Discipline—Control—Care. On the History of Spectatorship

This chapter aims at a periodization of spectatorship in European modernity, focusing on aspects of accessibility and collectivity, and especially on the ways that theater audiences have been addressed as a collective or as a gathering of individuals. How collective, independent, in/accessible, or diverse has the conceptualization of spectatorship been in different historical contexts and artistic developments? In what ways can theater spaces be seen as “contact zones” (Pratt) where different cultures clash and power relations are negotiated with regard to accessibility? To what degree are the space and time of theater performances designed as shared or un/shared? And to what extent can the power of theater audiences be linked to specific historical concepts of independence and collectivity? I will address these questions by proposing a rough division of the history of European theater into three paradigms: a spectatorship of discipline, a spectatorship of control, and a spectatorship of care. The first paradigm is marked by European theater reforms and theater policing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and can be linked to a society of discipline (Foucault) and to the rise of modern ableism. The second paradigm is characterized by the efforts of avant-garde and post-dramatic theater during the twentieth century to flexibilize and mobilize the audience, allowing spectators to participate in performances but within the space, time, and power relations of a society of control (Deleuze). The third paradigm, finally, can be linked to the disability arts in the present and the aesthetics of access and care, which define spectatorship as a diverse and multiperspectival practice. In this “theatre without late-comers” (Umathum), the space and time of diverse spectatorship are neither collective nor individualized, but un/shared (Margaret Price) and negotiated. Here, the collectivity of the audience paradoxically stems from the very differences of perceptions and diverse experiences of theatrical spacetime.

Wihstutz, Benjamin (2026): Discipline—Control—Care. On the History of Spectatorship. S. 170-183 in  in: Backhausen, E./Kreuser, M./Wihstutz, B. (Hg.): Independence and Collectivity. Configurations of Dis/ability Performance. London/New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003617990-13