"The Strange Word Urb"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how the French playwright Jean Genet wrote from a space of cultural, social and sexual marginality. In particular, it looks at how, in his essay 'The Strange Word Urb' he expresses his radical views within the richly suggestive images of the Nazi holocaust to express his sharp castigation of Fascist war-crimes and to redefine the role of theatre in the post-war world order.

From the Paper:

"At the outset of the essay, Genet feigns a highly serious and impersonal tone as he goes on to talk about the etymology of the word "urbanism" and with a seemingly objective stance he discusses the architectural plan of the city to arrive at the shocking conclusion that the theatre should be built "as close as possible" in the very guardian shadow of the place where dead are buried or the solitary monument which digests them are located. His very thesis which claims "dead" as an "important theatrical mainstay" in itself is problematic and even paradoxical. To elaborate, death signifies temporality of human existence, whereas theatre is a repository of ideas which are often undying and beyond temporal and spatial frames. Moreover, tragedy which is usually regarded as "mimesis of praxis" or (imitation of an action of a serious kind)is a powerful medium to represent life this appears anti-thetical to the ideas of death, absence of action and life which cemetery encapsulates. "

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