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CHAPTER Two: WHAT Is A DRAMA EVENT is how this aspect of growing into any culture impacts on the formation of the self, which he sees as a continuous, unending activity. He identifies human imagination as the crucial element in this process. As I have pointed out in the previous chapter the analysis of the nature of reality and the participants’ understanding of what they consider reality is a territory that is not explored in contemporary drama in education. Bond’s analysis of this subject and how he addresses it through drama can bring fresh ideas to LTD. This analysis makes it clear that the lessons in my action research should facilitate the questioning of what we do not notice as culturally set meanings and accept as real meanings in our surrounding rather than one specific ideological aspect of narratives. I continue to map Bond’s theory by discussing the role of imagination in the formation of the self, and to critique Bond’s concept of radical innocence as both are crucial in understanding the individual’s situation in society. Forming the Self and Radical Innocence I have discussed Bond’s concept of reality and ideology first because that is the context in which he considers the development of the self. The individual’s understanding of herself in a social context is the central element of Bond’s theory and practice. Bond starts out in his theory of the new-born child claiming that a baby is aware of itself, but not of the place it is in. It is a “monad - one thing which is everything, an infinity in which every point is the centre and the self. It is itself and the universe”.*** Bond claims that in this phase of existence the new-born cannot distinguish between itself and the universe, which means that even though it is dependent on the care of the outside world, it is not aware of it. Bond says that “if it is fed it not only feeds itself, it is the food. It is the world — a monad, a being enclosed within itself, the entirety of everything. I do not know how long this state lasts — only that there must be such a state". This stage where the early infant “confuses itself with where it is”?°° is important in Bond’s theory of the development of the self, because it is a state of “ontological autonomy”.””’ He links this period with the term ‘radical innocence’ that he coined to describe the base that the self is built on in his theory. The period described by Bond is a phase of development that is contested by researchers of psychology and neurobiology and philosophy too, there are many theories but no general agreement about this stage of self-formation. 294 Bond: Reason for Theatre, 113. 2955 Bond: Freedom and Drama, 207. 26 Ibid. 297 Edward Bond: Színház és drama, Criticai Lapok, vol. 19, 2010/3, 17. + 82 +
