ABSTRACT
Brecht's radical rejection of theatrical illusion relates in interesting ways to Enlightenment thought. While Brecht's historical materialism inevitably leads to an unabated totalizing condemnation of illusion, Diderot sees no contradiction between his enlightened materialist concept of the world and an effect of illusion celebrated in the theatre. In Brecht's critique of the Method we can thus discover an absolute dismissal of the idea that techniques of illusion could work at all within a cultural framework of enlightened modernity. No aesthetic of anti-illusion would be required, if illusion was simply 'stupid'. The self-contradiction implied in Brecht's anti-illusion argument accentuates a kind of paranoia that Brecht shares with other iconoclast movements, such as the Protestant Reformation, which reaffirm their own convictions by way of a double strategy of critique. The superstition projected onto the opponent's belief-system thus becomes the superstition experienced by the iconoclast herself.
