Misfitness: the hermeneutics of failure and the poetics of the clown – Heidegger and clowns

• Autor(a) principal: Beré, Marcelo
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/presenca/article/view/91658
• topic: Heidegger; Clown; Phenomenology; Philosophy; Theatre; Fenomenologia do palhaço

The article presents some Heideggerian ideas applied to the art of clowning. Four principles of practice of the clown’s art are analysed in the light of misfitness – a concept based on the clown’s ability not to fit into theatrical, cinematic and social conventions, thus creating a language of his own. In an ontological approach, this article seeks to examine what it means to be a clown-in-the-world. Following a Heideggerian principle, the clown is analysed here taking into account his artistic praxis; a clown is what a clown does: this is the basic principle of clown poetics. The conclusion proposes a look at the clown’s way of thinking – which is here called misfit logic – and shows the hermeneutics of failure, where the logic of success becomes questionable.