Per una genealogia dello spettatore moderno

About a Genealogy of the Modern Spectator The paper proposes a genealogy (in the Foucauldian sense) of the modern spectator, with special attention to the German-speaking context. Starting from the Eighteenth Century, the paper examines the salient elements of the process that transformed theatre into a State institution and spectators into subjects in need of aesthetic, moral and ideological training. The paper interprets the legislative, structural and architectural operations that generated the modern spectator in the context of the birth of political ‘governmentality’, which – according to Foucault – produced the modern State. As well as being an agent of this ‘governmentality’, we can see theatre as a medium of criticism. This critical attitude can be particularly detected in the projects of emancipation of the spectator from the governance of the scene, which, however, is always conceived and realized by the scene itself. This is a structural paradox, which is consti tutive of modern theatre, being the result of the Enlightenment Project. This top-down emancipation project has never stopped tormenting and revitalizing the theatrical practice.