Brecht’s Gesture

The paper tries to spell out two strategies in Brecht that in their juncture constitute the elementary Brecht’s gesture. The first one is to debunk high ideals and ideological appeals to sacrifice as the masks of self-interest and cynical egotism. The second strategy promotes self-sacrifice and consent as an ascetic process of renouncing the self. The two strategies seem to stand in contradiction, yet they form a necessary two-step pattern: from giving up on ideological illusions in the name of self-interest, to giving up the self as the biggest illusion. This passage is formative of the revolutionary desire for change.