Intercultural theory, postcolonial theory, and semiotics: The road not (yet) taken

Abstract

Elam's observation that during the past decade or so the semiotic approach to theatre studies has lost its cultural and academic prominence seems unquestionable, even though it should be qualified with the observation made by Sue-Ellen Case and many other prominent theatre theorists that almost all modern theatre theory is based on the semiotic project. Perhaps nowhere was the attempt to move beyond semiotics more strongly marked than in the various forms of poststructuralism, which, by their very assumption of that name, attempted to develop a discourse both beyond and often in direct opposition to semiotics.

In fact, the poststructuralist project did not produce a large body of significant theatrical theory. Much more important have been the various types of cultural studies, including various gender and ethnic studies, which never attempted to similarly distance themselves from semiotics. Among the most prominent of the various approaches to cultural studies that emerged in the late twentieth century was postcolonial studies, an approach to theatre studies that, like the various types of ethnic and gender studies that immediately preceded it, not only draws significantly upon a semiotic background, but is engaged in projects in which semiotic analysis provides perhaps the most useful potential tools. Thus, after the anti-semiotic reaction involved in at least certain aspects of poststructuralism, the reemergence of questions of representation, of historical placement, and of authorial voice in postcolonial studies provides a potentially rich new field for semiotic investigation.