Abstract
The chapter introduces the notions of meaningful absence and excessive presence to examine how censorship shapes the terms of authorial (dis) appearance. Two main contexts are considered: (1) that of state oppression, in the cases of Meyerhold, Havel and most notably, the contemporary Chinese dissidents—the global star of politically engaged art, Ai Weiwei, and the author and activist Liu Xiaobo; (2) and that of religious fundamentalism, where the case of Salman Rushdie emerges as the most iconic example of (near) death of the author in our times. The latter case study also foregrounds the other side of the equitation of the death of the author—the role of the Reader.
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Jestrovic, S. (2020). The Artist Is (Meaningfully) Absent. In: Performances of Authorial Presence and Absence . Adaptation in Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43290-4_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43290-4_7
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