Epilogue:

A Future without Screens?

It should be clear by now that from the perspective offered by this book, a
perspective in which the distinction of modernity is a phenomenological
one—as opposed to a sociological, economic, philosophical, or poetic one—it
does not make sense to speak of the present as “postmodern.” Indeed, while
this term may have currency in the context of a vocabulary that emphasizes
“totalizing narratives” or the centrality of the categories of Man or Reason—
although I would still question whether these organizing principles are as
dead as their antagonists have claimed—in the context of the vocabulary of
theatricality and presence, I see no indication that we have stepped out of a
basically theatrical experience of the world.1 The paradox of saying that we
are living in a theatrical age, of course, is that in much of the modern world,
the theater is essentially dead or dying, surviving only as an occasional pursuit
of the cultural elite, or suffering intermittent resuscitations by political or cul-
tural revolutionaries, convinced that they will strike a blow against oppression
Copyright © 2002. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved.

by at last leveling the carceral fourth wall. The vast majority of us, however,
absorb our visual entertainment via television and the movies, with an ever-
growing percentage also logging onto the Web for any variety of reasons,
business or pleasure.
To say that we are still theatrical, then, is to make an observation utterly
independent of whether or not we still go to the theater because the same
viewer who learned to negotiate theatrical space in the seventeenth century
would, after a few lessons in close-ups and montage, feel pretty much at
home in a world of television and movie screens. And the point of contact is,
I have suggested, the screen. The screen is more than just an element of tech-
nological innovation; it is a word we can use to identify a phenomenological
entity, an essential ingredient of a particular organization of space. The screen
has become so fundamental to modern ways of being that even situations of
extreme interpersonal intimacy, from face-to-face conversation to sexual in-
tercourse, can be seen as particular instantiations of the general rule, specific
encounters in which part of the fiction is that there is no fiction, that there is,

167
Egginton, William. How the World Became a Stage : Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity, State
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 168 HOW THE WORLD BECAME A STAGE

in effect, no screen there.2 At the same time, we must recognize the persis-
tence of presence in the form of what I have called the crypt, for certainly we
achieve moments of ecstasy, of immediacy, moments when actions, gestures,
and words have an impact that does not follow the route of theatrical identi-
fication. But these moments, sublime and ephemeral as they are, are couched
in and revealed to us from within the confines of a theatrical organization of
space. And insofar as our desire is also theatrical, it is a desire for the crypt, a
desire that has been described by psychoanalysis as the epiphenomenon of a
more fundamental drive toward death.
This, then, is the spatiality of modernity. But can we speculate as to what
might follow? If our modern world is disclosed to us through screens, then
what would a postmodern world resemble; what vocabulary might we use to
describe it? The theatrical, literary-artistic, and philosophical avant-garde since
the early twentieth century has tried to force the issue, has tried to create an art
and a thought that pierces the theatrical divide, that reconnects directly and vis-
cerally with human essence as opposed to its mere appearance, with the uncon-
scious lurking beneath consciousness, with the political reality underlying
ideology. And to a large extent art and philosophy were determined by this de-
sire to get beyond representation for much of the rest of the century. But such
a desire only attests to the persistence of theatricality. Neither Artaud nor Hei-
degger, Stelarc nor Deleuze, can successfully force the issue, make the sea rise
and wash Foucault’s face of man from the beach.3 The sea will do what the sea
will do, which is not a statement of political conservatism because real political
battles are being fought as the sea is now and will continue to be fought. The
interests of people in the here-and-now is the issue of politics, and no one’s in-
Copyright © 2002. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved.

terests can predictably be served by entering a different mode of being, even if

such a change could be forced. Knowing how our spatiality works, though, can
facilitate the effort to work effectively within it, and, if so desired, to effectuate
change. Understand theatricality, and theatrical identification! Learn how it
functions on your desires! Appropriate it to your own purposes, and you may
achieve a modicum of freedom! This, at least, might be one wayv of translating
the imperative of Ideologiekritik, from the Frankfurt School to Zizv ek, into the
vocabulary of theatricality.
The way out of theatricality, then, is not through the fourth wall, since
presence has always tantalized us from that vantage. If I could imagine, just for
a moment, what a world without screens would look like on the basis of the
kinds of media that exist today, I would say that it would not involve a return to
presence or to the immediate in any sense, but rather a fall into pure mediation,
mediation without reference to the original body, the primary self. Such a real-
ity would be a virtual reality without the oxymoronic connotation, a virtuality
in which all aspects of being would exist free of any anchor in the physical, a
virtuality in which ultimately life, consciousness, and human history would be

Egginton, William. How the World Became a Stage : Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity, State
University of New York Press, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ecnu/detail.action?docID=3408085.
Created from ecnu on 2024-03-12 03:57:18.
 Epilogue 169

sustainable. This is the dream of artificial intelligence and of the new age cyber-
prophets who speak of the network girdling the globe as a nascent life form.
Like Hegel’s Absolute Spirit, object and subject would coincide: in place of
consciousness would be transparency, and perhaps, in the distant future, some-
thing like Asimov’s giant computer would encompass the edges of the universe,
answer all possible questions, and in a last gasp say, “Let there be light.” On the
other hand, it is only because we are theatrical that such fictions even begin to
make sense.
Copyright © 2002. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved.

Egginton, William. How the World Became a Stage : Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity, State
University of New York Press, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ecnu/detail.action?docID=3408085.
Created from ecnu on 2024-03-12 03:57:18.
 This page intentionally left blank.
Copyright © 2002. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved.

Egginton, William. How the World Became a Stage : Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity, State
University of New York Press, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ecnu/detail.action?docID=3408085.
Created from ecnu on 2024-03-12 03:57:18.