Abstract

ABSTRACT:

While much has been written on Arthur Miller's relationship to the post-war intelligentsia, few critics have explored the influence that intellectual debates on Holocaust complicity had on the author's 1960s catalogue. Building on the similarities between the theory of the "banality of evil" offered in Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) and Miller's Herald Tribune article on the Nazi trials in Frankfurt (1964), this article suggests that the playwright's interest in emerging theories of complicity became a central concern of After the Fall (1964) and Incident at Vichy (1964). Strongly influenced by Theodor Adorno's and Jean-Paul Sartre's work on aesthetic responses to post-war guilt, Miller used these plays to dramatize competing responses to the concept of "ubiquitous complicity" for the Holocaust. Using the aesthetic language of addiction spectacle scenes, which a strong tradition of American temperance theatre had popularized, Miller evaluated the mechanics of complicity and offered a dramatic thesis on its importance to anti-fascist activism. I conclude that, in both plays, the representation of addiction became the primary means through which Miller participated in contemporary critical debates on post-war guilt.

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