ABSTRACT
The relevance of Diderot's aesthetics of alienation for contemporary culture becomes palpable in mind-provoking works such as Lars von Trier's 2003 Dogville and the TV series The Wire, created by David Simon. The Wire represents an even closer parallel to Diderot's aesthetics because of its sociological concern with alienation. Conceived by David Simon in the tradition of the realist novel, the TV series unpicks the different facets of post-millenium capitalism in American urban life. The notion that determines the difference between Brecht and Diderot's respective concepts of alienation most fundamentally is constituted by the principle of theatricality. Whereas Brecht's alienation effect is intended to control and contain the aesthetic qualities that after Plato are understood as quintessentially theatrical, Diderot's aesthetic of alienation embraces theatricality. Brecht and Diderot's different attitudes to theatricality are best illustrated in the contrast between Plato's shadow-cave, traces of which can be read in Brecht's aesthetics, and Diderot's revision of it.
