Terror Machine: Automated Affect in London's Gothic Theatre 1790-1840

恐怖机器：1790-1840 年伦敦哥特式剧院的自动影响

• 批准号: 2751081
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Queen Mary University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2751081
• 关键词: Terror; Machine; Automated; Affect; London

I intend to investigate London's popular theatre of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, particularly those plays either adapted from Gothic novels or adhering to the genre's aesthetics. This theatre was criticised in its time for preferring spectacle over textual meaning, its elaborate sets and technological innovations - and the visceral affective responses they inspired - taken to be the focus of attention. I want to study the relationship between this technological spectacle and the industrial society developing in England during the same period. By interrogating the automation of affect in this Gothic theatre - whose primary concern is the consistent production of terror throughout its audience - I will explore the relationship between technology and emotion under an emerging industrial capitalism, reflecting on popular attitudes regarding the new pseudo-automaton labour performed by industrial workers domestically and slave populations abroad. The study of automation in this period's theatre will allow me - especially given the carnivalesque tendencies of the Gothic genre - to explore mechanical qualities inherent to performance itself, qualities that complicate the supposed humanity of the actor. This popular Gothic theatre offers a venue for confrontations with the potential horrors of existence alongside technology, while firmly consigning the prior technological epochs represented by the castles and aristocratic persons populating Gothic literature to the past. As Fred Botting suggests, the Gothic genre provided Enlightenment society a heterotopic mirror, presenting them with the darkness, superstition and violence of a history they now thought of themselves in opposition to. However, these plays' apparent success in generating affect - leading to, for example, accounts of physical reactions including fainting - threatens the audience with absorption into the theatre's own automatic process, reflecting their growing need to situate themselves within an increasingly automated society.

我打算调查18世纪末和19世纪初伦敦的流行戏剧，特别是那些改编自哥特小说或秉承该流派美学的戏剧。这家剧院在当时受到批评，因为它更喜欢奇观而不是文本意义，其精心设计的布景和技术创新 - 以及它们激发的本能情感反应 - 成为关注的焦点。我想研究这一技术奇观与同时期英国发展的工业社会之间的关系。通过质疑这座哥特式剧院中情感的自动化——其主要关注的是在观众中持续产生的恐怖——我将探讨新兴工业资本主义下技术与情感之间的关系，反映人们对国内产业工人和国外奴隶人口进行的新伪自动劳动的普遍态度。对这一时期剧院自动化的研究将使我——特别是考虑到哥特式流派的狂欢化倾向——探索表演本身固有的机械品质，这些品质使演员的假定人性变得复杂。这座受欢迎的哥特式剧院提供了一个与技术一起存在的潜在恐怖对抗的场所，同时坚决地将哥特式文学中的城堡和贵族所代表的先前技术时代视为过去。正如弗雷德·博廷（Fred Botting）所说，哥特式流派为启蒙社会提供了一面异位镜子，向他们展示了他们现在认为自己反对的历史的黑暗、迷信和暴力。然而，这些戏剧在产生情感方面的明显成功——例如导致包括晕厥在内的身体反应的描述——威胁着观众，让他们沉浸在剧院自身的自动过程中，反映出他们越来越需要将自己置于一个日益自动化的社会中。