Grotesque images and sardonic humour: pain and affect in German drama

Abstract

In Art and Pain 1 2003 I discussed language that injures and causes pain. I looked in particular at ‘injurious speech’ and ‘linguistic vulnerability’ in German dramatist Heiner Müller’s play Germania 3 Ghosts at Dead Man. I suggested that in Germania 3 speeches uttered by dramatic personas mimicked the operations of hate-speech in the social sphere, with the addition that the effects of the speech are also shown. I suggested that Müller’s writing transforms a painful history into the discursive practices of the theatrical text and that the play’s impact and its importance reside in symbolic accounts of the pain and suffering of modern German history.This paper turns from language to images t..