The Pleasure of the Spectator

The Pleasure of the Spectator' ANNE UBERSFELD Translated by Pierre Bouillaguet and Charles Jose nfaut dire que c'est une caract6ristique des moyens th~Atraux que de transmettre des connaissances et des impulsions sous tonne de jouissances; la profoodeur de la connaissance et de I'impulsion correspond lia profondeur de la jouissance.:l Brecht Brecht's optimism: for him, pleasure and knowledge go hand in hand; knowing and enjoying are but one. " . He uses the word pleasure, but he also, impudently, refers to sensual pleasure Uouissancel, which means much more. One can say almost anything about the spectator's pleasure, and the most contradictory formulas can appear valid: the pleasure ofliking and ofdisliking; the pleasure of understanding and of not understanding; the pleasure of maintaining an intellectual distance and of being carried away by one's emotions; the pleasure offollowing a story ("and what happens next?" the child asks) and of looking at a tableau; the pleasure of laughing and of crying; the pleasure of dreaming and of knowing; the pleasure of enjoying oneself and of suffering; the pleasure ofdesiring and ofbeing protected from passions. ". One can continue forever this little game of oppositions'. All through the system of sigus of the representation, one can track down theatrical pleasure: it is scattered all over, it is never absent. Protean, obstinate, lurking, it can be found at very stage of theatrical research. Looking for the relationship between pleasure and the signs of the performance is perhaps unreasonable; perhaps pleasure can be considered as something that cannot be made the object of rational analysis. I shall try, nevertheless, to account for those various forms of theatrical pleasure. Since I placed this attempt under the aegis of Brecht, let me begin with what, in pleasure, is closest to intellectual reflection, what is perhaps, at the same time, the most semiotic of all pleasures - the pleasure of the sign. 128 ANNE UBERSFELD A FEW PRELIMINARIES a) Theatrical pleasure is not a solitary pleasure, but is rellected on and reverberates through others; it spreads like a train of gunpowder or suddenly congeals. The spectator emits barely perceptible signs of pleasure as well as loud laughter and secret tears - their contagiousness is necessary for everyone's pleasure. One does not go alone to the theatre - one is less happy when alone. b) Theatrical pleasure is multiform; it is made up of all kinds of pleasures, sometimes contradictory ones. It varies with the forms oftheatricality. Itcannot be reduced to a univocal notion-the more so as, by nature, itis twofold: ilis the pleasure of an absence being summoned up (the narrative, the fiction, elsewhere);and it is the pleasure ofcontemplating a stage reality experienced as concrete activity in which the spectator takes part. Sometimes there is an indissoluble link between these two kinds of pleasures: sometimes, according to the forms of representation, they are distinct, separate. Whether it is the pleasure of looking at a scaled-down reality or an emotional stimulus, it oscillates between the experience of an absence and the play with a presence. c) Corollary: the pleasure of the audience is never pure, passive reception; it is related to an activity, a series of activities (whose complexity we have already seen) in which, to a degree, it invests itself. d) The pleasure of the audience can be found in opaque signs (those which are resistant to meaning) as well as in those whosetransparency refers to an obvious meaning andlor to an obvious referent. THE FABLE: A PRELIMINARY In the beginning was the fable. We should have to go back too far if we tried to justify the pleasure of listening to a story, the pleasure that any story-tellers as well as Racine, Shakespeare, or Genet give their audiences. Pleasure of the diachrony of never-heard stories in which suspense is at the root of pleasure. Pleasure of the repetition of well-known stories, similar to the pleasure experienced by a child who, for the twentieth time, asks for a story that he knows by heart but whose most minute details must be respected. The very pleasure of narrative is no more a simple pleasure than the "simple forms" of literature are simple: dramatic...