Foucault’s theatres

Tony Fisher is Reader in Theatre and Philosophy and Associate Director of Research at the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama, University of LondonKélina Gotman is Senior Reader in Theatre and Performance Studies at King's College London and Hölderlin Guest Professor in Comparative Dramaturgy at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt

• Introduction: theatre, performance, Foucault – Tony Fisher and Kélina Gotman1 Foucault’s philosophical theatres – Mark D. Jordan2 The dramas of knowledge: Foucault’s genealogical theatre of truth – Aline Wiame3 Foucault live! 'A Voice That Still Eludes the Tomb of the Text…' – Magnolia Pauker4 Foucault, Oedipus, Négritude – Kélina Gotman5 Foucault’s critical dramaturgies – Mark Robson6 Heterotopia and the mapping of unreal spaces on stage – Joanne Tompkins7 Foucault and Shakespeare: the theatre of madness – Stuart Elden8 Philosophical phantasms: ‘the Platonic differential’ and ‘Zarathustra’s laughter’ – Mischa Twitchin9 Cage and Foucault: musical timekeeping and the security state – Steve Potter10 Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: reassessed – Tracey Nicholls11 Sightlines: Foucault and Naturalist theatre – Dan Rebellato12 Theatre of poverty: popular illegalism on the nineteenth century stage – Tony Fisher13 The philosophical scene: Foucault interviewed by Moriaki Watanabe – translated by Robert Bononno14 After words, afterwards: teaching Foucault – Ann PellegriniIndex

This book comes at a time when Foucault’s concerns with power, truth and knowledge could not be more pressing. So the focus here is on Foucault as a theatrical thinker. Taking the philosopher ‘at his word’, essays deploy the tropes and optics of theatre to examine Foucault’s own methods and the practices of governance and workings of power he made it his life’s work to engage with. Demonstrating different ways of responding to the question that underpinned so much of Foucault’s project: ‘What are the practices that permit the daily work of desubjugation?’ the possibilities voiced here could not be more pertinent; a fortification against the perils of the day.Jane Rendell, Professor of Critical Spatial Practice, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.