The stereoscopic vision of [Marat/Sade] … enables the modern spectator to see 1793 and 1808 simultaneously…. Our interpretation of history is determined by the politics prevailing in our time. Weiss, then, attempts to define both the object viewed and the standpoint from which it is viewed. The effect of this is Brechtian Verfremdung—one cannot give oneself up to the events of the play. Rather, one is forced to watch the relationship between the two time schemes, and whatever meaning one finds in this play is conditioned by one's understanding of this stereometric sense of time.
But can we really talk about the "meaning" of Marat/Sade? Is it a play about politics or a play about madness? Directors have created coherent, popular productions from both assumptions. My title deliberately recalls R. D. Laing's book of 1967, The Politics of Experience. I believe that Laing's "existential psychology" might provide a method for looking at this play and resolving some of its contradictions. The publication date of Politics rules out any direct influence, and indeed my argument is not that there is direct influence but that the psychological insights of the anthropologist Gregory Bateson and of Laing will help to resolve the contradictions between madness and politics that we find in the play.
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