Politics as theatre: an alternative view of the rationalities of power.

And what is the aim of that stately and marvelous creature, tragic drama? Is it her endeavor and ambition, in your opinion, merely to gratify the spectators; or, if there be anything pleasant and charming, but evil, to struggle against uttering it, but to declaim and sing anything that is unwelcome but beneficial, whether they like it or not? Life is not determined by consciousness but consciousness by life. Locating the subject Plato warned against the beguiling qualities of drama. If he was right then Marx was at least half wrong. Consciousness may be determined by life, but life is also determined by consciousness. This essay, a preliminary effort to analyze politics as theatre, emphasizes the second part of Marx's statement. The concern here is with the way theatrical aspects of politics shape consciousness. That is, how they become in effect lifelike, if not as pure representation then something else – display, mystique, mimetics, code, metaphor, symbolic condensation, manipulation – to suggest only a few of the attributes of all the world as a stage. This suggests a twofold purpose: to identify and examine significant aspects of the more general relationship between political discourse and political power, something not normally much dealt with within the framework of conventional political analysis. By the same token, we want to avoid some of the confusion associated with certain very commonly used concepts like political culture and ideology that, undeniably useful in the past, now have too many meanings (see, for example, Eagleton 1991). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]