The political art of Greek tragedy

1994 ◽  
Vol 31 (10) ◽  
pp. 31-5280-31-5280
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Art

Classical Presences and ‘Post Dramatic’ Performances

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Israeli Society ◽  
The Political

This chapter looks at theatrical productions created in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, which sought to convey the shock that permeated Israeli society as a result, and to provide theatrical responses to help the grieving community come to terms with his death. The chapter analyses the theatrical oeuvre of four post dramatic theatre creators—Ruth Kanner, Ilan Ronen, Rina Yerushalmi, and Hanan Snir—who saw Greek classical tragedy as a vast artistic arena where the political, the humanistic, and the artistic-performative merge, encompassing present and past, myth and history. Moreover, classical Greek tragedy allowed them to project their most disturbing concerns about the Israeli present and future by tearing apart the well-known texts, deconstructing their dramatic templates, and editing, adapting, revising, and redesigning their content in the decades after Rabin’s assassination, when hope gave way to despair.

How to Distinguish Aristotle's Virtues

Phronesis ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marguerite Deslauriers
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Art ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis paper considers the distinctions Aristotle draws (1) between the intellectual virtue of phronêsis and the moral virtues and (2) among the moral virtues, in light of his commitment to the reciprocity of the virtues. I argue that Aristotle takes the intellectual virtues to be numerically distinct hexeis from the moral virtues. By contrast, I argue, he treats the moral virtues as numerically one hexis, although he allows that they are many hexeis 'in being'. The paper has three parts. In the first, I set out Aristotle's account of the structure of the faculties of the soul, and determine that desire is a distinct faculty. The rationality of a desire is not then a question of whether or not the faculty that produces that desire is rational, but rather a question of whether or not the object of the desire is good. In the second section I show that the reciprocity of phronêsis and the moral virtues requires this structure of the faculties. In the third section I show that the way in which Aristotle distinguishes the faculties requires that we individuate moral virtues according to the objects of the desires that enter into a given virtue, and with reference to the circumstances in which these desires are generated. I then explore what it might mean for the moral virtues to be different in being but not in number, given the way in which the moral virtues are individuated. I argue that Aristotle takes phronêsis and the political art to be a numerical unity in a particular way, and that he suggests that the moral virtues are, by analogy, the same kind of unity.

scholarly journals Colour me Revolutionary

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 91-113
Author(s):  
Avital Zuk Avina
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Political Art ◽  
Chinese Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
Propaganda Posters ◽  
Visual Colour

Colour in China has a long history of artistic, symbolic, religious, and mythological use. This paper takes the idea of colour as a meaningful element within Chinese society and introduces the use of visual colour grammar as a new way to identify and breakdown the use of colour within political art and propaganda posters. The use of colour has been adapted by visual linguists into its own unique visual grammar component, relaying much more information than just a symbolic transfer from sign to signifier. Meaning within political posters can be derived from regularities in use, presentation, and conventional meanings. Colour as a visual grammar component is expressed through the three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. This paper explores how the Chinese views on colour interconnects with the metafunctions of colour to look at the political posters of the PRC. I will discuss both the approach to art as a text that can be ‘read’ through visual grammar and present colour in the Chinese context as more than a symbol making device but as a meaning component in and of itself. 

Larraín’s Ambivalence

2018 ◽  
pp. 42-60
Author(s):  
James Harvey
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Art ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
Latent Potential ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship

This chapter brings together the political aesthetic writings discussed thus far with works on historiography and ethics in Rancière’s work, in order to understand how historical representation contains its own latent potential for politics. Focusing on No (2012), the film’s ambivalent relationship to the effects of atrocity is, I argue, representative of what Rancière describe as an essential ambivalence at the heart of political resistance: ‘to resist is to adopt the posture of someone who stands opposed to the order of things, but simultaneously avoids the risk involved with trying to overturn that order’ (Rancière, 2010: 169). No offers a deeper understanding of the forms and concerns of contemporary political art cinema through its rejection of partisan narratives, its ironic employment of classical conventions (like stardom and linearity) and its artful use of obsolete technologies.

Civic ideology and the problem of difference: the politics of Aeschylean tragedy, once again

2000 ◽  
Vol 120 ◽  
pp. 34-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Goldhill
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Aggressive Form ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
History And Theory

There have been few issues in the contemporary analysis of Greek tragedy as hotly debated as what I shall call ‘civic ideology and the problem of difference’. By this I mean a nexus of interrelated questions concerning the political import of tragedy both for the fifth-century Athenians and for subsequent generations: how does the festival of the Great Dionysia—its rituals and dramatic performances—relate to the dominant ideological structures of democracy? How should critical or contestatory discourse be located within the dramatic festival and within the polis? How should the texts of tragedy be related to the society in which they were produced—and to the societies in which they are still being read and performed? The problem is not merely essential to our understanding of the genre of tragedy, but is also intimately connected to the history and theory of democracy and its discontents. To what degree can democracy respond to criticism and what space can it allow, in theory and in practice, for alternative viewpoints or opposition? In its most aggressive form, such questioning of the exclusions and repressions of democracy is sometimes articulated as a challenge as to whether the costs of (ancient) democracy outweigh its benefits.

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