Brecht's Alienation Theory And Reflective Subjects

In order to break the "Fourth Wall",Brecht proposes alienation theory <Verfremdung>,which shows his reflection on subject consciousness.The alienation theory regards subjects(including actors and audiences)as the main experimental objects,replaces imitative actions with performance conditions,and allows viewers to watch,express,and evaluate events in the attitude of others;Instead of Aristoteles' resonance,Brecht is used to allow subjects to extract from illusion and think rationally.Brecht constructs an open theater space from the following aspects: plot,narrative,and relationship between actors and audiences.Then Brecht tries to take the audiences as the part of the drama and play the role of the subject in the process of cognition,subversion,and reconstruction of social order.The drama called "Good Person in Szechwan" has employed the alienation theory from the three aspects,such as fable theme,actor performance,and political theme.In "Good Person in Szechwan",Brecht writes three different physical states entitled “prostitute”,“pregnancy” and “laugh”.The subject firstly takes the presence of the body as a starting point,gains cognition from the inside out,reflects on the body based on body changes,and then uses social relationships as the radius to generate emotions from external stimuli.In the whole process,Shen De is no longer a single person,but a subject existing in social relations.Brecht takes social relations as a dimension to construct a new situation.In the situation,in order to allow the subject to obtain the space for emotional expression,Brecht shapes the image of material space such as "cigarette factory","mask" and "dissolving" space.Based on the material living space,Brecht explains in detail the process of the two space images of "cigarette shop" and "mask" from the material living space to the poetic space and then to the cosmic space.Combined with the liquidity of dissolving space,Brecht exposes the personal and contradictory nature of human consciousness.Finally,through the art of dissolving,Brecht enters the discussion of the reality and political nature from the imaginary space "Szechwan".Brecht combines his exile experience and takes "the tragic consciousness of exile" as an important content of time and space to discuss how the gods intervene in the living space and how the subject realizes self-rescue after the failure of the God's trial.Relying on the alienation theory with obvious purposiveness,Brecht tries to involve various aspects of the construction of the subject,by embodying the symbiosis and struggle between the individual and the collective.Based on the “present”,Brecht stimulates the subjects to develop independent thinking,establish free expression and a critical position,and then realize the political intent of the drama.