Přehled o publikaci

In his 2022 book How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures, the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar published the findings of his team’s research on humans’ ability to work with several sets of intentions („I think that A believes that C is wrong about D’s offense towards E“). In so doing, Dunbar develops the concept of mentalisation as previously formulated by social linguists and philosophers. The ability to think with others at a certain level of complexity is, for Dunbar, the necessary mental capacity for the evolution of religion. In a previous essay, Pavel Drábek speculatively applied this concept to the experiencing of performance and analysed selected works from Prague Quadrennial 2023. In his paper, he would like to develop the theory of theatrical mentalisation even further and align it with Otakar Zich’s proto-phenomenology of the theatre and Jan Mukařovský’s aethestic function, norm and value as social facts. The resulting combination, I argue, is a very practical analytical tool that may allow us to understand what is going on while we are watching as part of an audience – experiencing performance with others: we watch while we are aware that there are others watching as well. The phenomenological reality of performance results from this interplay of minds that watch other minds watch others on stage make decisions and take action.