Political Catharsis? The Example of Harrison

This chapter places Harrison’s handling of classical Greek tragedy, and his notion of the function of the audience’s emotional experience in classical tragedy, in relation to the particular tradition of understanding and criticizing the idea of tragic catharsis, which informs and shapes his drama. Brecht’s rejection of Aristotelian theatre, and a tradition of Marxist criticism of tragedy, which is contemporary with Harrison’s ventures into classical tragedy in the 1970s—most notable with his Oresteia—are key to understanding Harrison’s politicized engagement with classical tragic form, and with the ways in which this form engages audiences emotionally. The notion of catharsis as emotional purgation—the idea that, upon watching a tragic performance, the audience feels pleasurably relieved of built-up feelings of pity and fear—is inimical to Brechtian theatre, as well as to Marxist aesthetics, both of which demand a more critical engagement with the meaning of tragedy. Much in dispute today, the purgatio model of catharsis, as it is assumed and rejected by the Left, shapes Harrison’s classical–political dramaturgy, which also resists this model. Though the function of pity in tragic theatre exercises Harrison, direct discussion of catharsis is virtually absent from his introductions and essays, which might suggest a degree of sceptical distance from what he takes Aristotle to mean by this vexed term. The chapter clarifies the implications of Harrison’s dramatic use of, and critical reflections on, pity and fear, and considers how Harrison’s tragedies might be understood in relation to contemporary debates about the meaning and import of Aristotle’s notorious formulation.