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CHAPTER Two: WHAT Is A DRAMA EVENT
in Bondian theory “embodies our ability to produce Values” and “radical
innocence puts forward our existential need to do so”.*” Understanding our
surrounding and evaluating it is needed to be able to survive. The process of
enculturation of a child is that of growing into the socio-cultural context and
using structures and elements of the surrounding culture to make meaning
and give value. Damasio writes about social and cultural homeostasis to
describe the enculturation process that the individual goes through.**
The scientific term suggests that to be able to exist in a society the individual
needs to take in and make elements of the surrounding culture its own. Bond
argues that as both the child and society use imagination to give meaning
and value in the process of enculturation the child’s imagination assimilates
elements of the culture it lives in. Imagination is used in the continuous re¬
creation of this subjective reality — the child’s understanding of the world in
its mind — which is also the formation of the self, because the experienced¬
understanding of its surrounding contains the child’s relationship to
the objective reality as well." The relationship to our surrounding is
the defining part of our self as it determines our thinking about it and
ourselves, and also our actions in it.
Bond sees the self as a “palimpsest of maps”*”° that is built on the need
to be at home in the world, the radical innocence, but contains the layers of
understanding of world where culturally determined values mix with those
based on personal values. In another source Bond uses the metaphor of layers
of sand, to stress the fluidity of interaction between layers. And under these
layers is the need to be at home in the world.**! However, there is a big difference
between this core segment of the self and the further layers that incorporate
the cultural elements surrounding the individual, because while radical
innocence is the human need for justice, the later layers of the palimpsest self
incorporate the injustices present in society. The basic tenet of Bond’s theory
is that the contradiction between striving for justice and living in unjust
societies presents itself within the self. It is the conflict between what he calls
the radical innocence and encultured layers of the palimpsest self.*”? Bond
sees this as an unresolvable conflict which does not have a right solution,
but creates a problem, a hiatus in understanding to which each person needs
to respond individually. Bond conceptualises this conflict within the self
as the “human paradox”.*? “The paradox is the sudden, dramatic assertion
317
Amoiropulos: Balancing Gaps, 75.
Damasion: Self comes to mind, 30.
Bond: The Cap, xxxiii.
320 Bond: Reason for Theatre, 117.
321 Edward Bond: Interview at ‘Stop Acting’ event by Addm Bethlenfalvy at Marczibäny Teri
Művelődési Központ, Budapest, 11 December, 2009.
322 Bond: Freedom and Drama, 212.
323 Tbid.
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319
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