Disability and Contemporary Performance

Chapter 4

Outsider energies

I do know that

space, time, dimension, becoming, future, destiny, being, non-being, self, non-self,

are nothing to me;

but there is one thing

that is something,

one single thing that is something

and that I know

wants to COME OUT:

the presence of the pain in my body;

the menacing, indefatigable presence of my body.

and however hard people press me with questions

and however vigorously I refuse all questions

there is a point at which I find myself compelled to say no,

NO

then, to negation.

(Artaud, To Have Done with the Judgement of God, 1948)

Languages, cultures and societies are relatively fixed systems, based on underlying if shifting understandings of basic difference and identity. For many thinkers, the other ...