Aestheticized Violence and the 'Amorphous Catastrophe'

Abstract

Sarah Kane directly meditates on the influence of Roland Barthes’ 1977 A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments on her play Cleansed, using the theatrical medium to explore the experience of love as that of ‘the amorous catastrophe.' This essay will turn to Katie Mitchell’s 2016 National Theatre production of Cleansed and Annabelle Comyn’s 2018 Gate Theatre production of Look Back in Anger to explore how violence is utilised as a device to explore how love is expressed amid brutality, its perseverance and endurability, as well as what is lost in its pursuit and protection. The central question posed around if love can survive the reality of bodily and psychological suffering is answered affirmatively in the final scenes of both Cleansed and Look Back in Anger. Whilst both playwrights' work is infatuated with the ultimate conquest of love, each text raises questions around whether the struggle of the amorous catastrophe is worth such suffering if it’s ‘irremediately bound to destroy’ the subject. Although love has conquered all, at what cost has survival occurred?