Reinforcing and destabilizing myths of origin: Storytelling and biopolitical communities in contemporary theater in French
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation examines representations of community in contemporary theater in French through the theoretical lens of biopolitics and analyses of the ways in which stories are told. In close readings of major theatrical works in French after 1968, I reveal how two different notions of community have been represented on stage both in France and abroad. In particular, I read plays by Aimé Césaire, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Marie NDiaye, and Wajdi Mouawad against the French post/neocolonial context of the latter half of the twentieth century as well as the international migration crisis of the early twenty-first century. While the plays in my corpus have been scrutinized by critics as either literary texts or performances, they have not yet been examined in a single study on both text and performance through the critical lens of biopolitics and myths of origin. More specifically, this study demonstrates how political communities in contemporary theater in French are formed through the origin stories that the protagonists tell and retell. An analysis of the biopolitical discourse employed in these stories reveals that two distinct conceptions of community, developed and nuanced further in this dissertation through Roberto Esposito’s conceptions of immunitas and communitas, are represented in the various plays. While Bernard-Marie Koltès and Marie NDiaye depict community as a pessimistic, bordered immunitas, Aimé Césaire and Wajdi Mouawad represent connections between characters through the more fluid and borderless notion of communitas. In chapter one, I argue that the postcolonial subjects represented in Aimé Césaire’s theater stand their ground to preserve their rich cultures while also bringing together stories from disparate time periods and cultures in an effort to build new multicultural and multi-origin communities. Chapter two analyzes the aesthetic qualities of Bernard-Marie Koltès’s neocolonial spaces to show how their solitary nature encourages the protagonis…
abstract: This dissertation examines representations of community in contemporary theater in French through the theoretical lens of biopolitics and analyses of the ways in which stories are told. In close readings of major theatrical works in French after 1968, I reveal how two different notions of community have been represented on stage both in France and abroad. In particular, I read plays by Aimé Césaire, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Marie NDiaye, and Wajdi Mouawad against the French post/neocolonial context of the latter half of the twentieth century as well as the international migration crisis of the early twenty-first century. While the plays in my corpus have been scrutinized by critics as either literary texts or performances, they have not yet been examined in a single study on both text and performance through the critical lens of biopolitics and myths of origin. More specifically, this study demonstrates how political communities in contemporary theater in French are formed through the origin stories that the protagonists tell and retell. An analysis of the biopolitical discourse employed in these stories reveals that two distinct conceptions of community, developed and nuanced further in this dissertation through Roberto Esposito’s conceptions of immunitas and communitas, are represented in the various plays. While Bernard-Marie Koltès and Marie NDiaye depict community as a pessimistic, bordered immunitas, Aimé Césaire and Wajdi Mouawad represent connections between characters through the more fluid and borderless notion of communitas. In chapter one, I argue that the postcolonial subjects represented in Aimé Césaire’s theater stand their ground to preserve their rich cultures while also bringing together stories from disparate time periods and cultures in an effort to build new multicultural and multi-origin communities. Chapter two analyzes the aesthetic qualities of Bernard-Marie Koltès’s neocolonial spaces to show how their solitary nature encourages the protagonis…
author: Strole, Nicholas A.
language: en
keywords: French Literature, Francophone Literature, Theater, French Theater, Francophone Theater, Contemporary Theater, Performance Studies, Adaptation, Biopolitics, Postcolonial, Migration, Community, Myth, Storytelling, Origin, Esposito, Levi-Strauss, Koltes, NDiaye, Mouawad
date published: 2020-10-07T22:07:08Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:48Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/108552