Artaud and the Gnostic Drama
by Jane Goodall
In Artaud and the Gnostic Drama, Jane Goodall offers a reappraisal of the importance of Antonin Artaud (1896–1948), mythologised as an icon of failure and madness, and examines the intricate parallels between his heretical dramaturgy and the heresies of ancient Gnosticism. The book situates Artaud as the most extravagant of heretics, in company with the Gnostics whose speculations served to define heresy in the beginnings of the Christian tradition. Artaud subscribed to the Gnostic idea that the sensible world was created by a demiurge who was ‘imperfect, possibly evil and depraved.’ His cosmology is inherently dramatic, setting creature against creator, force against form, matter against spirit, pious knowledge against heretical gnosis. Jane Goodall argues that major post-structuralist critics such as Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault, who have enlisted Artaud in their own anti-orthodoxies, have refused to pay attention to the terms of his own heresy. In this refusal, they display an anxiety towards the gnostic drama and its heresies, which mount an assault that may be more powerful than their own upon the founding tenets of western thought.
About the Scarlet Imprint Edition
First published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford in 1994; the text has been lightly revised for this second edition, and includes reproductions of 14 of Artaud’s drawings.
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Table of Contents
A Note on Citations
Introduction
The Gnostic Drama
I The Mise-en-scène
II The Point of Destruction
III The Alien Protagonist
IV The Theatre of Cruelty
V Voyaging into Gnosis
VI Houses of Correction
VII To Have Done ...
Bibliography
Index
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14 colour reproductions of Antonin Artaud’s drawings / 2 black & white portraits
Momo Hardcover Edition - Limited to 749 copies
272 pages. Bound in natural linen cloth stamped in black, textured black endpapers, and printed dust jacket.
Paperback Edition
272 pages. Sewn paperback, text printed on 120 gsm paper and images on 150 gsm paper.
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“In her illuminating reading of Artaud, Artaud and the Gnostic Drama, Jane Goodall makes a convincing case for reading Artaud as both a continuation of Nietzsche and as a revival of the Gnostic legacy. She ends her reading by stating that, ‘If Nietzsche’s philosophy has led the way in the modern assault on the onto-theological foundations of Western humanism, Artaud’s dramaturgy re-echoes the terms and images of an older and absolute assault’. This reading places the work of Artaud within a genealogy of assaults against Western humanism that have as their starting point and as their inspiration the early Christian blasphemous tradition of Gnosticism.”
University of Edinburgh Research Explorer
“This volume will probably be used as the most up-to-date and thorough critical analysis on Artaud in the English language. The specialists will gain great insight from it. The non-specialists will be more tested by it, especially if they are not familiar with Artaud's texts and have no knowledge of French thought or Post-Structuralist theories. Yet this volume is worth delving into for any interested reader. It is a must for any philosopher, French teacher, theater person, or reader who has an interest in occult traditions or esoteric literatures. It is extremely informative for the double movement of fascination and mistrust of Artaud for Gnostic and Cathar theories… Will the volume completely dispel the romantic myth created by the imagination which has made Artaud the epitome of the authentic madman? No. Artaud may be considered a seer, and one can learn a great deal from his writings. But "true" madness, constantly commenting on itself with its tyrannical obsessions, transgressions, and dualities, contests humanity in its entirety. And the "truly" sane, even if none of us qualify and the definition of sanity remains forever elusive or non-existent, will not follow Artaud's thinking all the way… [Goodall] must be praised for this intellectual presentation of high caliber on a complex writer, who is pictured not as a total failure in life and in his ecriture, but as the symbol of a dynamic being who refuses to lose. Artaud's very struggle with the "other" in himself and in language keeps him for ever young and makes him a perfect example of modernity.”
Claudine G. Fisher, Portland State University
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About the Author
Jane Goodall is an Emeritus Professor with the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. Artaud and the Gnostic Drama (originally published in 1994) was her first book. Subsequent works include Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin (Routledge 2002), Stage Presence (Routledge 2007), Trauma and Public Memory, co-edited with Chris Lee (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) and The Politics of the Common Good (NewSouth, 2019). She is also the author of three detective novels, The Walker (2004) The Visitor (2006) and The Calling (2007) published by Hachette Australia.