Spectacular History and the Politics of Theater: Sympathetic Arts in the Shadow of the Bastille

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s meditations on artificial society’s perversions of natural sentiment, specifically on the theater’s contribution to societal degeneration, provide a historical context for the dialogue between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine about the nature of the French Revolution. Much of the debate over the political rights of man consisted of an analysis of his affective rights. It was in many ways a controversy over what could be considered a moral method for attaching an individual’s sympathies. The problem of affective liberation stands behind Paine’s quarrel with Burke’s Reflections and with the victim Burke offered for the world’s consideration in that text: Marie Antoinette. For Burke the emotions aroused by theater and by the tragic representation of historical events could liberate the spectator into constructive action. Exposing Burke’s own affective imprisonment by the spectacle of revolution, Paine demanded instead a liberation through rational inquiry. (EDS)