sTP32(3)pp 257-267Intel l ectLi mi ted2012

St udie isn T h e a t re
& P e rfo rm a n c e
V olum e3 2N u m b e3r
o 2012l n te l le cLttdArti c l eEn g l i slha n g u age
doi:ro 1386/stap
323257r

DANIETSACK

TheBrilliance
of the Servant
withoutqualities:Barelife
andthe hordeoffstage

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In intsestigating
thenatureof plethoraand baresufficimcyonstage, HowardBarker Howard Barker
pursuesthe limit casebefween thepossibleand the irnpossible that hashauntedthe offstage
theatresincethe Attic tragedy This articleexploresthe ways in which the play- catastrophe
wright makesuseof theoffstage spaceas a repositoryfor theunknowable future, the GiorgioAgamben
-
spatiallyexcluded as a sitefor the temporallyexcluded. I reada lesser-known work barelife
of Barker's,The Brillianceof the Servant,as thesacificeof barelife to unknown potentialify
potentiality,wherethe eponymous serrsantsubmitsto the torture of a hordeof
barbariansoccupying theffitage spaceLike themessenger of theclassicaltragedy,
thisfigure traoersingthe borderbetweenthe sceneand obscmeannounces a new
kind of characterless
character, without desireand zoithoutobiectioes,but rich with
a plethoraof messages.

To experimentwith the nature of plethora and bare sufficienry in the thea-

tre is to experimentwith the limits of what is possibleonstage;it is to ask
what we may considerthe capacityof the theatre as an irrevocablybounded
space.How many bodiesaretoo many bodies,how little is too little? At either
end of this continuum waits the offstagespace,a field rich with unarticulated
excess,'rvhere every,thingand nothing could lurk in the wings. As this condi-
tional qualification'could'remindsus, thesequestionsalsomake demandson
temporalify,on what futures are availableto a depictedworld.
 x
D ani e l S a ck

Apprehending what events are possible onstage and how far a character
may stray from expectedpossibilities has been at the core of Howard Barker's
dramatic work at least since his decision in the late 1980sto Dursue a contem
porary form of tragedy in his self-proclaimed Theatre of It ls
entirely appropriate that a theatre conversing with the tragic tradition would
pursue the extent of the minimal and the maximal. According -atastrophe
to Aristotle's
Poetics (1967) - the most influential of many attempts to encompass a genre
that itself escapesdelineation - tragedy is at its roots concerned with nego-
tiating proportionalily: what are the appropriate consequences of an action,
what is the sufficient punishment for one's guilt and how does the one stand
in for the many? Tragedy seeks to restrain the plethora of futures opened up
by catastropheto a bounded and manageable whole. The Greek philosopher
hails p1ot, or the organization of events into a set of plausible causai relations,
as the most important element of the genre, requiring that whatever begins
must find its suitable end. The scale of a plot that its events may be held
within the scope of a viewer's memory - determines the complexity a p1ay's
dramatic arc can encompass (Aristotle 1967: 30) In epic texts IIke The Bite of the
Nrghf (running more than five hours in performance), the EcstaticBible (eight
hours in performance, but intended to unfold over a 24-hour period) or the
2011 Aberystwyth production of The Forfu (directed by David Ian Rabey and
as yet, unpublished), Barker presents a tragic work that cannot be contained
in a single glance, in a single remembrance As a contemporary counterpoint,
John Barton's ten-hour cycle of tragedies based on the Trojan War, Tantalus
(2001),also tests the limits of a spectator'sattention Yet where Barton subdi
vides his epic into smaller parts and self-contained stories to provide hand
holds for attentiory Barker's performances swell beyond summary or splinter
into fragments that cannot be encapsulated.His plays proceed by catastrophic
accumulation rather than causality
Against tragedy's attempts to establish rational proportions on irrational
forces and events, catastrophe courts the disproportionate and the incom-
mensurate. The OED defines catastropheas 'a sudden and widespread disas-
ter', but further qualifies its application in regards to the dramatrc paradigm
as 'the point at which the circumstances overcome the central motive, intro
ducing the close or conciusion; denouement' Thus, catastrophe inhablts an
unmarked time-space of open collapse that, through its dramatlc representa-
tion, simultaneously instigates the marked beginning of an end Tragedy ls a
theatrical apparatus for processing a central catastrophic event into a socially
legible meaning or product, to set an indeterminate middle on track to a
determinate end. Without the tragic to delimit it, the catastrophe reverber-
ates through other bodies and events; the plague of Thebes in Oedipus Rex,for
example, casts its blight on crops, animals and humans alike, suspending the
future and its unborn generations. By casting Oedipus as cause of the catas
trophe, the tragedy also makes of him its cure
On a much smaller scale,the dramatic simllarly processeslittle catastro,
phes o{ undisciplined motion into discrete and purposeful actions complete
with names and recognizable shapes Peter Szondi places the restraint of the
catastrophic at the core of not only tragedy, but the dramatic theatre more
broadly conceived: 'The accidental enters the Drama from outside, but, by
motivating it, accident is domesticated;it is rooted in the heart of drama itself'
(1987: 10) Thls taming or domestication of accidentalmotion comes to us ln
the form of a named action, movement giveu an intention, name and shape.
If drama is etymologically'the art of action', then it offers its audience figures

258
 TheBrillianceof the Seryantw ith out o ualities

and objects that can be identified in terms of actions and function (presumed
action). Its representations are based not only on what has bem done, but also
what wiII be done. Drama presupposes a network of certain bounded paths
for what may come next, a finite set of teleological projections streaming forth
from a character that we may call the possible.Since the earliest works in his
Theatre of Catastrophe, such as the fittingly titled collection of short plays
The Possibilities (1986), Barker has replaced objective-based action with the
moment of choice as the cornerstone of his art. He populates his worlds with
characters on the verge of opening out into multiple forms and attachments.
Caught in situations rife with historical and cultural upheaval, these charac-
ters explore the many proper and improper courses suddenly made available
to them in the presenf when they do choose to act they favour the profane
and egregious outskirts of these possible actions more often than acceptable
forms of behaviour. For example, when Anne Bradshaw, the heroine of Victory
(1983), encounters the great John Milton blind and feeble in his garden, she
does not offer him honour and acclaim, but a slap in the face. These characters
display a remarkable skill at expressing desires in langue both sophisticated
and surprising, drawing these sacrilegious intentions into the compass of an
ever-expanding human community via the dramatic form. In this manner,
Barker acknowledges the way in which the dramatic theatre inevitably incites
its audience to analyse character in terms of his or her plausible fufures, while
also staging reconnaissance missions to the outer limits of that constraint. We
are repeatedly forced to reevaluate what a character could do in light of what
she does.
And yet, there are occasional figures in Barker's elliptical plays that main-
tain or even gather an inexplicable force by adhering to the barest form of life
and refusing to give over to expression. For example, in a kind of counterpart
to the earlier collection of short plays, The Possibilities, the thirteen discon-
nected scenes that comprise 13 Objects (2003) each revolve around a series
of objects that do not behave solely according to function, but become the
nexus for ambiguous intentionality. The characters in these scenes relate to
the objects as if they, too, were live figures guarding secrets of their own: an
old camera terrorizes a young man with the unfathomable memory of all the
previous photographs it has taken. a child's rattle maintains the capacity for
speech before and beyond any individual statement. Here the bare sufficienry
of a singu.lar object opens out into the plethora of what we may call potmtial-
ity, a factity or medium that does not express an individual statement, but
instead holds its ability to express in reserve. As the example of the waiting
camera or the silent rattle tells us, it is in the bare sufficiency of an obiect or
a character that the plethora of the potential appears. Here we might follow
Aristotle rnhis Metaphysics in imagining the block of stone before the sculp-
tor's chisel has left a mark as containing within it a plethora of immanent
figures. Or we might tum to the blank page before the stroke of a pen and say
that this empty white field contains a plethora of future inscriptions. The bare
appearance of a ground or medium suspends a host of worlds before us. Any
further addition would narrow the fullness of what may come, would limit the
future to a smaller set of possibilities. But how can a human performer appear
as a medium containing a plethora of characters or messages?
One of Barker's lesser-known plays, The Brilliance of the Sercant, stages a
particularly effective version of this meeting of the minimal (bare sufficiency)
and the maximal (plethora) and it is in this direction that I would like to orient
the remainder of this article. The tragic/dramatic apparatus' corralling of

259
D ani el S a ck

potentiality lnto a set of possibilities here confronts an alternative system of

theatrical production, always at work, but necessariiy excluded from the insist-
ent boundaries of the stage itself: literally an offstage machine In the theatre an
empty stage may already show too mucLg may already exceed the bare suffi-
cienry of performance (for what stage is ever truly empty?) - perhaps the
minimal ground of the theatrical medium appears at the site where nothing
can be seen: in the blackout behind the curtain, off in the wings where who
knows what \urks. The Brilliance of the Seroant figures this unseen multiplic-
ity as an encroaching horde of barbarians, holding any number of terrifiTingly
unknowable futures in reserve. The play centres upon a singular figure that
occupies a position of bare sufficiency or bare life onstage, a blank slate of a
figure that goes forth to meet the plethora of the offstage, and returns with its
inexplicable power in tow Consummated in this fashion, this liminal pres-
ence announces a kind of characterless character, without directed desire and
objectives,but repletewith potentiality.
The Brilliance of the SelTant is set in the ruined hall of a great house as
a cataclysmic war rages on, the proverbial barbarians at the gate. As in so
many of Barker's plays, we are in the midst of revolution and political unrest,
the action centred on a time between regimes when hierarchies of power
are in disarray. Plays like Hated Nightfall, Victory, The Power of the Dog and
The Gaoler's Ache for the Nearly Dead return to historical moments of such
catastrophe; The Last Supper, Ursula and Judith look to apocalyptic transl-
tions from the myths of Christianlty; here there is not a specific historical
rupture, but the upheaval at the apex of any war, any time. As the quintes-
sential bourgeois groom-to be Taxman remarks to Camera, the lady of the
house and mother of his fianc6e, 'this war will finish off your entire class
and bring about a New morality! It is my misfortune to be straddling - like a
burglar impaled on a fence - Two eras' (Barker 2001: 92, original emphasis).
A-11of the characters are, like Taxman, impaled on the fence of history caught
in a catastrophe without end, an event that refuses to get on with it They are
burglars, criminals transgressing the order of the past and whatever order the
future may bring.
The overarching action concerns an attempt to counter this catastrophe
by realizing a marked historical action. At the top of the p1ay, we are told
that a wedding is to take place, that in spite of the obstacles that the inva-
sion presents (no priests, no guests), the bride-to-be, Sunetra, is adamant
that her wedding continue: '\Arhen the walls of culture fall. Practise culture!'
(Barker 2001: 104). The wedding ceremon, perhaps the most commonly
utilized denouement in the annals of theatre history, also functions as the
consummate speech act confirming societ;/s continuation Every wedding
announces 'I do' not only as a promise to a partner till death do them part,
but as a promise to keep this culture and world alive, to keep this language
alive Against Sunetra's attempt to resolve this civilizing action, the dramatic
event par excellence, the encroaching barbarians present an opposing appan-
tus that threatens the amorous jockeying of the onstage characters. This alter-
native machinery is comprised of a series of intricate torture devices looming
in the offstage space, accumulating more and more terrible force as the play
progresses.Death or great pain waits in the wings, recalling classicaltrag
edy's frequent palring of wedding ceremony and funeral rite (as in Aeschylus'
Agamemnon and Sophocles' Antigone) The play thus stages a conflict befween
the civilizing possibilities of onstage drama and the catastrophic potentiality
of offstage obscene power

2 60
 Ihe Brilliance
of theSeryant
withoutoualities

As the audience to this conflict, our only accessto the barbarians, machin-
ery is verbally relayed by the onstage characters or indicated by offstage sound
effects Early in the play we are told of a machine used to cut the lips off of pris-
oners as a means of negating both beauty and speechin a single, clean stroke
Invented by the barbarians to process the vast number of conquered peoples
in an efficient manner, it would produce bodies identically marked by therr
inability to enter the human world or, at the ieast, handicapped within the
realm of its dramatic counterpart where speech and appearance determine use
or value. Later, we are told how the barbarlans attach limbs to bent saplings,
allowing the force of the tree to dismember the victim - echoing the manner in
which Pentheus, the sacrificial victim in Euripides' Bacchae,is treed and then
torn to pieces by the possessedhorde of women in that prototlpical tragedy.
But these inventive devices of visible disfigurement are not the one whose
journey and eventual assembly just offstage forms the primary counterpoint to
the onstage action. Instead, the barbarians have brought their most exquisite
device, their crouming achievement, to the great house for the sole purpose
of selecting a marq,r from the dramatic world. If the '1ip' machine acts as a
factory for mass-producing identically unspeakable bodies, in a sense makrng
the unspeakableequivalent in its silence,then this latter construction - a port-
able 'ca1vaq,/according to one character - is devoted to producing the singu,
lar sacrifice. The excluded plethora and the singular bare life share a common
space offstage, marking with a brutal imagined machine the outside limit of
the human community that the drama represents Occupyrng a state of excep-
tion, included by their exclusion,they (do not) show where the representable
ends Convention assumes that the representable stands in stark opposition
to the unrepresentable;one is either included in the scene or excluded from
its premises. However, following Carl Schmidt, Giorgio Agamben has argued
that it is in the decisionbetueeninclusion and exciusion,the determinatlon of
a limit casebetween one and the other, that one most powerfullv encounters
the extent of both thought categories.Neither one nor the othea the state of
exception delimits and defines the human and the horde.
The classicaltragic martyr can protest and lament his or her fate, even choose
to willingly face death, but he or she must - with a few notable excep-
tions - die offstage. As Jean Genet writes in The Blacks:'Greek tragedy, my
dear, decorum. The ultimate gesture is performed offstage' (1960: 84) The
workings of the machines are as inaccessible or incommunicable to the
onstage characters as they are to the audience. During his preparations for
the wedding, Taxman observes one of the barbarians' horrific acts outside,
but he cannot name the action he has seen Later, one of the servant women
describes witnessing another device offstage that looks like a cat,s cradle
suspending an oid man in its lines, evincing gruesome cries, yet its exact
manner of operation also remains a mystery: 'I can't exactly see what - why
it hurts - [ ] why does it hurt?' (Barker 2001: 108) Later still, when he first
introduces the arrival of the consummate sacrificial machine, the head serv-
ant Shoulder describesit as an unseen, infuitive menace: 'No one has seen
it, though many testify to its existence.It is as if its coming is announced, rts
presence experienced, through the nerves, and its materiality rather intuited
than perceived' (Barker 2001: 118) In order to resist the objective interests of
the dramatic state with its subjects, the machine must remain out of sight,
lts exact process and construction unknown, but asserting a force that pres-
sures a1lonstage, makingits presence felt through the nerves. All these machines
counter the analytic contract between the spectator and the performance,s

261,
Da n ie l S a ck

production of meaningful possibilities discussed above. The offstage barbar-

ians carry with them an unnamed threat that can take any form in the future:
'All things that have been imagined will occur [...] every malicious thought
will be someone's ordeal' @arker 2001:99). They incite not the particular-
ity of fear, with its negative relation to a certain possibility (this Ihreat, tLtat
danger), but institute a field suffused with unarticulated anxiety where dread
suffuses all surroundings spatial and temporal. At any moment, something
horrible may come from some place. They offer a plethora of tortures to the
imagination.
Expanding upon the conception of the nomadic war machine proposed by
Deleuze and Guattari, theorist Gerald Raunig writes that 'the martial dimen-
sion of the war machine consists in the power of inventiory in the capacity for
change, in the creation of other worlds' (2010:58). The barbarian's machines are
such inventions in both sensesof the word: as material/technological construc-
tions and as the machinations of deception and manipulation. The offstage
machines also recall lhe deus ex machina, the contraption offstage that would
allow the enhance of a god from above in classical theatre, or any number
of other theatrical inventions devoted to producing supemafural appearances
(the fog machines of the Italian Renaissance or the architectures of mirrors
used to project image), but remaining behind the scenes.This machinery used
in the classical theatre'to resolve all the aporia that had emerged in the course
of the play' is, in the catastrophic theatre, used to manufacture uncertainty and
disruption rather than restrain it (Raunig 2010: 38).
Coupled with the characters' panic-stricken retreat from the potentiality
of the horde is a contradictory fascination with what can only be described as
its seductive power. It is a seduction that promises to reveal the truth about
the self in all its particularity. For the prinlipal characters, to be sacrificed to
the machine is to be analysed to the core of one's being as an individual, so
that eventually each feels that the machine has come specifically to require his
or her martyndom. One may say that in tragedy the hero achieves his or her
destined meaning and individuality in becoming the chosen sacrificial subject.
Such a figure becomes the centre of the drama and acquires a peculiar power
that we will discuss below. Camer4 the head of the household and qrrrosure
of a variety of amorous intentions, attests to the deepest understanding of the
machine. She explains the device as follows:

Do you not sense its anxiety? It is as if by virtue of its design, its manu-
facture and assembly, it has acquired a will. It is self animated in some
way, and utters. The peculiar silence that follows the tightening of the
ast bolt is replete with what - desire? Lack? It's almost tangible....
"2001
(Barker : 126 -127)

If the machine desires its victim, then surely, as the object of so many
human desires, Camera is the intended victim. She continues: 'Unlike us, tne
joumeys of the machine are undertaken strictly in accordance with an end'
@arker 2001: 127). Contrary to her claim, this mode of single-minded pursuit is
entirely in line with the kind of future available in the dramatic world to which
Camera belongs. It thinks in terms of ends, objectives and the attachment to
a desired object. If we are to beLieve Camer4 the offstage barbarians merely
represent the epitome of the economy (in its efrmological sense as 'household
management') of desire wi*Lin which she is the queen of the castle.The machh-
ery offstage mirrors her own striving for an 'ultimate gesture', a definite end.

262
 TheBrilliance
of theSeryant
withoutoualities

But the more we learn about Camera, the more suspect her tesn_
mony appears. Immediately after shoulder has announced the approach of
the machine that none have seery she claims contrarily that she has in fact
witnessed it, but only in pieces. In other words, she can only conceptualize
the potential in a part-by-part segmentation, as a set of posibl" pieces. As
befits her name, Camera presents herself as a woman set within a fixed pt,se,
an arrangement to be seen (she asks her daughter: ,you think I pose, don,t
you? You think I say things lor effect?' [Barker 2001: 90]). She may state that
'the consequencesof things .. have never interested me..., (Barker 2001: gg),
and soundly refuse to give apologies or hear them, but her daughter sees
through the mask of indifference. It becomes apparent that, at oddi with her
ov,n avowals, Camera is most interested in the machine as a 'concentration
of moral intelligence' that will translate her intended sacrifice into a definitive
judgement or end. she, like all the other principal characters, desires self-
recognition through painful apotheosis. Like sunetra and Taxman, Camera
desires that the machine choose her, that it authorize her character.
As the head of a dlng household - drama's spectatorial-analytical house -
a classicaltragedy would indeed elect Camera to submit to the sacrificial act. In
Barkels world" however, it is the brilliant sewant of the play's title who ultimately
becomes the collective's substitute. \vhere Camera's indifference is a performecl
display, intended to mask her own desire to meet this supreme endind look-
ing'to [the machine] for some cruel kind of solace', shoulder is the most enig-
matic of the characterg his intentionality almost entirely obscured throughout
(Barker 2001: 131) Even at the moment when he announces his position as
the sacrfficia-l
subject,it is unclear whether this is an active choice or ihe passive
acceptance of a decision voiced from without. He seemingiy exists outiide of
personal attachment and outside the law; as he puts if it is my privilege to judge
no one'. Asked to give a speech before departin& to judge the othery shoulder
can only offer his 'uncritical devotion' @arker 2001: 133).
shoulder is a man without qualities, a man without a place, and therefore
the ideal vessel for the communi[/s blame. A blank slate, a tabula rasa, anyone
can write anything onto him. In other words, he is a messenger without a
message. To generalize greatry, in classical tragedy, the messenger clelivers
his or her description of the offstage event with the least diversion or inflec-
tion possible. He or she has no name, ideally, and arguably no character apart
from the content of the message; the messenger does not appear onstage prior
to this moment, nor stay beyond its calling. writing of the figure of Hermes,
the dMne messenget Michel Serressuggeststhat,the messenger appears ...
but he must also disappear, or rrurite himself out of the picture, in oider that
the recipient hears the words of the person who sent the message, not the
messenger' (1,997:99).The quintessential messengeris a person oino impor_
tance with no end; announcing his or her own mediality as message, he oishe
disappears into a pure means without end. The messenger takei possession
of the potentiality to do or express without giving form to an action or state-
ment vvhile most of Barker's characters pursue a desired object or other with
fanatical conviction, here the playr,wight seems to present one that pursues
desire without an object, not as a reward or end in itself, but as a way of tLrlne
suspendedbeiween desireand fulfitment. some distant descendantof Chrisf
shoulder loves without object and without selfish interesf he gives himself
over completely in his 'uncritical devotion'. To remind us of the correlation
between these two mar$rrs, each time that Shoulder slaps Tamran across the
face during the play, the groom exclaims 'Christl, again and again.

263
 Da n i e lS a ck

As his own name suggests,Shoulder must carry the burden

of the
community's transgressions:the sexual escapadesbetween
Camera and
most prominent instancein a seem_
paredfor submissionbefore the ,port_
hrist's crucifixion,he perfectlv,eilir"s
fered by French theorist Ren6 Girard.
he of classicaltragedy representsthe
riminal acts coliapsedifferenceto such
a degreethat it is necessary to radicaly separateu ,u..ifi.iur subjectin order
to reconstitutesociarorder. This subject,the tragic hero,
is heid responsi_
ble for all dispersednegativeviolenceand the ."rt of society
reformsitself
tn oppositionto this other. His or her sacrificeremoves
caiastrophefrom
the city, and so the subject becomesat once both the cause
of uil dirr,rp_
tion and its resolution.He or she is the pharmakonin
both sensesof the
word: the poison and the cure. This duar state - deprived
and fulL of
at once - parailels the ambivalenceof the bare rife and sovereign. fo*".
ff bare
life possessesthe most narrow of powers sufficrentto be
calledrive, and the
soverelgnpossesses a plethora of capacities,one would assumethat these
two stand in strict opposition to one another. However,
sharing a common
state of exception as extraordinary figures, a radical ambivaleice
oversees
them. we may say that both exist ouiside the norm of the
human commu-
nity, so that the jurisdiction of human ordinancesdoes not
apply to either
category(e.g. the death of either sovereignor bare rife wourd
noiquarify as
homicide).As Girardnotes,in many culturesthe king is
the one who canbe
sacrificed,evenmustbe sacrificed,in order to marntainstable
sociarorder.It
is this structurethat the ciassicaltragedyrepricates.In Sophocles,
quintes-
sential tragedy oedipus savesThebei from tne sphinx o.,ty
to becJme the
causeof its plague;as mentioned above,his exiie curestne
city and setshim
wandering as a kind of refugeefrom city to city. In Oed.ipus
at totorrs, iy tt-re
time he nearshis death, the cursedman has becomedivinely '_
po_"rful hi,
burial site will offer a sacredbressingto its host city. Tellingiy,
this curmr-
nating death takesplace^offstage, its particurarrocationuns#n'even bythe
messengerthat reportsOedipus,demise.
As soon as Shoulderacceptshis mantle as scapegoat,the
stageworld
begins to
lloothly function. accordingto the possibiities of classilal trag_
edy's sacrificialstructure.when thJ servant prepares
to encounter the
rine,the other characters addresshim
.he other seryantspraise his carriage,
e with awe. This divinity has been
n Taxman,srepeatedexclamations of
other characters,but by the electron
of the world itself: here, the servant is left standing al.ne
o*tug", i*_o,
bile and'suddenly, a bright stream of light througl the
missing"rooi iltrr_
minates him. He feels it, laughs,
@arkei 2001: I01). And whei Shoulder
disappears{rom sight to offei himself as victim, there
is a sudden shift in
onstageas the long-awaitedand wirhhetdweddingU"gnr,
lll: i,:::On:re
tne preuousry antagonistic and despairing characters
embracing in nJarry
bucoliccelebration.
attemptsto watch Shoulderas he is greetedwith propriery
"-r?-l1t- lllT""
krndnessby the barbariansoffstage.It becomesincreasingly
::"-":-"1 diificult
loanan to describethe event that is taking pracebeyond
::r the triresholdof
rne staee:

264
 TheB ri l l i anceof the S eryantw i thout qual i ti es

(strainingto seeinto thestreet)I.A4-rat,s

happening.. . ?
It's hard to say exactly,my eyesare_
Can you-
Peculiar...
I wish my eyeswere better,I_

I can'tteli if he,s.. . what is he.. ..

@arker2001:137)
He turns from the window, his attenti
awareof the offstagescene.Durinq I
encedtheir ow.nrecognition:Camer
daughter, not her rivaf even dressin
gor.r'nshehad previouslyhoped to usr
have finally taken place,the nuptiar rebirth and the
Tagedy sacrificialdeath,
the recognition and reversai.so that as we hear
machine pu.k"J ,f u.,a
carried away,it seemsthat Shourderhas been processed
by the tradiional
dramatic apparatus,that history can
reachedits end and the possible is reir
Shoulder'st"uppeurinc"onstage, r
with an 'oversized overcoator.,orJid,.
'My agony',he says,,wasquite sirnpl!, a
the world ... like rain ... the movementof the tides ...,
This is the cruel necessrlflz @arker 2001:140).
that Nietzsche'sBirth of rragedy ide"rin* *'rn ,n"
pessimismof a radicailyinhuman and,incomprene"riLte
*o.ta,-rh" pr;oru
of the Dionysian.Crearlythe machinehas operateorn
manner quite different
from Camera'sexpectations:it does not provide an intentionar
pag"*;;t o.
rationalizationof its chosenvictim. And, is the lady
of the housJa"E ,ir"i i"
for the spectator,when she pulls the overcoatfrom
his back in ,"u.J-oirtr"
marks left by the machine,she discoversa surfaceof
smooth and unmarked
skin. Facing this blank canvasof a mi
ance, Camera,the mistressof that o1d
to reasserther own dramatic credenti
character...[...] I am clingingto my
emphasis).To which Shoulderreplies,
gone,swepidownsireamon a flood ..
@arker2001:142).Thatdeluge,that catastrophediscardingan endsand
moral
intelligence,leavesa set of figures gatherei on Barker,s"st"g;
],il-;;;"p
of refugeesbereft of their place and identity. A new age
begiis, herald"eduy
the unmarked messiahShourder.\44renthe stagedirections
describeCamera
releasing 'profound sobs, the heaving purri6', of
bereaveme",; ig"rk",
200.1: as the lights dim, the questio-nof ,why?,or ,to what
.143) ..,a2, ."r.,ui.,
entirely in the dark. In other words, in TheBriilianceof
the sentantthe tragic
sacrifice-no longer tunctions as anticipated by Girards
th;;;"i; ir'"o,"u"
agent of cultural restitution.This sacrificialsubjectdoes
not pro.tui--u-."tu.r.,
to a known role, to a characterwith knowable quaiities.
If the spectatoriardrama/tragedywith its possiblefutures
functions rike--tn,
a torturing machine, then it is one akin to that described
i" ru*J" t
PenalColony.It is a device of extensiveand iniricate,
but urtimate$,inite

265
Da n i e lS ac k

inscription.The stylusthat carvesat its victim's flesh

arrivesat an end, reaves
the body.markedby a moral and juridical statement,
the revelationof a char_
acterto the-analyticalgaze, even-ifthat meaningis, as
in Kafka,sparable,only
legrbleto the judged and god above.We, in the spectator,s
seat,get to play
the part of-sucha god and seea charactermade iegibre.
But Bark#s barbar-
ians from the no-man's-randof the offstage,pu." i-"urr"
no trace;rather they
refurn the body of the sacrificiarsubjectiniact and unscathed,
io"g.. ,.*-
g - pe.rhapsno ionger a characterat all _ and sacred "o
?_.ii:.:t oiy as the
ta,wa rasa oi a iife outside the realm of the possibre.
The stage directions
describeshoulder watching the barbarians'departure
from the window, ,as
if taking leave of someoneprofoundly loved for whom
no gestureis app.o-
priate' @arker 200I: 140). How *orrl,C o." stage
this mom"ent,p".nup', tn"
in the play, with its gesturethat ii not a gesture?Sioulder
-:tt.l?*:.fuI has
establishedan inimitabreconnectionwith the horde, tiing
on their fi",}roru
of cruelty-the full potential of a world,s unrealizedimagrnings.
No glrtu.u o
this great expanse;there is no way of thJ protun_
1,"_t:t]",9"{::e
orry oI nrs rove, nothing to show of the horror endured. "ipr"rli.,g
ThiJnaked back,
displayng a shoulder as wourd dispraythe ability or potentiarita .u.ry
-one -_the oniy
a burdery is the bare sufficienry sufficienry- oi such a
magnitude of feeling. The classicalm< ""p."rrirg
and showing where all is told and n
crisis.Baring himself Shoulderreveal
messengerwho could contain a plethc
like the tragiccharacterhe fuLfilsthe t
the many: not as a sacrificiarsurrogatefor the many,
but as a singularfigure
that possesses the capacityto be miny others.

R E F ER EN C E S
AgTl:1 Giorgro (1998),Homo Soaereignpoz,erand BareLife (Irans.
-Sacer:
D..Heller-Roazen),Stanford:Stanford UnivJrsity press.
- (2000),Potentiarities:CoilectedEssaysin philosophy(trans.
D. Heiler-
Roazen),Stanford:StanfordUniversitvpress.
Aristotle (1967),Thepoetiu(trans.G. Ekei, annarbor:
Universityof Michigan
l-ress.
Butf:.. Howard (1997),Arguments a Theatre,
for Manchester:Manchester
UniversityPress.
- plays:Volume5, London:
(2001),Collected
John Calderpress.
Blocfr,Ernst (1995),Theprincipleof Hope:Volume1 (trans. plaice, plarce
N. S.
and P. Knight), Cambridge:Uif piess.
_
Genet, ]ean (1960), The Blicks: A Clown Show (trans.
B. Frechtman),New
York: Grovepress.
Girard, Ren6 (1979),Violenceand the Sacred(trans. p.
Gregory), Baltimore:
]ohns Hopkins Universitypress.
Kafl<a,Franz (1995),The CompleteStoriesof Franz
Kafka (trans.W. Muir and
E. Muir), New york: SchockenBooks.
Nietzsche,Friedrich(1967),The-Birthof Tmgedyand the
Caseof wagner (trans.
W. Kaufmann),New york: Vintaee.
RaT1&_ Gerald Q01O),A Thousani Machines:A
Concisephilosophyof the
Machineas a SocialMoaement(trans.A. Derieg),Cambridge:
Mfi i.;'rr.
Sen;1_Micfel (199n, Angels:A Modern Myti "Cowper),
ltrans. n. taris,
_FialruTlanon.
 of the servanf w i thout o uali ti es
The B ri l l i ance

States,Bert O. (1994), The Pleasureof the PIay, Ithaca: Cornell University

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Szondi,Peter (1987),Theoryof Modem Drama (trans.M. Hays), Minneapolis:
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SUGGESTED CITATION
Sack,D. (2012),'TheBrillianceof the Seruantwithout qualities:Bare life and
the horde offstage',Studiesin TheatreI Performance 32" 3, pp 257-267,
doi: 10.1386/stap.32.3.257
-L

CO NT R IB U T ODRE T AIT S
Daniel Sack is Assistant Professorof Theatre Studies at Florida State
University. Prior to this appointment he was a Five College Mellon
Postdoctoral Fellow in Performance Studies at Amherst College and the
University of Massachusetts.He is currently revising his book manuscript,
TheFuturesof Performance: Possibilityand Potentialityin LiaeArt.
E-mail dsack@fsu.edu

Daniel Sackhas assertedhis right under the Copltighf Designsand Patents

Act, 1988,to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submittedto Intellect Ltd.

267