CULTURE OF THE SPECTACLE AND THE SOCIETY OF THE OPPRESSED

Text topic: Cultures of Rhythms and Spectacle

Text author: Влатко Илић

This text re-questions possible effects of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed within the context of the disciplinary legacy and the contemporary conditions of cultural production. Starting from the assumption that this practice has not been fully de-coded, that is, included into the body of the discipline, but that there are certain points of its (soft) resistance to the mechanisms of total translation immanent to the operative logic of culture of the spectacle, my attempt is to direct the experiences and the thought of the Theatre of the Oppressed towards the establishment of a platform that would enable development of radical strategies of resistance, within the dominant matrix of generating new-media reality. Thus, the critical potential of the Theatre of the Oppressed is, with its simultaneous activity within more then one register, left without a possibility of their synthesis or reduction. Through a constant movement while gazed at, the critical potential is taking shape of a fictional presumption, that is the jump of faith towards im/possible society of the equal.