Drucksache was a series Heiner Müller used to publish when he was director of the Berliner Ensemble Theater. In issue number 1 of a renewed Drucksache project (1999), edited by guest editors, Toni Negri writes about Müller: about reading Müller along with Felix Guattari, who had less German than Negri; about an unpublished text Müller dedicated to Guattari, Mommsens Block; and about the difference between Brecht's and Müller's didacticism: "Brecht scolded science; Müller tortured the body."
Defending Müller against certain of his admirers, Negri writes:
"In the paradise of penitents that is Italy today, you can actually hear people excited about [Müller's] raw and wild description of reality -- as if it could cement cynicism into politics; the penitents of socialism are masters of cynicism. They say, 'In the night all cats are gray -- that's what Heiner Müller teaches.' Nonsense. Müller's cats catch their mice, they hunt them, play with them, and then devour them. Not all didacticism is the same: Brecht scolds science, Müller tortures the body. It's the unavoidable consequence of a [theater of] didactic alienation confronted by a society in which capital traumatizes bodies. To accuse Müller of cynicism is like blaming Velazquez for the ugliness of the Habsburgs."
2 comments:
Why did you delete your posts on aesthetics? I thought that was great. Maybe you are publishing it?
Thanks; that's very kind of you. You mean the post about creative writing programs? I dunno; it was snarky and just kind of cheap. The interesting points about aesthetics are all from Steve Shaviro's web site and also from Samuel Delaney's writing about writing (that's where I got the stuff about writing as submitting).
So but anyway, thanks. Maybe I'll put it back again.
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