Artaud, Germ Theory, and the Theatre of Contagion

This article explores the influence of Pasteurian germ theory on Antonin Artaud's concept of theatre as plague. Drawn to the corporeal focus of germ theory while resisting its medicalized discourse, Artaud's theatre of cruelty tropes the Pasteurian body, refigures its structures of time and space, and imposes an ecstatic performativity on its narrowly microbial understanding of contagion. In so doing, Artaud points to a broader epidemiological modernity in which scientific and cultural notions of contagious disease propose new and often contending ways of theorizing individual and collective bodies.