Between fiction and truth: theatricality as a mode of knowledge
In Western societies, theatre and theory are related ; both imply seeing and showing. Following Samuel Weber’s work Theatricality as Medium, where theatricality is defined as the ability to transform any given space into a scene onto which something – an event, a situation, an action, an idea, etc. – exposes itself before an audience and takes place in passing, this article analyzes theatricality as a mode of knowledge in which fiction and truth share a common goal, that is : to see and show the meaning – real and/or imaginary – of individual and collective human action. The relationship between fiction and truth, which is exposed in an emblematic way in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, shows that theatricality, taken as a mean of understanding, is based on the concept of play.