Content area

Abstract

This dissertation introduces “anonymity” as a critical concept that reshapes how we understand modernist performance, subject formation, and political agency. Challenging the enduring association between naming and power, this dissertation shows how anonymity operates as a performative structure across dance, theatre, and cinema to unfix identity and enable alternative forms of individual and collective action. Each chapter analyzes a central aesthetic object through archival research, inductive formal analysis, and critical theory. Chapter 1 reads Les Noces (1923) by Bronislava Nijinska and Igor Stravinsky as a critique of J.L. Austin's theory of the performative, staging non-sovereign collective agency through the ballet's anonymous peasant chorus. Chapter 2 examines interpellation in Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Blind (1890) and Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), arguing that anonymity structures the formation of subject positions. Chapter 3 turns from the anonymity of the interpellated individual to that of the collective, focusing on the figure of the proletariat in Bicycle Thieves (1948), and showing how the film mobilizes choral anonymity to untether class from fixed identity and open the possibility of an anonymous revolutionary subject. Across these case studies, the dissertation reframes anonymity as a performative mode of appearance that unsettles dominant theories of action, collectivity, and representation. In this account, anonymity displaces the centrality of named identity in theories of agency and appearance, revealing how political subjectivation emerges through structurally anonymous, non-sovereign acts. By reading modernist performance as a site in which anonymity materializes subjectivity and agency, the dissertation reframes anonymity as a critical resource for aesthetic form and political theory alike.

Details

1010268
Literature indexing term
Title
Anonymous Subjects: Performing Anonymity Across Media 1890–1948
Number of pages
254
Publication year
2025
Degree date
2025
School code
0054
Source
DAI-A 87/1(E), Dissertation Abstracts International
ISBN
9798286499656
Committee member
Robbins, Bruce; Franko, Mark
University/institution
Columbia University
Department
Theatre
University location
United States -- New York
Degree
Ph.D.
Source type
Dissertation or Thesis
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation/Thesis
Dissertation/thesis number
32117959
ProQuest document ID
3228171122
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/anonymous-subjects-performing-anonymity-across/docview/3228171122/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.
Database
ProQuest One Academic