Dispositivo crítico: condições de possibilidade da crítica jornalística de teatro em Portugal

Critical Device: conditions of possibility in journalistic theatre criticism in Portugal (Dispositivo crítico: condições de possibilidade da crítica jornalística de teatro em Portugal) analyses the place of theatre criticism within the Portuguese theatrical polysystem. Such a programme was based on the hypothesis that journalistic theatre criticism hasn’t yet found an adequate insertion within Portuguese Theatre Studies, as it has been consistently subjected to either absolute omission or a punctual and diffuse use through a paradoxical strategy of (under-)figuration. That is, it is “allowed” as an example whilst its truncated quotation – for the convenience of the argument it should illustrate – not only decouples its practice from the cultural and ideological continuum, but also renders unachievable the measurement of the systemic relevance it assumed at the time of its original publication. This disqualification of journalistic criticism has two important consequences: the weakening of public space, affected by the exclusion of one of the practices that has constituted it since the 19th century; and the erasure of performative memory, an indispensable source for writing an effective history of theatre that isn’t simply literary. In order to achieve a sustainable visibility of journalistic criticism the dissertation follows two strategies. First, it aims to define journalistic criticism not as an irrelevant and transient epiphenomenon – an inconsequential provocation of the installed sociocultural order – but, instead, as a theoretical possibility that, in addition to its tangible achievements, also possesses the necessary tools to intervene in modelling the theatrical system and, thereby aims to, “contribute to a reform of practices and moods” (Leone, 2005a: 105). Such an enterprise implies a deconstruction of the concept of criticism (not merely in its theatrical vent) in order to determine the distinctive traits that allow for the notion of “journalistic criticism,” whilst also considering the recent theoretical and methodological frameworks that have enabled its integration in (European and North-American) academic discourse as a stand-alone problem. Secondly, and after having been established as a pertinent question, “journalistic criticism” is examined in the context of Portuguese academia, from where it emerges with a mark of “extemporaneity.” Given the obtained results, the “conditions of possibility” established beforehand are then illustrated through a study of the intervention of the Portuguese theatre critic Eduardo Scarlatti (1898-1990) during the 1920s and 1930s, particularly with regard to his important contribution to a modern discussion of the concept of criticism (and, within it, of theatre criticism).