Echoes of “I” in Sarah Kane’s Blasted with Regard to Fichte’s Theories of Subjectivity

Considering unreliability of language, the postmodern writer creates theatre with an elusive, paradoxical system of a fragmented nature. Theatre, as the core of inevitable tension, needs to be connected with this reality. Kane’s theatre is a forum for representing these parameters and art-reality union through the body. Fichte introduces the idea of moral community and arrives at plurality of selves. Exploring structures of Self-consciousness toward world, he poses world as the product of the “I,” perceivable by human consciousness, and brings unity into the entire human being. He remarks what it is that makes a subject a subject with a self-positing structure differentiating it from an object. This theory of subjectivity is applied to Kane’s play, Blasted, which provides a union as a final resort to verify the authenticity of self. For Fichte and Kane, one perceives the world through actions, which must be aligned with individual's gaining consciousness of self, others and the world otherwise, they can be destructive. Unable to use language for expressing themselves, Kane’s characters choose purposeless activities, transfigured to shocking images of cruelty, sexually graphic and violent scenes. They find themselves paralyzed and alone in a nightmare world that will not let them die.

Keywords:

Fichte , Absolute “I , ” Subjectivity , Kane , Blasted.