Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses that the "Butoh" shares problematics posed by French contemporary thought. This study attempts to clarify how Min Tanaka and Ko Murobushi present their unique post-human bodies responding to the disappearance of modern human subjectivity as Michel Foucault claimed.

Paper long abstract:

The present study puts its focus on the conceptual and practical echo between Japanese avant-garde dance "Butoh" and French contemporary thoughts. There has been great discussion about Butoh as Japanese unique style of dance. In fact, Tatsumi Hijikata established his unique body referring to the habitude of his home town in the north-east region of Japan. Conversely, as The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (2018) indicates, some researchers have shown an interest in Butoh's internationality and inter culture, avoiding an essentialist trap. However, what seems to be lacking is considering the resonance between the butoh's second generation and contemporary French thought. It is important that how Min Tanaka and Ko Murobushi have found the parallel relationships between their artistic activities and some concepts of French thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Gille Deleuze, Pierre-Félix Guattari.

For examples, Min Tanaka obtained opportunities to encounter with Foucault, Roland Barthes after his premiere in Paris in 1978. Ko Murobushi also had his premiere in Paris in same year, and Jean Baudrillard wrote a critic about his performance. And in compilation of Murobushi's texts published after his death, we can find that Murobushi cited from texts written by Foucault and Deleuze in order to work out a plan for his last unfinished piece.

Tanaka and Murobushi succeed surely the key concept and dancing method of Butoh as "the dead body", "the body which cannot stand up" invented by Hijikata, however, it should be noted that they seemed to refine these concepts by themselves and to realize the disappearance of modern humanistic subjectivity as Foucault claimed. To be concrete, Tanaka left his almost naked body as like object on the road in the city of Ginza and was arrested. Murobushi also animalize or materialize his body as shown in some pieces.

From examining their discourses and practices pushing the limits of humanistic figure legally and conceptually, it is suggested that these two dancers propose some examples of post-humanistic body. Accordingly, the investigation I attempt to indicates that they respond critically to contemporary philosophical problematics as Rosi Braidotti considers in The Post human.