Biopolitics, Materiality and Meaning in Modern European Drama

Hedwig (Hedy) Fraunhofer is Professor of French and German in the Department of World Languages & Cultures at Georgia College (U.S.). Working at the intersection of Comparative Literature, Drama and Theatre Studies, and Philosophy, she has published on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, poststructuralism, new materialist philosophy, European drama, and the novelist Daniel Kehlmann.

• Introduction: Anxious FleshPart I: Copenhagen and Paris, ca. 1889: Economies of Excess1. Posthumanism and Gender, or The Fall Back into Nature2. Death and Community, or Metaphors and MaterialityPart II: Munich and Paris, 1918 to 1943: Encounters with Fascism3. Bare Life, or Becoming-Animal4. Flies vs. the Fetishisation of Consciousness5. Artaud and the Plague: A Posthumanist Theatre?6. Where Does the Body End? Artaud’s MaterialSymbolic TheatreConclusionBibliography

Biopolitics, Materiality and Meaning constitutes a literary-critical breath of fresh air, insofar as it takes contemporary biopolitics - with its primary emphasis on the post-human emergence of new materialist force - onto the terrain of modernist drama, putting the performativity of matter literally center stage.