the puppet as a figure of the other final P PIRIS 2013 - Central ...

elation to consciousness. I suggest that these definitions of the object partly encompasswhat constitutes the puppet in its materiality and its opposition to the performer.The Other is altogether familiar and strange to oneself. The Other exists undermultiple forms. It can be someone from another country, of another gender but also arelative or even a part of the self. In manipulacting, the human being is confronted by ananthropomorphic object which resembles him because of its shape, its behaviour, and itsmovement. The interplay taking place between the manipulactor and the puppetmaterialises the paradoxical status of the Other as someone both familiar and strangebecause of the ambiguous ontology of the puppet as subject and object.1.4. A Sartrean perspective of manipulactingThe relation of the puppet with the manipulactor is examined through the perspectivesof the relation of self to Other developed by Sartre in Being and Nothingness, andcompleted by a Levinasean approach of the Other. A Sartrean perspective might bethought a little anachronistic as Sartre is not usually the phenomenologist cited in thecurrent debates in performance studies. For many years Sartre’s philosophy has beenunjustly neglected in this sphere. As French philosopher Frederic Worms (2009) writesin the introduction to La Philosophie en France au XXe Siecle - Moments, hisphilosophical work is paradoxically unknown due to Sartre’s ‘excess of fame’ (Worms2009: 16). Worms means that Sartre’s strong involvement in the political debates of histime as well as the dominating position of Existentialism as a philosophical trend inFrance until the 1950s have drawn a lot of opposition. Worms ranks him as one of thethree major French thinkers of the last century, alongside Bergson and Deleuze.However, there has been a reappraisal of his work in recent years. To name but a few,28