Revisiting the Happening: Cruelty and Eroticism Through the Lens of Susan Sontag

Abstract

This paper explores the social influences of Antonin Artaud’s theater of cruelty on the happening as analyzed by Susan Sontag, through a connection with Bertolt Brecht’s didactic theater. To this end, we delve into the Sontag’s critique of Peter Weiss’s play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat and its film adaptation Marat/Sade by Peter Brook, highlighting how both works immerse the audience in an intense and violent sensory experience, in line with the principles of Artaud’s theater of cruelty. From here, we follow the thread that Sontag proposes in her analysis of the happening as an art of radical juxtaposition, aiming to unravel the disruptive and surrealist dimension of this phenomenon. In doing so, Sontag seeks to position us both in the performative manifestation of Artaud’s theses and in a critical relationship between the viewer and the artwork, heightened by pain and unease. Ultimately, we propose that the social dynamics Sontag reflects upon suggest an aesthetic and emotional relationship between art and the audience, fostering a visceral and critical response that goes beyond mere didacticism about the condition of political subjects.