로메오 카스텔루치의 포스트정치극 : ≪마조흐≫에 나타난 수동성과 무위의 윤리

초록

This study analyzes Romeo Castellucci’s(1960~) performance 《Masoch》 (1993) through the theoretical framework of ‘post-political theater’. The term refers to a theatrical form that moves beyond traditional ideological antagonism and narrative-driven political expression, seeking instead to explore political potential through the redistribution of the sensible, inoperativity, and the deconstruction of subjectivity. Within this perspective, passivity emerges as a crucial ethical modality, functioning as a key element in the constitution of post-political ethics. Romeo Castellucci and his company, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, have consistently disrupted and reconfigured the relationships between sensation and action, body and meaning. 《Masoch》 stands out as a pivotal experimental work that articulates an ethics of passivity and inoperativity through sensorial dramaturgy. In this piece, Castellucci invokes Gilles Deleuze’s(1925~1995) concept of masochism in Coldness and Cruelty, alongside Herman Melville’s(1819~1891) figure of Bartleby and his paradigmatic refusal—‘I would prefer not to’—to dismantle the paradigm of active subjectivity and to stage the preconditions of sensation before action. Through rhythms of repetition, delay, and suspension, sensation is deferred, and the actor’s body is presented not as a vehicle of expression but as a passive surface, exposed to external stimuli and objectified on stage. Devoid of narrative progression, the performance denies the audience the possibility of interpretation or emotional identification. Instead, it confronts spectators with undecipherable images and disjointed sensory stimuli, compelling them to assume responsibility for their own perceptual responses. By obstructing structures of empathy and foreclosing representational comprehension, Masoch establishes a sensorial mode of passivity and inoperativity that lays the groundwork for the ethical orientation of Castellucci’s later political theater. Through this analysis, the present study argues that Castellucci’s theatrical practice exceeds mere aesthetic experimentation or narrative deconstruction, positioning itself as a unique intervention into the affective conditions of contemporary politics. By theorizing concepts such as passivity and inoperativity in relation to the partition of the sensible and the politics of affective attunement, this paper seeks to expand the ethical horizon and aesthetic stakes of post-political theater.

키워드