DRAMATURGIJA OTUĐENJA, PANOPTICIZAM I BIOPOLITIKA U DRAMI "RAZNESENI" SARE KEJN

Abstract

Drawing on Bertolt Brecht’s concept of the dramaturgy of estrangement and Michel Foucault’s concepts of panopticism and biopolitics, this paper examines the mechanisms of power, violence, and control in Sarah Kane’s Blasted. It focuses on the ways in which language, the body, and interpersonal relations are shaped by disciplinary and biopolitical structures, as well as on the ways in which private, political, and wartime violence intersect within the play. Using an analytical-synthetic method, the paper argues that estrangement in Blasted is produced not only through the disruption of theatrical illusion, but also through language and the body as key sites of humiliation, discipline, and the disintegration of subjectivity. Language functions as a domain of classification, sexual labeling, humiliation, normalization, and symbolic violence, while the body becomes the site on which sexual violence, bodily harm, biopolitical control, and loss of identity are most visibly inscribed. In this way, the macro level of war and political violence is reproduced on the micro level of intimate relations, helplessness, and violence against the body. Panoptic mechanisms operate through surveillance, self-control, and the internalization of discipline, whereas a biopolitical perspective shows that the body and sexuality are represented as domains of political regulation, coercion, and control. The paper further argues that in Blasted individual violence cannot be understood separately from broader social and political structures, since private, political, and wartime violence appear as interconnected forms of the same order of power. The conclusion suggests that the final “Thank you” does not signify redemption, but rather marks only a minimal ethical breach within an otherwise devastated world.