Without Beginning or End 1

The chorus is not an invention of the theater. From the far-branching rural Dionysias, the chorus once started out, to appear in the Greek poleis in the early fifth century BCE. These new city-states were based on strict binary divisions: polis and oikos, skene and orchestra, protagonist and chorus, man and woman. The missing link in-between these opposites is called cosmos. The chorus, which does not owe itself to any foundation, forms a place of indeterminate plurality, of non-genealogical forms of connection and of non-familial modes of relating. While the question of origin is linked to the individual being and the genealogical scheme of reproduction as filiation prevails, the chorus recalls an indeterminate 'filiation' of all living beings linked to the earth. At the site of the chorus, the insight is articulated that the binary divisions of the polis go hand in hand with a species-trouble that is spreading today in ecological and queer terms

Art · Chorus · Genealogy · Literature · Queer · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Theatre and Performance Studies