Delito Político

‘Is it possible? They didn’t tell me I had a brother’ (Bond 2018: 174). This is Norman’s last remark in The Angry Roads, produced by Big Brum in 2015, and the whole play revolves around this possibility, or impossibility. This question problematizes the relationship between the source of the story and storytelling: is it possible to tell an untold story based on unknown facts? Is it possible to rely on subjective imagination when objective evidence is so obscure? The Angry Roads focuses on the process of Norman’s awakening to the truth about his father’s past; however, because of his father’s selective mutism, Norman must recall the past via his imagination and his communication with his father by table-tapping. The truth repressed by his father is an accident: before Norman was born, the Father killed the woman with whom he had affairs and her baby by driving his taxi over their bodies. There are two interrelated details about the accident that are important but not specified: one is about the reason for the ‘row’ that gave rise to the accident; the other is about Norman’s role in the accident. It is implied that, although Norman was not yet born, he was also ‘present’ at the site of the accident. This suggests that the Father’s wife could be pregnant at that moment, and Norman’s existence might make the Father decide to end his affairs with the woman. However, the woman might quarrel with the Father over their relationship and their son, so the Father, feeling unable to cope with the situation, decided to murder the woman and the baby deliberately. Norman’s mother knew about the accident, and she decided to leave Norman and the Father when Norman was six because she was unable to bear the unresolved pain of the event. According to Norman, his mother used to tell him about part of the accident, but she never revealed the whole truth to him. Therefore, he can only rely on his imagination and table-tapping to communicate with his father to reconstruct the truth of the accident.

Norman’s quest for the truth is both a process of breaking the structure of egoism and a rite of passage toward maturation. Intriguingly, read in terms of Bond’s theory of subjectivity, The Angry Roads actually subverts and contradicts Bond’s theory. While Norman’s quest for the truth of his brother’s premature death could be propelled by radical innocence that

keeps asking why, it is not a quest to affirm his right to be at home in this world but, rather, a quest to inquire why his brother is denied the right to be in this world. In other words, the question is why Norman and his brother fail to be ‘at home’ together, and the answer is that it is because Norman occupies the place of his brother. Norman’s ‘right to be in this world’ presupposes his brother’s death. It is in this sense that the existential imperative of radical innocence to assert one’s own right to exist is suspended and self-effaced as an imperative. This process of disclosing the truth about Norman’s brother is analogous to the structure of inspiration that underlies the logic of At the Inland Sea. Norman’s recollection is not completely motivated by his autonomy – he is also obliged by a heterogeneous force to bear witness to his brother’s death. Although this force remains enigmatic throughout the play – as we never know how it is possible for Norman to fully realize the truth – it is this impossibility that interrupts any attempt at attaining absorbable knowledge and coherent interpretation. Norman’s rite of passage does not lead to an autonomous self but a traumatized self that acknowledges the violence inherent within the assertion of the self and recognizes the irreversible death of the other due to his existence. This rite of passage leads to the birth of an ethical subject that recognizes the ineradicable heterogeneity inherent in the subject.

As Levinas states, ‘[t]o be oneself, the state of being is a hostage, is always to have one degree of responsibility more, the responsibility for the responsibility of the other’ (1998: 117). It is clear that, for Levinas, the ethical subject as the one-for-the-other is always already a subject of responsibility, a subject that bears ‘guilt without fault’ (2001: 52). Therefore, although Norman does not directly kill his brother, this by no means exempts him from bearing the consciousness of guilt for his brother’s death. The fact that he cannot be indifferent to his brother’s death testifies to his being a subject that is, to use Levinas’s terms, ‘non-indifferent’ to the other. Norman’s final remarks are revealing:

Deliberately. (Silence. He doesn’t look at Father) It was your son. You said your last words to him. Then you lost your voice. How do I know all this? They live in the past. They

want you to go back there and sort out their lives for them. You cant [sic]. I wasn’t there. How did I know it? It seeps out of the silence. – Tomorrow he wont [sic] know any of this. Wasn’t even an hallucination. He took an overdose of tablets. Passed out. And it didn’t happen.

[…]

The worst thing that can happen is not knowing it happened. Then it didn’t happen – so its [sic] always happening. (Lets

the curtain fall.) I heard my father’s voice.

[…]

Look in in a few days when you’re out. Pick up the rest of my things. Last time I speak to you. You dont [sic] hear. Keep the toys. You should get something for them. – Is it possible? They didnt [sic] tell me I had a brother.(Bond 2018: 174)

The incessant table-knocking that stimulates the process of Norman’s telepathically inspired recollection is a sign of the dead brother’s spectral return that ‘seeps out of the silence’. His father’s mutism, caused by the traumatic loss of his child, is an enigma for Norman, and it is this enigma that situates Norman within the structure of the familial tragedy even though he never experienced it in person. In spite of the fact that it is reasonable to suppose that Norman has communicated with his father through table-knocking for a long time, Norman’s recollecting process still surpasses rational communication. How can he hear his father’s voice? According to Levinas, ‘silence is not a simple absence of speech; speech lies in the depths of silence […]. It is the inverse of language: the interlocutor has given a sign, but has declined every interpretation; this is the silence that terrifies’ (1969: 91). Silence thus ‘appears within a relation with the Other, as the sign the Other delivers, even if he dissimulates his face’ (93).37 Unlike the silence that refuses communication, Norman can hear his father’s voice even in his silence – he can detect a sign of otherness that demands approaching and understanding. This understanding is not about the

37 _{As Rudi Visker analyzes, in Levinas’s ethics silence can also be understood as an} attempt to evade the obligation demanded from the Other (130). In my analysis, silence is primarily understood as the speechless demand from the Other. Both views can be found in Levinas’s theory. In terms of theatre, Levinas criticizes the spectator for remaining hidden silently in the darkness and enjoying the spectacle. The silence of irresponsible spectating exemplifies the silence of indifference. However, the spectacle of silence that defies representation and disrupts intelligibility also demands listening. The gap between intelligibility and unintelligibility constitutes the possibility of ethical spectating and listening.

pathological diagnosis of mutism, nor is it about discovering the traumatic past – both are likely to be ossified as mere knowledge. This understanding is about approaching the otherness that endows the subject with responsibility to respond to it – for Norman, this understanding is to face the unbearable truth about his own birth as the cause of his brother’s death. Norman’s own story can never be complete if he fails to tell the insupportable story, nor can his future be possible without basing his self-knowledge on this truth.

In performance,38 Richard Holmes’s portrayal of the Father retained the enigmatic quality of the action of table-knocking. Although it is tempting for the actor and spectator to try to decipher the meaning of the sound, Holmes’s performance made this method of communication seem ‘natural’ for the Father and Norman without emphasizing its peculiarity – it is just another language that is shared by him and Norman. In fact, this ‘naturalness’ can be regarded as another example of Bond’s post-Brechtian dramaturgy of alienation without explicitly alienating the spectator or actor from the spectacle. This nuanced effect can be difficult to achieve, as Holmes admits: ‘The hardest thing I found as an actor was not to over-explain the story through the knocks or make the father’s silence mystical or menacing. I couldn’t do the audiences work for them, while at the same time doing enough to let them into the story and accept, quickly, this is how it is’ (Wooster 2015: 15). How Danny O’Grady performed Norman also preserved the enigmatic quality of the interaction between the Father and Norman, and it should also be pointed out that the discrepancy of age between O’Grady as actor and character had the same effect of ‘alienation without alienating’. Instead of trying to imitate a teenager’s behaviour, O’Grady’s performance remained demonstrative and neutral, and this made it possible for the spectator to feel distanced and involved simultaneously. Norman’s first action in this play is to sort his toys, a gesture that signifies his farewell to his childhood – although is may seem weird at first sight to see an adult actor sorting toys, O’Grady’s neutral

38 _{I attended Big Brum’s production of this play at mac Birmingham in February 2015, on} which I based my analysis of the performance.

performance, which evaded the realistic identification between actor and character, made it possible for the spectator to contemplate the relationship between childhood and adulthood. Intriguingly, one of the thematic concerns of The Angry Roads is the transition from childhood to adulthood, and the image of ‘the inner child’ in an adult can also be understood through Bond’s concept of the palimpsest structure of the subject.

In ‘The Storyteller’ (1936), Walter Benjamin argues: ‘If the art of storytelling has become rare, the dissemination of information has had a decisive share in this state of affairs’ (2007: 89). Benjamin contrasts information, the dissemination of news, with stories in terms of verifiability and intelligibility: while information can be easily verified and clearly explained, stories, the validity of which derives from their origin in foreign countries or tradition, cannot be verified and usually remain unexplained (ibid.). Like Benjamin, Bond suggests that the hyper-saturation and commodification of information as one of the causes that renders storytelling difficult. However, Bond differs from Benjamin over the source of the validity of stories by stating that the validity of stories originates from responsibility for the future, and he thinks that the insatiable consumption of ‘the present’ nullifies the possibility of imagining the future (Tuaillon 2015: 51). Bond argues further that, by daring to tell stories to imagine the future, young people can potentially be liberated from authority and the market (52). Moreover, different from Benjamin’s postulate about the antagonism between information and stories, Bond holds the relationship between information and stories in tension by turning information into stories. For Bond, the source of storytelling is not the past or foreign countries but the present and the local. Turning information into stories is to save from consumable news the inconsumable, that is, the ethical.

5.2. Spectre and Spectrality