• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.38
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• pp.29-63
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• 2015

This paper attempts to re-read Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire from a non-Aristotelian perspective, particularly focusing on the audience performativity. In Chapter 6 of the Poetics, Aristotle says that tragedy has a final purpose or end (telos) and that is to inspire a catharsis (literally "purification") of pity and fear by means of representation and to give pleasure from experiencing their relief. However, a dramatic theoretician Augusto Boal argues that Aristotelian catharsis is not to get rid of pity and fear through their vehement discharge; rather, the basic function of catharsis is the purging of antisocial elements from the social body and the restoration of order because catharsis occurs when the spectator, terrified by the spectacle of the catastrophe, is purified of his "hamartia" which looks similar to the tragic flaw of the hero in the play. Thus, Boal asserts that Aristotle's coercive system of tragedy manipulates the emotions of the passive spectator. By contrast, in non-Aristotelian aesthetics, tragedy functions not as legitimation for a particular political configuration but as the performance of ethical acts-through which all the participants, including not only the actors but also the audience, communicate more actively about practical problems and actively work in order to make sense of themselves, others, and society. Here, the audience is required to restore and reinforce his/her capacity to think and to act; thus, an unquestioning, passive, indifferent attitude is not allowed. In these contexts, this paper explores how Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire involves the audience in the responsibility for what occurs on the stage, in order to urge the audience's ethical judgements and responsible acts. This paper argues that what this play asks of us is not catharsis, the purging of pity and fear, but empathy toward the other's pain, beyond pity and fear, to carry out our responsibility of sharing in and caring for the other's suffering. That is to say that it will be an ethical way to "re-member" Blanche DuBoi-the iconic Williams victim "dis-membered" by traumatic memories and open wounds and is thus unable to complete her grieving and mourning-as one of us, not as the other. It will be the only way to remember right regarding her tragedy.