P HILIPP S CHULTE The World as Stage and Representation: Notes on the Theatrum Mundi Metaphor 1 I ‘The Great Theatre of the World’ WORLD: Well, what do you plan to do? Is there anything I can do for you? DIRECTOR: […] I want you to make a festival To celebrate my power So when my greatness is made manifest All Nature will rejoice. Everyone loves it when a show really works And the audience shouts ‘Bravo! ’ Human life is not but acting, so Let Heaven sit in the best seats To watch a play on your stage, World. As I’m Director and the play is mine, It shall be acted by my company Whether they want to act or not. As I chose human beings to be The most important creatures of all They’ll be the members of my company And they shall act out, as well as they can, The story of the play that’s called The World. I shall cast each in a suitable role Now an entertainment of this kind Needs beautiful props and transformations And richly-decorated costumes. […] Work quick as light, for I’m Director, You are stage manager, humans the actors. WORLD: Great Director, the actors and I Will obey your every word. I am the Great Theatre of the World And I am your Stage Manager Here to carry out your orders, For though the scenery is mine, the play is yours. 2 P HILIPP S CHULTE 180 And thus the ‘Great Theatre of the World’ which Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca conjures up before the audience’s eyes in his homonymous religious play El gran teatro del mundo, is dedicated. Calderón’s play received its premiere on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 1645 3 , in Seville. He had, however, not been the first to use the idea of world-as-stage and, correspondingly, life-as-play. In fact, the notion dates back as far as classical antiquity, and it is likely that, during Calderón’s own time, it had already turned commonplace. Still, no other playwright before the Spaniard, whose Christian parable presents all of world history since Creation, had with such consistency put on the idea of a play-in-play. Barely has Calderón’s world been chosen — as quoted above — to act as stage, when, instantly, it equips itself with two stage doors: an entrance in the form of a cradle; and an exit represented correspondingly by a grave. And through this cradle, the Lord and Stage Director calls all of those human players to their entries, for them to be assigned their various roles. There is the King, the Sage, the Belle, the Rich Man, the Peasant, the Beggar, the innocent and all-too-soon-dying Child. ”Do Right, for God is God“ is the seemingly tautologous title of the play that is being performed. The players are free to act within the bounds of their respective roles, until they are again called offstage, to be judged by God according to their onstage conduct. In using this image, Calderón falls back on a motif that in seventeenthcentury Spain already had a long tradition, a motif that can be found in Plato and St Augustine, in the Sceptics of antiquity as well as in Stoics such as Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. 4 As Alexander Demandt, who has presented the arguably most comprehensive survey of the manifold manifestations the theatre metaphor has undergone since ancient times, sums up: Figures of speech taken from the general realm of theatre have at all times served to clarify beliefs about history. Tragedy and drama, puppet and extra, role and unmasking, entry, scene and peripeteia, staging and Iron Curtain are familiar images of historical political speech. Their basic outlines persist; they have been 1 Translated by Tobias Gabel. 2 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, ”The Great Theatre of the World,” Three Plays (1993; London: Oberon Books Ltd, 2003) 174-75. 3 For the date of the first performance, different years have been suggested. I follow Ansgar von der Osten, “Das große Welttheater,“ Harenberg Schauspielführer (Dortmund: Harenberg Kommunikation, 1997) 181. 4 See Adriana Hass, ”Theatrum mundi,“ Theaterlexikon: Begriffe und Epochen, Bühnen und Ensembles, eds. Manfred Brauneck and Gérard Schneilin (1986; Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1992) 1051. The World as Stage and Representation 181 elaborated variously according to the development of theatre and the permutations of our way of looking at history. 5 The world is like the stage in a theatrical production, whether the roles are cast by Fate, as the ancients believed, or, as in baroque times, by the Christian God. Needless to say the metaphor has, time and again, been used in drama itself: in Lope de Vega, in Shakespeare, 6 later in the opening prologue of Goethe’s Faust, in Büchner’s Dantons Tod, and, explicitly, in Hofmannsthal’s plays Das kleine Welttheater (‘The Little World Theatre’) and Das Salzburger große Welttheater (‘The Great Salzburg World Theatre’). Just as the notion of the world as a stage with human players was not invented in one of Calderón’s plays, then, it did not cease to exist with the end of the baroque era. On the contrary, its various forms pervade, down to the present day, the dominant aesthetic, mundane, and scientific discourses. Over the course of the 19 th century, admittedly, its Christian character got lost somewhere along the way. God, at any rate, who had thus far served as both stage director and sole spectator of the global spectacle, left the theatre and henceforth let the players act on their own and, apparently, un-watched from the outside. Those very actors, however, stayed on the minds of many artists and theorists who still put their hopes for an adequate description of the world in the theatrical model. The most consistent exponent of this kind of metaphorization in the 20 th century might be Jewish-Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman. Goffman first presented his take on the subject in his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. 7 “[The] ordinary social intercourse is itself put together as a scene is put together, by the exchange of dramatically inflated actions, counteractions, and termination replies,” 8 as Goffman puts it. In his theory, theatre is used as a descriptive model of the 5 Alexander Demandt, Metaphern für Geschichte: Sprachbilder und Gleichnisse im historischpolitischen Denken (München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1978) 421. (Own translation, T.G.) 6 See e.g. William Shakespeare, As You Like It, ed. Jonathan Bate (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2007) II.7: “All the world‘s a stage, [/ ] And all the men and women merely players. [/ ] They have their exits and their entrances; [/ ] And one man in his time plays many parts, [/ ] His acts being seven ages.”; William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. Jonathan Bate (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2007) V.5: “Life‘s but […] a poor player [/ ] That struts and frets his hour upon the stage [/ ] And then is heard no more.” — Especially the concept occuring in Shakespeare of a play-within-the-play can, in this context, be seen as a first development of the theatrum mundi metaphor: embedding theatrical acting within a background story (as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet) makes possible meta-reflection upon the relationship between ‘theatre’ and ‘world’. For this suggestion I am indebted to Sibylle Baumbach. 7 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959; New York: The Overlook P, 1973); the title of the German translation (Wir alle spielen Theater, i.e. ‘We all put on an act’) makes the leaning towards a theatrum mundi metaphor even clearer. 8 Goffman 72. P HILIPP S CHULTE 182 social sphere. Accordingly, Goffman has everybody play a role all the time, creating certain façades and a “‘setting’, involving furniture, décor, physical layout, and other background items which supply the scenery and stage props for the spate of human activities played out before, within, or upon it.” 9 Later on Goffman, too, draws on many other terms from the realm of theatre, such as ‘team,’ ‘audience,’ ‘costume,’ ‘proscenium,’ ‘backstage,’ ‘dramaturgy’ — and, of course, ‘role’. Just nine years later, another, more abstract book with a marked propensity for theatrical imagery was published, this time in France. It was Guy Debord’s La société du spectacle, in which the controversial artist and theoretician develops 221 theses — some of them emphatically gloomy and provocative — about how human existence turned spectacle. Debord claims that present-day life takes place within a detached, phoney world of its own. Moreover, he contends, modern man wrongly assumes that it is himself he sees in a kind of spectaclist mirror image, being thus rendered incapable of comprehending his own, ‘real’ existence. The more time people spend just looking on, Debord says, the less time they have at their disposal for actual living; the more readily they settle for identifying themselves with the prevalent representations of need, the less they understand their own existence and their own desires. “Tout ce qui était directement vécu s’est éloigné dans une représentation,” 10 Debord writes right at the beginning of his book. Lastly — to bring this brief overview to a close — a look at American philosopher Judith Butler is in order. In framing her idea of a discursive, actionoriented, performative identity, Butler does not balk at employing theatrical imagery: “the acts by which gender meaning is performed bear similarities to performative acts within theatrical contexts.” 11 At her most explicit, Butler compares the discursive power structure which surrounds us all to a theatrical text of sorts which largely — albeit not completely — determines that we are “actors, always already on the stage, within the terms of the performance.” 12 Just as a script may be enacted in various ways, and just as the play requires both text and interpretation, so the gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space and enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives. 13 9 Goffman 22. 10 Guy Debord, La société du spectacle (1967; Paris: Éditions Gérard Lebovici, 1989) 9. 11 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, eds. Katie Conboy et al. (New York: Columbia UP, 1997) 403. 12 Butler “Performative Acts” 410. 13 Butler “Performative Acts” 410. The World as Stage and Representation 183 II Comparison and Interillumination: Different Views of Metaphor Following Max Black What is it then that connects all these different artistic and scientific approaches? What do they have in common? They draw on the concept of ‘theatre’ in order to better describe the concept of ‘world’ — and some of them, vide Calderón, use the concept of ‘world’ to arrive at a more adequate description of ‘theatre.’ In any case, ‘world’ and ‘theatre’, theatrum and mundus, are — within a certain framework — equated with each other, in a hope of gaining further insight into both. Using the term developed by mathematician, philosopher, and metaphor theorist Max Black in his essays “Metaphor” 14 and “More about Metaphor,” 15 one could call this view “a comparison view of metaphor.” 16 The theatrum mundi metaphor consists in the representation of an underlying analogy or resemblance: ‘The world’ is, in some respects, just like ‘the theatre’, e.g. regarding the finite nature of human existence, the necessity of living up to certain fixed social roles, the aspect of ‘staging’ etc. Whoever thus employs the theatrum mundi metaphor with all its shades of meaning in fact speaks, as Black points out, in a parable. Black also stresses that likeness of any kind between primary and secondary subject (i.e. that which is meant and that to which it is compared) is never given objectively. Rather, he says, it is always to be interpreted as gradual, as likeness always admits of nuances, and this is exactly why Black at first doubts the value of such a comparison: “The main objection against a comparison view is that it suffers from a vagueness that borders upon vacuity.” 17 But Black goes even further when he states that any resemblance between two compared subjects is established no sooner than the respective metaphor is used: “It would be more illuminating in some of these cases to say the metaphor creates the similarity than to say it formulates some similarity antecedently existing.” 18 In the particular case of the theatrum mundi metaphor, I also think it misleading to adopt the comparative view of metaphor. This is due, I think, to one specific ambiguity: It is unclear which of the two subjects compared is the primary, and which is the secondary subject of comparison. It is true: ‘World’ is compared to ‘theatre’, and thus, one would assume that ‘world,’ like brave Achilles in ‘Achilles is a lion,’ is the primary subject. At the same 14 Max Black, “Metaphor,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. LV (London: Harrison & Sons, Ltd., 1955) 273-294. 15 Max Black, “More about Metaphor,”Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony (1979; New York: Cambridge UP, 1993) 19-41. 16 Black, “Metaphor” 283. 17 Black, “Metaphor” 284. 18 Black, “Metaphor” 284-85. P HILIPP S CHULTE 184 time, however — and Demandt calls this a “dual primary reference” 19 — the image resorted to for the purpose of comparison (‘theatre’) is usually understood in one specific historical sense, namely as an aesthetic form of representation which itself represents the world to begin with. The primary subject is compared to a secondary subject which, in turn, is often used as a primary subject to the original primary subject, which thus becomes a secondary subject. Instead of a rigid scheme with two opposing sides that are in a fixed relationship, we are now looking at a dynamic process. One could best describe this relationship of incessant mutual influence in the form of a spiral, if only this did not at the same time imply an ideal vanishing point, and thus a forward movement. ‘World’ is equated with ‘theatre,’ which in turn represents a specific, new version of ‘world,’ which itself has to confront a new notion of ‘theatre’ and so on ad infinitum. Black would not be as intriguing, though, had he left it at this comparative theory of metaphor, which — in this case at least — falls short of providing a real solution. His considerably more complex “interaction view of metaphor” 20 might offer a solution more adequate to this spiral movement. In context, Black also talks about “interillumination,” 21 which he takes to mean the following: [W]hen we use a metaphor we have two thoughts of different things active together […]. To speak of the ‘interaction’ of two thoughts ‘active together’ (or, again, of their ‘interillumination’ or ‘co-operation’) is to use a metaphor emphasizing the dynamic aspects of a good reader’s response to a non-trivial metaphor. 22 Looked at it this way, the two subjects — in our case: ‘theatre’ and ‘world’ — are no longer considered fixed and immovable variables, but are instead perceived as two distinct systems of things — as “system[s] of associated commonplaces.” 23 In other words, aspects that are usually associated with one of the two subjects, should, within the frame of the metaphor, be associated with the other subject as well, and vice versa. “The metaphor selects, emphasizes, suppresses, and organizes features of the principal subject by implying statements about it that normally apply to the subsidiary subject,” 24 and the other way around. On the ‘boards that signify the world’ (‘Bretter, die die Welt bedeuten’), as Schiller famously called the theatre stage, many different aspects of this world, some of them worth imitating, others merely imitable, are used in order to present a theatrical version of this world. The social world, on the other hand, is often characterised as, in some regards, resem- 19 Demandt, Metaphern für Geschichte 332. (my translation, T.G.) 20 Black, “Metaphor” 285. 21 Black, “Metaphor” 286. 22 Black, “Metaphor” 285-86. 23 Black, “Metaphor” 287. 24 Black, “Metaphor” 291-92. The World as Stage and Representation 185 bling the theatre — be it with respect to the observation that it, too, functions largely by representation, and that dispositifs and structures can be regarded as arranged and thus ‘staged’; be it the notion that, furthermore, there are certain, fixed codes of conduct, and that these are regulated — rather like the script for a film — by something Butler calls the ‘discourse’, which predetermines each and every one of us in every social interaction. Those partial aspects which correspond to both metaphorical subjects Black aptly calls ‘commonplaces,’ i.e. generally held opinions which need not be correct or even verifiable, and which are of course liable to a certain degree of historical or cultural deviation. Hence, every time the theatrum mundi metaphor is used, this is to be understood as part of such a process of semantic transfer, which one could call, with all due caution, ‘performative.’ Every time ‘world’ is described as ‘theatre,’ it is not only our look at the world that is changed and manipulated, it is also the meaning of ‘theatre’ that is remoulded into something somewhat different and new. To quote Black: The presence of the primary subject incites the hearer to select some of the secondary subject’s properties; and […] invites him to construct a parallel implicationcomplex that can fit the primary subject; and […] reciprocally induces parallel changes in the secondary subject. 25 Black is, in this context, bent on describing a dynamic system; this is why he talks of transformation and change. I would, however, like to complement this notion of dynamicity with the following thesis: The mutual influence exerted by both subjects of metaphor does not necessarily lead to a steady process of change; it can just as easily lead to the coinage of a new, fixed metaphor — and the commonplaces which appear to ‘work well’ and prevail within the frame of metaphorical interplay are thus perpetuated. It is exactly this consolidation of meaning which causes me discomfort, and which shall be traced in the next part of this essay. III Theatre and its Commonplaces At the outset, I tried to provide a tentative delineation of exactly which commonplaces are taken from the realm of ‘theatre’ and applied to our world. Now it is time to consider briefly the kinds of fixation these commonplaces have acquired through metaphoric usage regarding the ‘social world,’ and to contemplate in turn the possible inferences for the ‘social world’ implied by this usage. As a rule, these current commonplaces are stereotyping ideas whose historical point of origin can be located quite clearly, and whose continued influence on the performing arts is beyond doubt. At the same time, it can hardly be said that they still in an emphatic sense represent con- 25 Black, “More about Metaphor” 28. P HILIPP S CHULTE 186 temporary theatre with its multifarious manifestations. A considerable portion of these commonplaces can be traced back to the 18 th and 19 th centuries and to Europe, exclusively. This means that they accrue from a historical situation in which representational theatre was not only well on its way to complete illusionistic dominance, but also, ultimately, led to the rise of a perspective which further and further marginalised alternative ways of thinking about and staging something which could be called ‘theatre.’ These alternative approaches were obliterated to an increasing degree, and sometimes fell into complete oblivion. As the middle classes were growing stronger throughout the 18 th century, a new kind of theatre gained a foothold in Germany, and in Europe in general. Its declared goal was to present to the audience a credible and convincing illusion of reality. By trying to suppress all tokens of the fictionality of what was happening onstage, the concept of the Fourth Wall created a new fictional space apart from the audience. In this space was then to be presented an illusion as coherent and consistent as possible. This aspect of the proscenium-type stage plays an important role: The Fourth Wall separates the fictional events on stage from the real world of the audience, just as if the action were taking place in another world completely. Another metaphor, which itself continues to be used often in connexion with the theatre, comes into play here: that of the mirror. These intensified efforts to create a credible theatrical fiction went hand in hand with the supposition of a certain fixed inner essence of man, as can be first observed explicitly in the 18 th century bourgeois theatre of illusion. This type of Enlightenment theatre, along with its naturalistic descendants, can well be considered as a downright stronghold of a ‘fiction of essence.’ The theatrical system of representation characteristic of these genres made intensive use of various means of fictionalisation, in order to emulate onstage, generally speaking, a plausible succession of events supposed to be understood as a faithful reproduction of reality. In particular, it conveyed an image of man peculiar to the Enlightenment, a conception according to which the identity of man emanated from an inner essence which could be appropriately displayed through physical actions. Just as, according to the opinion of the age, a mimetic reproduction of reality by the theatre was within the realm of possibility, so the fixed inner essence of man, too, was thought to be representable by means of the proper outward signs. The bourgeois theatre of illusion, which experienced a ‘second raising’ with the rise of 20 th century naturalism, has, to this day, been formative in dramatic art — one need only think of the Anglo-American notion of the ‘well-made play.’ In fact, this kind of dramatics has had such a strong influence upon our current conception of ‘theatre’ that a mere mention of the term more often than not calls to mind the classic picture-frame stage all’italienne with its strict segregation between auditorium and stage, and a psychological conception The World as Stage and Representation 187 of ‘role.’ The latter assumes that an actor plays a role within a clearly defined stage area. The actor, it is furthermore supposed, is especially good at this whenever the impersonation is particularly credible; if the audience does not buy into his illusion, he is not doing a good job. Even mainstream cinema has largely made this notion its own. We do not think, at least not right away, of the numerous non-European traditions of theatre such as, for instance, the extremely elaborate and formalistic Asian styles of acting seen in Beijing opera and Bunraku; we do not think of the pre-illusionistic forms of theatre thought to have been in existence during ancient and mediaeval times; we do not think of the historical avant-gardes around 1900, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, Brecht’s Epic Theatre or the Performance Art movement emerging in the 1960s. In other words, the commonplaces about ‘Theatre with a capital T’ are much more unanimous, uniform, and repetitive than all the manifold modes of acting which today are subsumed under the same heading of ‘theatre’ might lead one to believe — but that is just the way it is with commonplaces. ‘Theatre,’ today, does not depend on the said psychological impersonation to the degree it used to: Actors often pretend not to act at all in an emphatic sense, but rather make believe it is themselves they present onstage, acting the way they act in everyday life; hence modern theatre’s penchant for employing amateurs. But as much as we are aware of this development, as much as we know that the theatrical frame today is constantly challenged — by a theatre which has long abolished the curtain, integrates the audience, or takes place in unusual locations —, as much as we are conscious of all this: The phrase ‘All the world’s a stage’ still takes us right back to the world of ideas of the 19 th century. IV The Misleading Nature of the Theatrum Mundi Metaphor But why should this be a problem? Whence the uneasy feeling mentioned above? As has been suggested, it is most likely due to the fiction of essence which is usually associated with the concept of theatre just described. ‘Theatre,’ in this context, is thought to be a second-order illusion, imitating something ‘real’ — or, at any rate, something more real than its reproduction. Implicitly, at least, it refers back to an antecedent entity for which an adequate representation can be found. This, of course, is to be taken in a thoroughly baroque, Calderónian sense: The world is a theatrical performance only in as much as truth and something like substantiality can exclusively be attained in an eternal afterlife. After the ‘performance’ has ended, every ‘actor’ is rewarded or punished according to whether or not he has satisfactorily discharged his role, and those successful are granted entry to an authentic afterlife. In my estimation, this is precisely the problem of the theatrum mundi P HILIPP S CHULTE 188 metaphor: It tries to fake authenticity and substance where we do not need it — at least not for the time being. This does not mean that the use theorists such as Butler or Goffman have made of the concept was naïve. After all, it was Butler’s comments which provided us with an increasingly antisubstantialist perspective of the world in the first place, and Goffman, too, voices misgivings as to the metaphorical nature of his own model. At the end of his discussion, he points out that the conceptual analogy between ‘theatre’ and ‘world’ introduced by him may only be understood as a “rhetorical manoeuvre.” Goffman admits that theatre is solely about ‘artificial illusion,’ while everyday life deals with actual, real things: The claim that all the world’s a stage is sufficiently commonplace for readers to be familiar with its limitations and tolerant of its presentation, knowing that at any time they will easily be able to demonstrate to themselves that it is not to be taken too seriously. An action staged in a theater is a relatively contrived illusion and an admitted one; unlike ordinary life, nothing real or actual can happen to the performed characters — although at another level of course something real and actual can happen to the reputation of the performers qua professionals whose everyday job is to put on theatrical performances. 26 And, a little later on, he adds: A character staged in a theatre is not in some ways real, nor does it have the same kind of real consequences as does the thoroughly contrived character performed by a confidence man; but successful staging of either of these types of fake figures involves use of real techniques — the same techniques by which everyday persons sustain their real social situations. 27 When scrutinising his model, Goffman, therefore, can only find one shortcoming, of all things: that it makes a distinction between illusion and reality. For Goffman, the theatrical act is merely and exclusively fictitious; hence, it cannot ‘infiltrate everyday life.’ As a consequence, he seems to ignore the current tendencies in dramatic art which have already been mentioned: tendencies to break the bounds of the imaginary in order to very well come across as a part of so-called reality. Considering when his book was written, of course, it is not very surprising that Goffman should have been ‘oblivious’ of these developments. Contentious as Goffman’s theatrum mundi metaphor and similar analogies are, then, they can hardly be reconciled with the trajectory of postmodern theatre. Caution is due in the reception of these and similar texts: It is crucial not to fall for the cryptosubstantialism which can, as discussed above, be ascribed to the theatrum mundi metaphor. Maybe, or rather, probably, the current scholarly concepts of, and discussions about, the more abstract notions of theatralicity and spectacularity could serve to make 26 Goffman 254. 27 Goffman 254-55. The World as Stage and Representation 189 the said relationship between world and theatre more flexible, as I am advocating. Conceivably, for an adequate description of this relationship we might even employ the term ‘performativity,’ which has mainly been debated in the German-speaking world, and is often used in a misleading manner. To elaborate on the lively and intensive debates about the concept would be to go beyond the scope of this essay. Therefore, without wanting to focus on the complex and inconsistent uses of that term, ‘performativity,’ we shall examine something more specific. When one looks at the discussions about ‘performativity,’ there is one recurring aspect which may very well contribute to an improved understanding of the dynamic between ‘theatre’ and ‘world’: It is the notion of abundance, which can already be found in the writings of speech-act theorist John Austin, and, more precisely, in his treatment of what he calls ‘perlocutionary acts.’ 28 It does, however, also play a role in the works of Derrida 29 (as ‘event’), Butler 30 (as ‘subversive element’), and not least in those of German theatre scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte, who manages to give a very straightforward description by differentiating between the performative and referential elements of, for example, a theatre performance: While the referential function focuses on the theatrical depiction of characters, actions, relationships, situations and so forth, the performative function concentrates on the carrying out of actions by the actors (or, sometimes, the audience) as well as on the immediate effect of these actions. 31 28 Austin calls that speech act ‘perlocutionary’ which, by virtue of its performance, manages to bring about certain consequences for reality, namely that it causes reality to be either reshaped or constituted in the first place. Assuming that is the case, speech act and effect do no longer coincide; a perlocutionary act is carried out by way of its consequences. According to Butler, it is precisely this asynchronous nature of the consequences of such a speech act which causes a considerable lack of clarity and thus of controllability in its effects. Moreover, she holds said uncontrollability, which is usually considered as failure, to be potentially liberating: It can free us, Butler says, from the obligation of following in all details a rigid discursive standard. Rather, we are free not to comply fully with that standard, but, on the contrary, challenge it and, ultimately, — if other requirements are met — shift it. See John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (London et al.: Oxford UP, 1971), as well as Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, (New York et al.: Routledge, 1997). 29 See e.g. Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” Limited Inc., ed. Jacques Derrida (1988; Evanston, IL.: Northwestern UP, 1993), 1-23. 30 See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York et al.: Routledge, 1990); Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York et al.: Routledge, 1993). 31 Erika Fischer-Lichte, “Grenzgänge und Tauschhandel: Auf dem Wege zu einer performativen Kultur,” Theater seit den 60er Jahren: Grenzgänge der Neo-Avantgarde, ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte, et al. (Tübingen/ Basel: A. Francke Verlag, 1998), 2-3 (Own translation, emphases added, T.G.). P HILIPP S CHULTE 190 Accordingly, the referential parts of a theatrical performance are those which represent, which stand for something else, which serve as a symbol — or metaphor — of the world, or rather, something within it. The performative, however, is that which overshoots this claim to symbolic relevance, for the two cannot merge completely. It is that which comes to pass during a process of action — and this can be any symbolising, met aphorising process —, that which somehow transcends the referential, that is to say the comparison which had possibly been intended. The performative produces a surplus in meaning which precisely does not make use of the referential mode to indicate something outside of the theatre. In other words, it does not serve as a symbol for anything else: In the act of carrying out itself, it self-referentially signifies nothing but this its own execution. Thus, inevitably, the performative influences the world surrounding it. It is exactly this surplus in meaning which can be considered the engine of the dynamic described. Indeed, there is a relationship between theatre and world. This relationship, however, is neither purely metaphorical, nor purely mimetic, as every depiction in turn alters that which is being depicted; every image influences reality; every performance modifies the world, or rather — let us stay modest — a small fraction of it. Nonetheless, a static interpretation of the theatrum mundi metaphor, one that regards both of its poles as immutably fixed, should be banished from scientific discourse. Not least it is the consideration of Goffman’s abovequoted remarks which clarifies why this is so: After all, a mere comparison of theatre and world is bound to impair the relevance and the political potential of theatre, neither of which are usually very high to begin with. Certainly, theatre, sometimes, is like our world, but be that as it may — it first and foremost is to be considered part of our world, which means that it is capable of actively influencing the same. The notion of a disconnectedness of ‘world’ and ‘theatre’ as it is implied in the theatrum mundi metaphor quite invalidates this possibility. Theatre and performance art do not so much describe our world the way it is, as at times depict it the way it should (or should not) be — if, that is, they do not altogether refuse the obligation to function as a mimetic mirror for that social world which they surround, whose constituent part they are, and in which they can only intervene by clearly asserting this their constitutive status. No question: The theatre still plays a privileged role in all this, there still exists the contract between the performer and his audience that whatever is presented is institutionally framed, even though this contract is sometimes outside of the performer’s consciousness, as Helga Finter argues in her essay The World as Stage and Representation 191 “Disclosure(s) of Re-Presentation: Performance hic et nunc? “ 32 But if one states that theatre only functions as a model for the world, as Goffman describes it, than one simply underestimates the attempt of so many artists since the beginning of the 20 th century: to put this frame into question again and again. 32 Finter, Helga, ”Disclosure(s) of Re-Presentation: Performance hic et nunc? ,“ Aesthetics and Contemporary Discourse: REAL - Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 10, ed. Herbert Grabes (Tübingen: Narr, 1994) 153-67. P HILIPP S CHULTE 192 Works Cited Austin, John L. How To Do Things With Words. 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