Oldal 86 [86]
OCR
FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE BONDIAN ÁPPROACH and social world, and it turns into the need for the world to be a just place, so that it can be at home in it according to Bond. This need is what Bond sees as the base of the self and calls radical innocence. In his study on Bondian theory the psychologist Bill Roper defines radical innocence as the ‘Pre-self’ and describes it as a basic orientation of the newborn human towards the world, and of the world towards it. That intrinsic to this new centre of awareness is its right to be; this is gradually articulated into its right to be at home, to make the world its home and for the world to be its home, which in time is further articulated into the right of itself and others to be at home in the world. This is the positive site on which self, understanding and character will come to be constructed.*” Roper also explains that this pre-self cannot be defined as a psychological self yet, and the transition to the next stage of formation is driven by the emerging consciousness. Bond links the opening of the neonate consciousness of itself as a separate entity to the recognition of the pattern in sensations of pleasure and pain. He argues that perceiving pattern is the first ‘mind event’, it is an act of consciousness that is the beginning of the formation of the self as it turns the sensations into concepts, and the concepts form a reality parallel to the experienced material reality in the mind. This is the beginning point of creating a map of itself and the material reality in the mind. The mapping of the world is also the creation of the self according to Bond." A crude translation would be that the meaning attributed to the world is actually the self itself. The reference point in this process of understanding is the neonate’s need to be at home in the world, its radical innocence." Asthe neonate becomes aware ofits surrounding a gap opens up betweenthe rest of the world anditself. Imagination is central in making meaning and also giving value according to Bond,*"© Amoiropoulos explains that imagination 312 Bill Roper: Imagination and Self in Edward Bond’s work, in David Davis (ed.): Edward Bond and the Dramatic Child, Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books, 135. 313 Bond: Freedom and Drama, 207. 314 Bond: The Cap, xxiv. 315 A number of studies have pointed at concepts similar to Bond’s radical innocence in other bodies of thought. Sahni (Sahni Urvashi: Keynote: Drama in Education: Finding self, finding home. Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 53, 2007/2, 44.) links radical innocence with AtmanBrahman in Vedanta philosophy. Katafiasz (2008) argues that Bond’s theory can be better understood through a Lacanian framework and compares radical innocence to ‘spectres’, a part of the human psyche that resists symbolisation and are »not influenced by ideology« (245). Amoiropoulos (2013) argues with Katafiasz about the usefulness of Lacanian terms in understanding Bond’s work and points to Castoriadis’s theory that »overlaps largely with Bond’s« (99). He also points out the differences between concepts used by them. I presented these examples because they help to highlight that Bond’s concept is connected to a large body of thought. 316 Ibid. a
