Chapter 6 - Transembodiment as Translation

Summary

In this chapter, I consider how translation pertains to the body on stage as a site of multiplicity and propose the term ‘transembodiment’ in my analysis of Weronika Szczawińska and Bartosz Frąckowiak’s Komornicka. Biografia pozorna (Komornicka. Ostensible biography, 2011). My intention in considering transembodiment is to analyse the effects and limitations of physical and fictional bodies as they appear within the mimetic, representational and concrete frame of the theatre space. Ultimately, I argue that the body is itself a paradigmatic site of translation, which can neither be reduced to nor fully dislodged from language, and which is both submitted to and escapes processes of mimetic representation. In this way, I do not offer transembodiment as a methodology but rather as a structure and a consequence of the process of transmission in the theatre that invites new subjects to emerge and come into being.