However, in keeping with Kundera’s theme, I shall argue that the essence of absurdity in the play is that Berenger, the quintessential clochard or anti-hero, is caught between two idealized and false worlds, namely, the world of the provincial petit bourgeoisie and that of the mindless dynamism of the rhinoceroses. Many interpretations have been offered, ranging from the sociological to the psychoanalytic to the surreal. Rhinoceros has often been cited as one of the great paradigms of the theater of the absurd. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.” 3Įnter Ionesco. Kundera notes in passing the theatrical games we play with tombstone inscriptions and stories of the dearly departed: “Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Philosophical kitsch, on the other hand, tries to establish monism in place of actual plurality it posits essentialist stereotypes about the supposed nature of our concretized and individualized being in such a way that we become diffused and lost in idealized ontological categories. In effect, political kitsch is the ideology of a sort of fantasy land. The precise and specific experiences of individual human beings in their daily struggles with the beauty and filth of life-and everything in between-are thereby ignored or negated.

2 Whether the paradise is of communism (the classless society) or capitalism (mindless consumerism), Kundera argues that the resultant “happiness” is superficial, propagandized, idealized, and false. In terms of politics, he sees kitsch as the notion that political transformations can bring a sort of secular paradise to the world. Valentine, Savannah College of Art and Designįor the purpose of this paper, I shall understand kitsch to be not merely the attempt to pass off “unworthy goods” as art, but also, in Milan Kundera’s words, “the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.” 1 For Kundera, kitsch appears in politics and philosophy, as well as art.

Rhinoceros eugène ionesco