The Dramaturgy of Thought: Jean-Luc Nancy's Theatrical Experiments

This article begins by examining Jean-Luc Nancy's experiments with theatrical form across a number of experimental essays and performance texts composed in the 1970s and 1980s published in Expectation and Multiple Arts: Muses II, considering these alongside lesser-known, uncollected writing available elsewhere. Where the composition of these coincides with an overlooked period of practical involvement in the theatre, this article demonstrates how theatrical practices are carried over into the text of philosophy and reflects on what their philosophical affordance(s) might, there, be. Drawing texts oftentimes bracketed off as experiments in philosophical presentation into much closer relation with Nancy's philosophical corpus proper — and contesting this very distinction — this article shows how these rarely discussed texts theatricalize the operations of philosophical thought and, in turn, how philosophical thinking itself comes to rely on theatrical technologies and dramaturgical techniques for its conduct and actualization. Subsequently widening its scope, it shows how a philosophical theatricalism subsists in Nancy's later writing to make some broader speculations as to the theatrical and dramaturgical work of his thought.