrality of the theme of violence in various socio-political and cultural discourses from time immemorial makes us realise the ubiquity of violence not only as a phenomenon but also as an aesthetic subject. That it is becoming perennially significant in today’s world is more or less obvious in the frightening increase in instances of violence. Its recent and more frequent manifestation is in the discourse on terrorism, which has evolved along a new line of argument, parallel to that of violence. One 9/11 episode may be enough to give rise to an entire genre of narratives reflecting on the fast-changing relationship of Islam with other religions against the backdrop of a global political crisis. At times, we tend to feel that the violence that we witnessed in connection with modern warfare, Auschwitz, or Babi Yar has mutated into terrorism; it is as if an old frame of reference has come to be replaced by a new one. Even when it appears that ‘the Ground Zero of Hiroshima becomes the Ground Zero of the World Trade Center’, it is ultimately about understanding how the people suffer ‘in different contexts of violence without conflating their suffering under the sign of a common victimhood’ (Bharucha 2014: 3). However, in the paroxysm of terrorist activities, the conventional conflict between the instinctivist approach and the behaviourist interpretation of the cause of violence becomes largely irrelevant, or, at least experiences a paradigm shift. Whether it is an innate propensity of aggression that human beings share with animals or some manifestation of chagrin and anger over socio-political injustice in a specific cultural context, resulting from constant ideological manipulation, is more or less a redundant issue. In the wake of this paradox, therefore, it would be critically safe to assume that violence has not quite mutated into terrorism but has only taken a new dimension that makes it appear slightly unfamiliar, if not baffling. Saul Newman points out
Details
- Pages
- XIV, 220
- Publication Year
- 2025
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781803746357
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781803746364
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781803746340
- DOI
- 10.3726/b22809
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2025 (September)
- Keywords
- in-yer-face theatre theatre-in-education diabolonian ethics Kant Marx Freud Fromm Arendt Benjamin Foucault Agamben Žižek postmodern Edward Bond violence aesthetics ethics structural violence metaphorical imagination theatre event
- Published
- Chennai, Berlin, Bruxelles, Lausanne, New York, Oxford, 2025. xiv, 220 pp.
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