“Vielleicht kommt die Gewalt von innen”: Dea Lohers Poet(h)ik der Gewalt

Abstract

Almost all of Dea Loher’s plays deal with violence in one way or another. But Loher’s scenarios do not seem to follow a certain concept of violence. On the one hand violence seems to “come from inside,” like an irresistible drive; on the other hand it is presented as a stroke of fate—which might be a reference to Greek tragedy. Also, the difference between victim and perpetrator is blurred in Loher’s plays. This shows that Loher questions concepts of violence which insist on a strict separation of the positions of victim and perpetrator. At the same time the problem emerges that the experience of violence can no longer be associated with certain agents, e.g., with persons or institutions. In the worst case, violence cannot be related to anything at all. Loher’s treatment of violence is characterized above all through its uncanny omnipresence that leads to a naturalization of violence. All in all, Loher presents violence as an opaque phenomenon oscillating between an essentialist model which comprehends violence as an anthropological constant and a mythico-metaphysical concept suggesting that violence was and is always already there. (CK; in German)