From Cleansed to Crave: The Paradox of 'Cruelty' and Love in Sarah Kane

『정화』에서 『갈망』으로 -사라 케인의 '잔혹'과 사랑의 역설

Despite the ubiquity of love in the work of Sarah Kane, the theme has been overshadowed by the violence that characterizes her early plays. This essay differentiates Kane from her contemporary "in-yer-face" playwrights, arguing that violence in Kane operates as a means of securing love. Antonin Artaud's concept of cruelty, often (mis)understood in a physical sense alone, provides a clue to the nature of Kane's violence and its relation to love. The essay focuses on Cleansed and Crave, both written in 1998, one about love's redemptive possibility, the other about its pure impossibility. What makes Cleansed hopeful is its violence that works as love's obstacle, creating the illusion that once it is removed love would be possible. The absence of violence in Crave on the contrary lays the illusion of love bare, making it Kane's most despairing play. Kane's oeuvre draws a trajectory of love from hope to despair; as a whole it stages the impossibility of love. To love the other requires the relinquishing of the self, making love logically impossible by depriving the verb of its subject. Love, if possible, would offer the bliss of unity, tearing out the constraint of the Symbolic Order. Kane's only alternative is death, as is expressed in Crave and 4.48 Psychosis.