of a new kind of performance, closer to ritual than theater.
Before delving deeper into Diderot’s text, it may prove worthwhile to reflect on possible contributing factors to the rise of an increasingly keen attraction for the reenactment of recent events. Without wishing to assign a single cause to a complex evolution, I contend that the interest in staging current events reflects a broader transformation in the Western world’s relationship to the past, which also took place, according to Reinhart Koselleck, in the second half of the eighteenth century.4 Although the bulk of Koselleck’s evidence is drawn from early modern historiography, it highlights a shift in the perception of time that is equally pertinent to a new understanding of the evolution of eighteenth-century theater.5 From the classical metaphor of historia magistra vitae (history is the teacher of life), as well as from other, largely semantic phenomena, Koselleck concludes that the seventeenth century experienced time as a cyclical process, comparable to the natural succession of seasons and regal dynasties. The past was understood as a vast reservoir of reiterated and reiterable events drawn from a plurality of individual histories (rather than one History) from which readers were expected to draw lessons through the recognition of parallels with their own situations. Such a model of history rested on an implicit faith in a continuous space of potential experience, as well as in the constancy of human nature, insofar as it posited a relationship between the past and the present that was less one of causality than it was one of analogy.
Starting in the middle of the eighteenth century, however, under the influence of Diderot and other Encyclopédistes, a new philosophy of history emerged, one in which the immediate past and the present were but preparations for a radically different future, unpredictable and yet predictably better. This conception of progress transformed the perception of time from a cyclical structure to a linear one. Because progress implied the existence of a driving force subjecting time itself to a constant renewal, it prompted a new relationship between the past and the future, in which the latter no longer resembled or repeated the former but opened up instead on an indeterminable horizon and a completely new experiential space. Accordingly, while the distant past lost much of its exemplary value, the immediate past acquired a new relevance, both as an indication of the accomplishments and direction of progress and as a lingering near present that needed to be worked through, its flaws highlighted, judged, and condemned, so that a new, better future could be set free. Indeed, as Koselleck notes, the Encyclopédistes often expressed the desire to “accelerate” the Enlightenment, with the result that even the most recent past became something to be exceeded, even exorcised.6
This shift in the conception of time appears to have influenced the representation and intended function of the past in eighteenth-century theater in much the same way it transformed the writing and meaning of historiography. Indeed, if classical rules opposed the dramatization of events taken from the nation’s history, it was because theorists such as d’Aubignac, drawing heavily on Aristotle’s Poetics,7 deemed the preservation of a temporal divide between the spectators and the characters to be essential to the pedagogical aims of the theater. Historical events, especially recent ones, risked eliciting from the spectators an unmediated, visceral involvement in the particularities of the story (the domain of history, according to Aristotle) likely to prevent them from extracting more universal lessons and philosophical truths (the domain of poetry). Similarly, the settings of classical plays were deliberately kept indeterminate8—generic even—to encourage the spectators to view the world on stage not as a reenactment of a specific historical moment but rather as a universal, timeless space.9 On the classical stage, as in classical historiography, events were thus never portrayed as links in a linear chain bridging the past and the present, but were depicted instead as eternal examples of political or ethical dilemmas bearing an analogical bond with those of the present. The utility of the theater (and of historiography) depended therefore on the spectators’ ability to recognize these points of contiguity, identify the universal, atemporal laws illustrated by the story and then apply this knowledge in such a way as to enhance or reduce, as the case may be, the likelihood of a repetition of the play’s outcome in their own time.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, this reflective relationship to the events on stage yielded increasingly to a more unmediated, emotional response, contingent on the spectator’s immediate recognition of a basic identity between his own world and that of the stage. To quote Alain Ménil, the spectator’s perspective shifted from “it’s the same for me” to “it is me”—in other words, from a primarily analogical experience to a more direct involvement in the world of the play.10 Promoting this experience of unity was the increasing realism of stage settings and costumes, as dramatists and decorators progressively redefined the space of representation from an atemporal, generic world to a fragment of the world inhabited by the audience. The rise of reenactments fits perfectly into that evolution, taking it, in fact, to its logical conclusion. By drawing their content from contemporary events, they achieve precisely what Mercier lamented classical tragedy, with its analogical conception of the past, could not: “History, from which the pompous tragedy emanates, is for the masses an effect without a cause; they do not see the connections.”11 Unlike classical plays, reenactments reveal causal relationships between the immediate past and the present. They allow the performers to reexperience their own role in a recent event, gain new insights into its sometimes-hidden roots, and reflect on its continued impact. And when they have spectators, reenactments seek less to impart universal laws to them than to enable them to actively intervene in and pass judgment on contemporary events, and in so doing shape their meaning and assign them a place in the linear narrative of history.
The shift toward a perception of time as linear and unpredictable thus likely contributed to the emergence of reenactments in one obvious way: by making the immediate past seem of the utmost relevance and worthy therefore of being dramatized. Yet the popularity of reenactments may also be linked to this shift in a different way—less as a symptom of it than as a remedy against it. The linear conception of time inevitably induces a certain anxiety, for it presents the future as experientially different from anything that preceded it, and for that reason, as impossible to predict and prepare. Transgressions become all the more alarming in light of the future’s uncertainty. They belie the narrative of progress and raise the possibility that the perception of time as a force of constant and accelerating renewal will weaken longstanding laws and beliefs, leading to social chaos and collapse. Lysimond’s reenactment is a response to precisely such a threat (incest) to his family’s unity. Its aim is permanence: an end to the mercurial movement of time, synonymous with loss and difference (hence Lysimond’s request that there be no acting, artistic invention, or outside spectators—nothing that could differentiate the reenactment from the event). By renewing year after year the judicial act (the prohibition of incest) through which Lysimond founded a united family, the reenactment seeks to bestow immortality to the patriarch and his law, thereby providing his descendants with the security of an everlasting stillness. Diderot deliberately pushes Lysimond’s project beyond the limits of tenability, however, less to discredit it than to allow another conception of reenactment to emerge from its collapse. In this alternative model, reenactment ceases to be an instrument of fixity, wielded by a patriarch to enact his law, and becomes the very opposite: a way for members of a community to confront a recent transgression, reassess it, and gain control over it by playing (with) and amending their own roles within it, in an attempt to find forgiveness, or at least understanding and resolution. This second type of reenactment is easier to reconcile with the notions of linear time and progress, for it seeks to move beyond a transgression once and for all, not through the constant renewal of it and of its prohibition, but by the collective elaboration of new rules and values best able to free a new future from the shackles of the past. Through a single performance, then, Diderot identifies two very different kinds of reenactment, with nearly opposite views on the passage of both time and laws.
Fixing the Father’s Law: Making It (and Him) Eternal
Let us begin by examining the first type of reenactment, as envisioned by Lysimond. From the start, the project bears witness both to his awareness of the looming specter of death (though he misjudges its proximity,
