Brief über die Schauspiele

In 1757, in the seventh volume of the Encyclopédie, d'Alembert proposes that Geneva should finally have a theatre. The city would become more refined, the arts would flourish, and the despised actors could become respectable citizens. Rousseau, »Bürger von Genf«, answers with a polemic that goes far beyond its occasion. With it he also breaks publicly with Diderot and the circle of the Encyclopédistes.

His objection is political, not narrowly moralistic. The theatre improves no one; it only amplifies what is already there. It produces an »unfruchtbares Mitleid« that feasts on tears and leads to no action. And it isolates: »Man wähnt, sich im Schauspiel zu versammeln – und dort gerade vereinzelt sich jeder.« Where pleasure is sold for the price of admission, inequality grows besides. A republic therefore needs not fewer spectacles but different ones: open-air festivals in which the spectators themselves become the spectacle. »Pflanzt mitten auf einen Platz einen blumenbekränzten Pfahl, versammelt das Volk darum, und ihr habt ein Fest.«

The letter is a primal scene of the modern critique of the spectacle. Whoever thinks about audience, representation and community sooner or later arrives at it – from Schiller's »Schaubühne« to Debord and Rancière's »emanzipiertem Zuschauer«.