Epic Theatre Reexamined from the Viewpoint of Cognitive Science

인지과학의 관점에서 본 서사극 이론

Reexamining Brecht's theoretical hypotheses in terms of cognitive science, this essay arrived at several temporary interpretations. Cognitive science implies that empathy can precede the rational understanding in Verfremdungseffekt. The spectator tends to simulate the unfamiliar incident and character and feels the consequential embodied emotion that leads to the cognitive understanding. The similar situation can be found in social gestus. According to cognitive science, gesture(social gestus) is simulated in the mirror-neuron of spectator, arousing consequently the embodied emotion that triggers the succeeding understanding. The spectator apts to experience and feel physically the moving gesture before decoding it as a social signification. Brecht's intention that attempts to reveal the duality of actor and character by eliminating the fourth wall is negated by cognitive science. According to the theory of conceptual blending, the spectator under the eliminated fourth wall mixes actor and character, and simulates this blending image so that he experiences it imaginatively. As such, another kind of illusion can be formed when a fourth wall is collapsed. Meanwhile, the critical thinking of spectator Brecht wanted can be hard to occur during the performance. It is necessary for the spectator to recollect the bygone dialogue and action in terms of social context as if he presses the pause, stopping the playback while watching a play in video. In this respect the social meaning Brecht intended can be achieved more effectively by the stop motion like tableau. It would not only give the time for the spectator to consider the implied social signification, but also make him possible to decode a semiotic meaning as if interpreting a still picture. Or it can be delivered by the dialogue that expresses the playwright's critical judgement. In this case, the subject of critical thinking is not the spectator but the author. The alternative explanation that the cognitive science suggests illuminates theoretically the reasons why Brecht's theory fails to be realized in practice. In a sense, Brecht's theory is nothing but a theoretical hypothesis. It takes the premise that the emotion hinders the rational thinking, understanding emotion and reason oppositively like Plato. This assumption is negated easily by the recent cognitive science that sees the reason as a by-product of physical experience including emotion. The rational understanding, in this sense, begins from the embodied emotion. As such the cognitive science denies the dichotomy of emotion and reason that Brecht adopted. The theoretical hypothesis of cognitive science makes us recognize again the importance of bodily experience in theatre. In theatre the spectator tends to experience physically before decoding the intellectual meaning. The spectator Brecht wanted, therefore, is far from the reality. The spectator usually experiences and reacts physically before decoding the meaning critically. Thus Brecht's intention can be realized by the embodied emotion resulted from simulation. This tentative interpretation suggests that we need to pay more attention to the empirical study of spectatorship, not remaining in a speculative study.