Theater and the Pathologies of Politics in Caragiale's View
Dr. Mihaela Czobor-Lupp,
Georgetown University, Department of Government
According to Julien Benda the modem "clerks" betrayed their true mission. They reduced the whole of reality to the realm of politics, while politics itself was reduced to the "intellectual organization of political hatreds." It is the aim of my paper to demonstrate that Ion Luca Caragiale does not fit Benda's description. This is relevant not only because Caragiale lived at a time when Romania was engaged in a work of intense national construction, but also because nowadays, at the time Romania is joining the European Union, the latter seems to be moving in a direction that intensifies national identities and nationalist feelings, fear of and uncertainty in the presence of the other.
Caragiale saw as the danger of his time the hollowness of a political project imposed from above that absorbed into its abstract emptiness the particularity and diversity of social life. Nation and national politics framed it. As a result, his intention was to disassemble this frame and, at the same time, to accomplish civic Bildung. My paper will first show how Caragiale identified several pathologies of Romanian politics and society in his plays, and, second, it will demonstrate that through theater he sought to initiate the critical self-examination and education of the Romanian public. His project of civic Bildung was meant to start from the imperfections and monstrosities of life, and not from abstract ideological projects. As Bakhtin's, Caragiale's laughter was constructive and regenerative.
