Socrates’ Muse and the audience's desire

Plato's philosophical dialogues provide the earliest theory of performance in the Western tradition. Surprisingly, performance theorists have not closely examined the one dialogue devoted to the performer's art—the Ion. A close reading of this dialogue reveals a non‐Platonic theory of performance buried beneath the one advanced by Socrates. Socrates argues that performance begins in the Muse, but the rhapsode Ion suggests that it begins in the audience. Desiring to shape itself after heroic models, the audience possesses and displaces the performer who embodies those models. Socrates’ Muse is the audience's desire. An episode from Stanislavsky's An Actor Prepares is analyzed in order to contrast the two perspectives on performance offered by Plato's Ion. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the audience's desire from psychological and political points of view

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Order (exchange · Performing arts · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · SOCRATES · Stanislavski's system · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Theatre and Performance Studies · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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