Aesthetic Politics: The Tendency of Anti-Visual Rationality and its Political Potential in Jean Genet's The Balcony

Abstract

Greek philosophy emphasizes an eternal present, where the immediacy of vision fixes fleeting appearances into a static essence of existence. Particularly during the Renaissance, the invention of perspective placed the eye focused on the vanishing point at the center of absolute viewing, initiating the process of privileging modern vision. Descartes posited that seeing is knowing, asserting that the fixed images observed visually represent the inherent essence of reality, leading to a dualistic epistemology. Perspective art has always dominated the theater, positing that by creating illusion, inactive vision allows audiences shrouded in darkness to grasp the nature of things directly through their eyes, forming a rational consensus that reinforces identification with political ideology. The politics of Genet’s theater is aesthetic politics, emphasizing the dual potential through sensory redistribution. However, in studies of Genet's The Balcony, prioritizing visibility has become a dominant strategy, leading to a representation of politics in the theater as something recognizable and solvable, establishing a hierarchy in which theater subordinates itself to political functions. This study argues that in The Balcony, Genet reconfigures the tradition of perspective in theater through a Baroque visual arrangement, showcasing a tendency to degrade visual rationality while enhancing visual perception through dazzling effects. Drawing on Deleuze’s and Benjamin’s theories of the Baroque, combined with Rancière’s theory of aesthetic politics, this study will utilize textual data and analysis to discuss how Genet’s theater in The Balcony redistributes the visual regime of the stage, disrupting the fixed relationship between things and meanings within the power dynamics of the visible and the invisible, and achieving a democratic visual construction of theater amidst uncertainty. The discussion will focus on the visual configurations of perspective and allegory, offering new possibilities for realizing aesthetic politics in Genet's theater.