Theater and real life are structurally indistinguishable rather than opposed

Evidence

Yet this does not mean to privilege fictional and theatrical uses of speech acts as commonly understood. Just as there is no homogeneous and totalizable intention generating the utterance, so also can it not be advanced that the utterance is simply autotelic as such. It is rather that, among the many heterogeneous elements that constitute the speech act with traces leading back and forth, the iterable non-self-identical intention and context as well as the “parasitic” use are structural moments. The “theater” does not win out over “real life.” The two are seen as indistinguishable and structurally implicated. “As though literature, theater, deceit, infidelity, hypocrisy, infelicity, parasitism, and the simulation of real life were not part of real life!” — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 725

Categorization

• XREF: Highly relevant to whether strategic essentialism can be held without collapsing: Derrida refuses to let the ironic/simulated pole win, keeping simulation internal to the serious — a structural answer to Spivak’s bind. — connects to: Dramatic realism and realistic portrayal are distinct and frequently conflated; Fictional dramatic urgency is routinely confused with realistic portrayal — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race…, 292; Living Theatre performances could dissolve the boundary between actors and audience into chaos — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 1426 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Early performance work deliberately blurred the boundary between art and real life #exemplifies (0.85) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 69
• Living Theatre performances could dissolve the boundary between actors and audience into chaos #exemplifies (0.82) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1426
• Dramatic realism and realistic portrayal are distinct and frequently conflated #corroborates (0.80)
• Fictional dramatic urgency is routinely confused with realistic portrayal #corroborates (0.80) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 292
• Theatrical archetypes on stage mirrored actual street confrontations. #exemplifies (0.80) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 323
• Modern discourse struggles to distinguish real suffering from theatrical representation #corroborates (0.78)
• Live sporting moments differ from theater because they cannot be repeated #complicates (0.75) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1053