Kapitalistischer Realismus: Capitalism, Art and Subjectivity in Botho Strauß's "Trilogie des Wiedersehens"

Alessandra Pennesi

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Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Literature - Basics, grade: 1, National University of Ireland, Galway, language: ...

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Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Literature - Basics, grade: 1, National University of Ireland, Galway, language: English, abstract: "The Trilogie des Wiedersehens" is surely a controversial play: there is no real plot but just a series of characters brought together into the space of an art exhibition. The audience is put in a critical position as they are asked to observe the attitude of the characters towards the works of art on stage as well as to analyze their own attitude towards the play. Taking the title given to the exhibition as a starting point, the main question I want to address is how the Trilogie depicts the effects of capitalism on the way art is experienced by the individual and how the function of the artist has changed with the emergence of a profit-centered society. Confronting the Trilogie with Steiner's text Real Presences, I will see how the capitalistic process of commodification of reality can be understood in terms of the logic of the secondary, which aims at hampering the directness of art and at stifling its communicative power. In the light of these considerations I will also try to delineate the two opposite options that the play suggests about the development of art in a capitalistic society: either it succumbs to being objectified and turned into intellectual merchandise, or it becomes a means through which the self can transcend his individuality and thus reach a spiritual and moral liberation. Eventually, taking into account Theodor Adorno's theories about cultural industry, I will try to analyze how some characters in the play seem to warn against the danger, in a society dominated by mechanized production, for the subject to be alienated from their own subjectivity.