IN PRAISE OF NOT KNOWING: AN INTRODUCTION
1 What we can know about the origins of theater, which is always less than we would like, and yet not grounds for despair
2 How great works work against our desire to know, and why the question should always exceed the answer
3 The problem with thinking we know a thing or two: or the rise of the answer at the expense of the question
4 The special providence of certain questions: or the necessity for the re-enchantment of theater
PART ONE: THE INVENTION OF OUTSIDE: ON THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF THEATER
5 Borges and theater: what the great Argentine poet can tell us about the secret life of theater
6 Beneath Averroes' window: Borges' first clue; the family resemblance of play, ritual, and theater
7 The story of Abu-al-Hasan and the house of painted wood: or Borges' second clue, the ascension of the ocular
8 From the mimetic to the meta-theatric: the four modalities of theatrical expansion
9 The Companions of the Cave: Borges' third clue, on the necessity of thresholds
10 Anatomy of failrue: why the machine of theater breaks down
11 Recapitulation #1: or toward the what of theater
PART TWO: NINE AND A HALF TABLEAUX: ON THEATER’S EK-STATIC ABILITY TO BRING WHAT IS HIDDEN INTO VIEW
12 Welcome to the Museum of Ek-stasis: or when things "stand out" in theater
13 Exhibit one: Agamemnon redux: the optics of the tragic
14 Exhibit two: Abraham and Isaac: difference, variance, and making time manifest
15 Exhibit three: Romeo and Juliet: love and other spatial relations
16 Exhibit four: The Winter's Tale: seeing being
17 Exhibit five: Tartuffe: the not-so-secret life of inanimate objects
18 Exhibit six: Faust: the persistence of allegory
19 Exhibit seven: Woyzeck: reading other inds, or the discovery of subtext
20 Exhibit eight: The Three Sisters: the invention of the pause and intimations of the void
21 Exhibit nine: Galileo: "making strange": the fine art of seeing otherwise
22 Exhibit under construction: Angels in America: seeing double
23 Recapitulation #2: or toward the how of theater
PART THREE: FROM SOPHOCLES’ URN TO WITTGENSTEIN’S BOX: THEATER AND THE ENGENDERING OF FELLOW-FEELING THROUGHOUT THE AGES
24 Brief introduction: theater;s telos: the engendering of fellow-feeling
25 The ancients
26 The transition
27 The moderns
28 And now?
29 Recapitulation #3: or toward the why of theater
30 Final thoughts on fellow-feeling and the meaning of theater
