The Thin, Thin Crust and the Colophon of Doubt

continuity of ego is myth, he said in an interview some months after production of Baal (1926), where he was dealing with buying and selling of imagination and degradation of creative genius. A man is an atom that perpetually breaks up and forms anew.' What other prospect, then, for audience-as subject is salvaged from atomization of historythan to construct its own meanings, which also break up and form themselves anew? (There was also in Baal more than incipient horror that in breaking up nothing would form itself anew.) But as fissionary process accelerates in swift half-life of modern world, what is required is a quick-witted (C 14) whichlest be deluded by two extremes of residual habit and freefloating desire-would first of all know how to observe. Reflecting on ideal of Brecht's dramaturgy, Sartre observed that audience would be like team of ethnographers among savages. Ideally, that might be so, if one doesn't underrate savages who are, as Brecht conceives performance, functioning as observers too. That is, in theory, basis of identification. Still, there are certain problems. Overlooking Brecht's view of the isolation of spectator which-left intact2 or even widened--corresponds to splendid remoteness of performer, Sartre doesn't explain nature of teamwork which brings about discovery that members of audience are only studying themselves. The collaboration of audience and author occurs, however, in recognition by audience of its estrangement; that is, it brings itself into being as an object before its own eyes, and sees itself, though without playing itself as role, and thus comes to understand itself.4 But as with ethnographer who is alienated from savages in very act of perception, understanding occurs under tenuous circumstances.5

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