Cuando el teatro toca lo real

potencias de lo irrepresentable

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to outline a discussion about the problem of the unrepresentable in theater: what are the limits of representation and what remains outside of it? The issue is present in numerous contemporary aesthetic discussions (Rancière, Didi-Huberman, among many others). Taken to the field of theatricality, we consider it worthwhile to think about it in relation to the devices of visibility proposed by various poetics. To this end, we will take two cases: Nosotras en el espejo (Kamar, La Rioja, 2014) and Bajorrelieve apocalíptico (Los Toritos, Mendoza, 2018). In particular, we are interested in the forms adopted by the poetics of these assemblages, with a view to showing modalities in which the unrepresentable is presented, fundamentally under the ideas of injury and disfigurement. This allows us to consider that the diverse forms of appearance of the bodies denote, in turn, other possible modes of existence. Taking into consideration these dislocations, it is proposed that theatrical images allow us to touch a realm of the unrepresentable, that is to say, they strum a space of the real that is difficult to codify by language, by exposing a regime of visibility that accounts for other forms of life. Consequently, these regimes evidence logics of appearance of that which remains blocked in the regime of pure mimesis.