Abstract:
This study argues that Sarah Kane’s work for the theatre proposes a new tragic
aesthetic for the contemporary stage which in many ways transcends the limited
genre definitions with which her work is generally associated. By realising a
rudimentary tragic dialectic between the traumatised subject and an invariably
unattainable ‘other’, it is argued that Kaneian theatre describes a new tragic mode
which is primarily based on the psycho(patho)logical suffering it portrays. The study
suggests that Sarah Kane’s work introduces an aesthetic complex termed the ‘empty I’
which manifests itself through notions of ‘empty space’, ‘traumatic loss’ and
‘impossible love’. Via an in-depth reading of the plays, it shows that the playwright’s
radical formal efforts are bound to an ongoing attempt to unite dramatic form with
tragic content, and it is further argued that Kane’s plays implicitly criticise a growing
culture of missing ontological stability and problematic interpersonal relations. The
new tragic aesthetic defined this way proves to be as much about aesthetisised
traumatic suffering as it laments a deficient form of contemporary subjectivity. The
thesis concludes with the suggestion that Kane’s work implies a social rather than a
theatrical reconciliation of the tragic disposition it depicts.
