Download Clare Finburgh - University of Essex

Clare Finburgh
Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies
University of Essex
LT 356 Politics and Performance
BERNARD-MARIE KOLTÈS (1948-1989) BLACK BATTLES WITH DOGS (COMBAT DE
NÈGRE ET DE CHIENS) (1979). First performed 1982 at Theatre La Mama, New York.
First French performance at Théâtre des Amandiers, Paris, 1983, directed by Patrice
Chéreau.
The following notes provide background information to our seminar session. They are
intended as a starting point from which you can conduct further and more detailed
research. They include questions (in BLUE) that encourage you to explore themes and
issues in greater detail. If you refer to the notes in essays or examinations, please
ensure that you quote your source clearly.
SET TEXT: Bernard-Marie Koltès, Plays: 1, trans. by David Bradby and Maria M. Delgado
(London: Methuen, 1997).
INTRODUCTION
 K. is the most important French dramatist since the 1950s wave that included Jean-Paul
Sartre, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco.
 His plays have become classics in the contemporary dramatic repertory. Since the 1990s,
he’s become one of most performed contemporary French authors abroad.
 His plays have the merit of being relevant both on a universal, mythical level, and on an
immediate socio-political level. In particular K.’s plays discuss difference and otherness in
terms of racial, national, cultural and gender.
THE DEAL AND CONFLICT
 All K.’s works concern the problem of constructing the identity of the Self, while negotiating
identity of the Other. This Self could be individual, cultural, national or economic. His plays deal
with the constant struggle to construct these identities.
 K. uses the concept of “the deal” to reflect human interaction. For him, this capitalist idea of
negotiating money symbolises relationships not only on a business level, but also on personal,
intercultural or international levels. K. writes:
A deal is a commercial transaction concerning values that are banned or subject to
strict controls, and which is conducted in neutral spaces, indeterminate and not
intended for this purpose, between suppliers and consumers, by means of tacit
agreement, conventional signs, or conversations with double meanings – whose aim is
to circumvent the risks of betrayal or swindle implicit in this kind of operation – at any
time of day or night, with no reference to the regulation opening hours for officially
1
registered trading establishments, but usually at times when the latter are closed
(“Epigraph”, In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields (London: Methuen, 1997)).
Life comprises transactions on various levels: individuals negotiating in order to get what they
want.
 There are links with the Sartrean idea of existential freedom in Being and Nothingness,
where one individual’s freedom comes into contact with another’s freedom, and is judged and
limited by the Other. Individuals are alienated from their sense of Self because Others form
opinions of them, and impose external limiting circumstances on their freedom. Sartre's famous
quotation: “Hell is Others” is relevant. BBwD is reminiscent of Sartre’s Huis clos, in that
characters are thrown together, and they determine each other’s existences and identities.
 K. provides a metaphor of the deal, to symbolise negotiations that must take place between
individuals, each exercising their own respective desire for personal freedom. So conflict is
inevitable. It’s a tragic fact implicit in the human condition. K.’s characters are condemned to be
in conflict with each other. They’re both aggressive and fragile.
 K. shows how deals often break down and conflict and violence result. His plays are
marked by violence. The deal breaks down when people can’t respect the difference of others.
 Think about the ways in which deals break down in BBwD.
 Conflicts in K.’s plays are between individuals or between family members. But these
personal conflicts often pose as metaphors for conflicts between opposing world views,
opposing ideologies.
 What are the metaphorical significations of the deals and conflicts in this play?
 Many of K.’s plays concern the inability of society to accept or understand those who don’t
necessarily conform to white, middle-class, European “norms”. Unlike Brecht or Sartre, K.
never aligned himself with party politics, but always concerned himself with those who were
socially or politically oppressed. His plays are frequently located in “peripheral”, marginal
places: docks, wastelands, suburbs, scrub of Africa, etc. These places are populated by people
excluded from mainstream society: Blacks, Arabs, drug dealers, prostitutes, murderers,
building site workers, dockers, squatters, tramps, homosexuals. He says:
More and more, in a way that’s at the same time vague and decisive, I divide people
into two categories: those who are condemned and those who aren’t (Interview with
Hervé Guibert, in Une part de ma vie, p. 20).
K.’s works show how these people are “condemned”, excluded from society, because society
refuses to accept and understand their difference, their status as Others.
 What is the signification of the geographical location in this play? What does the
location denote in literal terms, and what does is symbolise in metaphorical terms?
 An inability to understand the Other is emblematised most in K.’s work, by the lack of
understanding towards Blacks. They become the embodiment of white fears, anxieties,
forbidden desires. Blacks aren’t allowed to speak for themselves, express the own identity.
 In an appendix to BBwD that K. added to the French version, Horn says:
A black man’s never hungry and never full; he can eat lots or very little, at any hour of
the day or night, or do without eating for a very long time. We mustn’t draw any
conclusions according to our European eating habits; a black man doesn’t feel hunger
or satisfaction like a European; he eats whatever food there is when it’s around. And I
promise you that the slightest morsel he consumes benefits him (“Carnet”, in Combat
de nègre et de chiens, p. 121).
He also says Africans have no feelings and though it shocks many Europeans, he’s used to it
(p. 20). He shows a total inability to perceive the Other on the Other’s terms.
 How does K. illustrate this in BBwD?
2
 In the same Appendix, Alboury describes in metaphorical terms how difficult it is to shed
this image that’s externally projected by Europeans onto Africans, Whites onto Blacks,
colonisers onto the colonised, neo-colonials onto the oppressed. He talks about Western power
in terms of a little white dog that’s tenacious and vicious (here, there’s a link to the title of the
play and to Cal’s white puppy that bares its teeth). He says he tried to kill the dog, but it jumped
on his head and sank its nails and teeth into him so hard that he had great difficulty tearing it off
and crushing it (see “Carnet”, in Combat de nègre et de chiens, p. 112). This could pose as a
metaphor for the image that’s forced onto Blacks, that they must try to tear off (there are
connections with Genet’s The Blacks).
 So what is the significance of Alboury fighting off and killing Cal’s dog?
 The main question asked in K.’s theatre is: do human beings want good for the Other, or
only good for the Self?
 K. explains that theatre’s the best location in which to demonstrate this conflict between the
Self and Other, because characters come into contact and conflict on stage:
My characters … want to live and they’re prevented from doing so; they are human
beings that come up against brick walls… We are confronted by obstacles – that’s the
story that theatre tells (Une part de ma vie, p. 135).
CONFLICT AND THE TRAGEDY OF LANGUAGE
 Conflict leads to an almost total breakdown in communication in many of K.’s plays. Very
little understanding between characters is shown. They often speak in soliloquies whilst
interlocutors (speech partners) remain silent. They fail to respond. K. shows the inability of
people to communicate not only on social, national and political levels, but also on an
existential level. It seems to be the human condition to be isolated and misunderstood.
Horn and Leonie back-to-back in a production of the play, demonstrating the lack of
communication between them.
Characters in the play solicit responses, but don’t get them. Words don’t enable characters to
know and understand each other any better. Words reflect the tragic impossibility to access
Others and to understand the Self. Characters frequently use the rhetorical device of
accumulation (long lists), as if in a desperate, anguished attempt to find the right word or
phrase to express something, but they never manage it. The more characters speak, the less
they seem capable of communicating. K. writes:
It’s language that is the real subject of the play; language defines you, traps you,
doesn’t allow you to communicate (Interview with Anne Blancard, Radio-France,
quoted in Anne Ubersfeld, Bernard-Marie Koltès, p. 154).
He calls the play a tragedy of language (note that Ionesco describes his theatre, especially The
Bald Prima Donna in these terms too). Non-exchange is one of the key themes of K.’s play.
 Find examples in the play of monologues, soliloquies and the use of accumulation,
that demonstrate the absence of communication between characters.
 K. also raises the question of linguistic alienation in specifically political terms. Colonised
peoples are forced to speak in a non-native language, e.g. French or English. Language is
used by the coloniser to dominate, not to communicate.
3
 How exactly is this shown in the play?
 How do Alboury and Leonie show that a sort of communion is possible without
linguistic communication?
NEOCOLONIALISM
 Conflict and the absence of understanding are symbolised on a concrete level in play,
through the theme of neo-colonialism.
 The transition to freedom and independence of the ex-colonies in Africa, Asia, the
Caribbean, etc., hasn’t meant an end to domination. Colonial armies and bureaucracies have
withdrawn, but Western powers are still intent on maintaining maximum indirect control over
former colonies (or direct, in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan, for example) via political,
cultural and above all economic channels. This is known as neo-colonialism.
 K. shows that behind the façade of Northern reconstruction in developing countries,
exploitation is rife:
The women secretly cover the dead bodies of the workers in palm leaves to protect
them from the sun and the vultures. In the day, the lorries on the worksite pass over
them, and once the night returns, the women come back to put new branches on. After
a few days and nights, little mounds of branch mixed with flesh form, and gradually
become subsumed into the earth (“Carnet”, in Combat de nègre et de chiens, p. 116).
K. shows that constructions and developments by Northern countries in developing countries
are often founded on blood and exploitation (c.f. today’s Iraq).
 K. travelled extensively in Africa, and in Nigeria, he stayed in a camp for expatriate
workers. There, he had his idea for BBwD. He was both shocked and fascinated by the
exploitative attitudes and brazen racism of the European economic expatriates living in the
camp and working in the construction industry. He writes in a letter to his friend, the teacher
Hubert Gignoux, about an expatriate bar:
[I was told that] it’d only take a week here for me to become a racist; that they’re all
having little houses built in the Cévennes [French countryside] at great expense, for
‘later’; that black women are all sluts, without exception, they’re not unpleasant, but I
must be sure to disinfest myself after, that I shouldn’t be shocked the first time,
because they all have their clitoris cut and their vaginal lips slit: racist discourses about
them being mentally handicapped; total ignorance in politics, absolute certainty about
things, convictions that were as violent and definitive as they were conclusive. One
French guy who’d been repatriated from Algeria … said he only knew one thing, that
Arabs had wanted his skin, and that he’d get revenge one day, and that he was
already getting it, via the Nigerians. The same day, an African had died on the building
site, crushed by a Caterpillar. They made sure they showed me this was a banal fact,
almost everyday, laughable, even healthy, and proved to what degree this little society,
united in the ex-pat club around a pint, chatting happily amongst Whites, was made up
of hard, experienced men who were in control, tough guys (interview in Europe, Nov.Dec. 1997, pp. 19-20).
 Who in the play represents these attitudes, and how?
 One could say that Cal is an outwardly neo-colonial capitalist, whereas Horn
appears on the surface to be more charitable and understanding, even if he essentially
shares the same views as Cal. Do you agree? Justify your response.
 K. shows how this neo-colonial domination need not be permanent, and can be destroyed.
Horn and Cal are powerless in various ways, and so the reader can see a potential for change,
since Northern dominance is revealed as being fragile.
 In what ways are Horn and Cal powerless?
4
FRATERNITY
 K. says BBwD isn’t merely about neocolonisation of Africa through liberal capitalist global
expansion. He writes:
[the play] doesn’t talk about Black Africa – I’m not an African author -, nor does it talk
about neocolonialism, nor questions of race (interview in Europe, Nov.-Dec. 1997, p.
29).
Instead, he says it’s about “France and the Whites: something seen from a distance may
become easier to decipher” (“Afterword”, Combat de nègre et de chiens). K. distances the play
spatially from contemporary society, in order to create a more mythical, universal message
about intercultural, interpersonal understanding.
 Fraternity is a significant theme in this, and all K.’s plays.
 In spite of the fact that conflict prevails, many of K.’s characters hold the hope of forging
relationships with others, displaying the utopian desire for communication, communion,
understanding. Along with the breakdown of the deal and conflict, K. also proposes the idea of
fraternity.
 The play treats the idea of building bridges between cultures, making steps towards
understanding other cultures here, in increasingly multicultural Europe. He says:
I’m more interested in foreigners than French people. I had quickly understood that
they were the new blood of France, that if France lived only on the blood of French
people, it would become a nightmare (quoted in Anne Ubersfeld, Bernard-Marie Koltès,
p. 143).
 The word “fraternity” is significant for K. because he says it’s not based on sentimentality or
emotion, which could change, thereby leading to the end of relationship. Fraternity’s based on
a blood relationship that never changes. K. feels that on a metaphorical level, there should be
this unquestioning loyalty between humans. For K., this idea of fraternity is more vast and
powerful than love, or family. It’s commitment to compassion for fellow humans, acceptance of
the Other on the Other’s terms. It’s also non-hierarchical. Brothers are equal, as opposed to the
case of the patriarchal system of hierarchical relations (e.g. symbolised by Horn calling Cal “my
boy”).
 Who in the play displays this spirit of “fraternity”, and how?
 Fraternity involves reaching out and trying to understand other individuals, cultures,
peoples, on their terms, not on the Self’s terms.
 Who attempts this in the play?
 Leonie’s act of scarification is an extremely powerful visual scene. What does it
symbolise?
 Why is it significant that she scars her own face?
 Does K. idealise intercultural exchange and fraternity, or does he display a certain
amount of scepticism?
CONFLICT AND SCENIC LOCATION
 K. had been a theatre technician, and acoustics, set and lighting are always described with
meticulous attention in his plays. These theatrical elements are used to convey meaning, along
with the dialogue (the beginning of Sc. 20 is exclusively acoustic).
 The scenography [visual design of set, costumes, etc.] of BBwD constitutes a central
metaphor for the construction of the Self’s identity and conflict with the Other. K. speaks of the
significance of location:
The place is very important. I can’t write a play, get involved in the characters, unless
I’ve found something to contain them. A space that, in itself, tells practically the whole
5
story (Interview with Anne Blancard, Radio-France, quoted in Anne Ubersfeld,
Bernard-Marie Koltès, p. 112).
I wanted to speak about this place. About this metaphorical place, that spoke more
about life than about Africa itself (Interview in Europe, p. 41).
The scenic location of this play makes specific reference to geographical, political, economic
situation of neocolonialism in Africa, but it also becomes a more mythical location, making a
more universal statement about human relations in general. Like Joseph Conrad’s river in
Heart of Darkness, the location is both geographical and political, and metaphorical.
 Horn speaks of the power of his multinational construction company, that has influence in
Africa, Asia, Middle-East, America:
What chance can you have up against a head that has, from one end of the world to
the other, a thousand building sites, and on every one it’s got control over every
machine, every lorry, every cent, every man as if he were the only one, even down to
the bottle of whisky that’s there and that it knows is there, down to the cigarette I
smoke and that it knows I smoke (“Carnet”, in Combat de nègre et de chiens, p. 114).
Horn is under the delusion that his multinational has complete power and control over all its
projects around world. But this power is shown, via the play’s scenography, to be far from
insuperable.
 Explain how the scenography depicts in graphic, visual terms, the conflicts between
different ideologies in the play.
Play directed by Reya Wukovits-Kumbaraci at Vienne English Theatre. On one side
there’s the terrace of the site manager’s bungalow, and on the other, there’s a tree
representing a wild forest.
 Think about the symbolic meaning of the building site, the half-finished bridge, the
encroaching forest, the watchtower, the bungalow, the sea of mud, the fences, etc.
 How does the scenography symbolise the deconstruction of apparently fixed
boundaries between inside and outside, known and unknown, black and white, male and
female, European and African, SELF AND OTHER
A POSTMODERN HYBRIDITY OF DRAMATIC TRADITIONS
 Postmodernism is characterised in particular by a combination of different styles – high and
low cultural allusions, everyday and mythical references, reality and fantasy, prosaic and poetic
styles, European and non-European traditions. K. states that his influences range from KungFu star Bruce Lee and reggae musician Bob Marley, to neo-classical French dramatist Jean
Racine, to novelists Victor Hugo (one of his favourite books was Les Misérables), William
Faulkner, Dostoevsky Gorki, and poet Arthur Rimbaud.
 K.’s theatre displays a great many different influences.
 CLASSICAL THEATRE: Unlike Jarry’s avant-garde theatre, or Brecht’s epic theatre, or the
Theatre of the Absurd that preceded this period, K. didn’t feel an iconoclastic need to break
radically with former traditions of French neo-classical theatre, or Naturalist theatre.
6
 PLOT: K. differs from Jarry, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, where experimenting with the form of
theatre (the direction of the plot; the nature of the characters; time and space) was as
significant as the message contained within the form. For K., the story should be told in the
simplest, most comprehensible form, that conforms best to the age in which it’s written
(“Entretien avec Jean-Pierre Han”, in Une part de ma vie, p. 10). For K., plot is a central aspect
to a play. Crucial to K.’s concept of theatre is the idea of telling a good story. He therefore
moves significantly away from Absurdist experimental theatre, where plot’s abolished. He
reintroduces the Aristotelian focus on action and story, as central to the play (“Entretien avec
Michel Merschmeier”, in Une part de ma vie, p. 32). Form of theatre for K., should be
subordinated to content, i.e. the story.
 Racine, who K. quotes as a great inspiration, says a play should have very few events.
 Assess K.’s construction of plot, time and space in BBwD. To what degree could it
be described as “classical”?
 PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISATION: In classical theatre, according to Aristotle,
action should be of more importance than characterisation. But K. has characters that are
highly complex, clearly defined, with psychological depth. Unlike Brecht, he doesn’t make
characters into social or political archetypes. They’re individuals. And unlike Beckett, Ionesco
or Genet, they’re not puppets, created externally by social forces greater than themselves.
They have their human depth. The spectator is invited to feel compassion for all of them. In this
respect, K.’s more influenced by Shakespeare than neo-classical French theatre.
 Examine the psychological construction of each of the characters.
 REALISM AND MYTH: K.’s plays appear Realist, and they treat very real issues of
immediate significance in contemporary life: conditions of urban life; disparities between rich
and poor, “hosts” and immigrants; the blurring of cultural boundaries and cultural identities;
relationships between the rich North and poor South and the global impact of large commercial
organisations.
 But in his theatre, there are always levels of meaning that transcend immediate social,
historical, political or geographical references of works.
 BBwD is distanced from immediate historico-geographical location. How does K.
achieve this? Think about the names of the country, characters, etc.
 Language in his plays is a combination of very clear, light realist everyday speak, and
densely constructed poetry with highly complex and intricately structured long sentences. The
vocabulary is very simple and he eliminates all specialised or difficult words, but he never
resorts to cliché. There’s a distinct, disciplined rhythm to the speech he writes, that relies on a
regular number of syllables, and the repetition of words and phrases. Language becomes both
everyday, and timeless.
 Find examples of these different styles of language.
 The word “myth” is frequently used to describe K.’s theatre. He creates stories provide
insights into the mysteries of the world. His plays aren’t just sociological, though they always
treat socio-political themes. They make universal statements about human interaction and
conflict at large. They’re metaphors for universal philosophical themes.
 So BBwD isn’t just about neo-colonialism. It’s also about human interaction at avery basic
level. Jarry, Ionesco and Beckett might use universal themes and characters as metaphors that
can be applied to specific situations of geographical conflict or political tyranny. K. does the
opposite: he uses specific situations as metaphors for more universal themes. He creates an
allegorical theatre that comments both on universal themes, and on contemporary everyday
life.
 A MODERNIST ABSENCE OF AUTHORIAL POSITION: K. undermines the validity and
sovereignty of his theatre through doubt, perpetual interrogation, uncertainty. Like Genet, he’s
7
very aware of status the of theatre as artifice, as separate from the real world, and therefore as
incapable of dictating codes, morals, ethics, modes of life to the real world. He writes:
I have always rather detested theatre because theatre is the opposite of life; but I
always come back to it and I love it because it is the one place where you say: this is
not life (“Un Hangar à l’ouest” in Roberto Zucco (Paris: Minuit, 1990), p. 120).
 His theatre provides no conclusive answers; it isn’t doctrinal or didactic. It provides poetic
metaphors that require reader/spectator to interpret them. He renounces his position as a
sovereign, omniscient author, and hands responsibility to the reader/spectator.
CONCLUSION
 K.’s prioritisation of fraternity and mutual understanding is perhaps reflected in his
juxtaposition of various styles and influences in his theatre. He doesn’t eliminate or exclude
traditions, unlike his theatrical predecessors Jarry, Brecht, Ionesco, Genet.
FURTHER READING
For English-language secondary reading on Koltès, please consult Literature Online.
Alternatives théâtrales [journal in French], Special Issue on Koltès, no. 35-36, Brussels, 1990.
Contains bibliography on Koltès.
Bernard Desportes, Koltès: la nuit, le nègre et le néant (?: La Bartavelle, 1993). A rather
“musing” essay, but one that raises many themes central to Koltès’s works, for
example spatial, social and philosophical concepts of marginality.
Europe [journal in French], Special Issue on Koltès, no. 823-824, Nov.-Dec. 1997.
Bernard-Marie Koltès, “Carnet”, in Combat de nègre et de chiens (Paris: Minuit, 1989).
Monologues by Alboury, Leonie, Horn and Cal, that give additional insights into their
motivations.
*“Epigraph”, In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields (London: Methuen, 1997)
Une part de ma vie: Entretiens (1983-1989) (Paris: Minuit, 1999). An excellent
collection of interviews, where Koltès speaks about his works.
François Regnault, “Passage de Koltès”, in Nanterre Amandiers / les Années Chéreau (Paris:
Imprimerie nationale, 1990). Chapter on Patrice Chéreau’s staging of Koltès’s plays.
Anne Ubersfeld, Bernard-Marie Koltès (Arles: Actes Sud, 1999). An excellent study, that covers
all Koltès’s works, and that analyses his theatre from perspectives of theme,
production, language.
Robert Young, “Colonialism”; “Neocolonialism”; “Postcolonialism”, in Postcolonialism: An
Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).

In English.
When looking for materials in the university library, think laterally: search not only under
the author’s and text’s names, but also under key words related to the text. E.g. for
Bertolt Brecht, you could search under “German drama”; “twentieth-century German
theatre”; “art and war in Nazi Germany”; “political theatre”, etc. You can also conduct
online searches for materials using Literature Online and Jstor (available via the
university library website – click “Databases”). Again, think laterally if you don’t
immediately find relevant resources.
8