Acoustic Mimesis: Ethical Cadence and Sonic Violence in Tambours Sur La Digue

Abstract

Models of Western intercultural theatre have often been subjected to the totalising tendencies of Western philosophy since Western theatre privileges a logocentrism — speech over writing — that regards nature and reality in so far only as it is present. Such an ontology renders any possibility for understanding the non-present/absent as ‘meaningful’ since ontology presupposes an ideal of ‘presence’ and is a paradigm of logic that examines what is ‘there’ and what ‘is’, and how this ‘is-ness’ relates to each other. In many ways, this ontology built on a presumption of presence always privileges a single, fixed viewpoint from which meanings of terms and discourses are anchored. Ontology presupposes a ‘being-ness’ of things and phenomena; logocentrism encourages an understanding of discourses based on the metaphysics of presence where presence is privileged over absence, and meaning favoured over indeterminacy. Interculturalism from the Euro-American axis, rooted in logocentrism, has often been a theatrical practice located in an ontology and presence which inevitably constructs a universalistic Weltanschauung and a paradigm that eradicates difference and indeterminacy; the ‘Other’ is always (pre)viewed through the prism of that which is the same. The quest for deep structures and universal values across performance types and genres, seen in the beliefs of Schechner and Turner, and the practices of Brook and Mnouchkine, exemplifies this ontology of totality.