Interruption and Interpellation: Leaving the Theater in Search of the Theater

This chapter reflects on the significance of interruption in performance. Under which conditions might interruption be deemed political? And what precisely accords such inter­ruptive gestures an interpellative quality, the capacity to usher a sense of political sub­jecthood into being? The chapter dwells on three scenes of interruption: in Walter Benjamin’s writings on Bertolt Brecht, in Louis Althusser’s ideology theory, and a scene from a 2018 public lecture-performance in Amsterdam by the scholar-artist Chokri Ben Chikha., In the artist’s gesture toward self-immolation, the protocols of theatrical perfor­mance are interrupted in order to reflect on the political efficacy of performance. By way of a complementary reading of Benjamin’s elaboration of the Brechtian ‘gestus’ and Louis Althusser’s conception of ideological interpellation, the chapter suggests that perfor­mance and politics are related by the ways in which they interrupt and interpellate each other.