Faust is Dead. Mark Ravenhill’s View on a Posthuman Era

Abstract

This article departs from a close reading of Mark Ravenhill’s Faust (Faust is Dead) and argues that the play in its radical postmodern sensibilities asks fundamental questions about the future of the tragic hero in contemporary playwriting. One of its central notions is Fukuyama’s megalothymia to denote the human drive to compete with one another. As Fukuyama has delineated in his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), man has lost this drive and is lost in an apathetic existence. It is this state of lethargy that can be noticed in Ravenhill’s play, and that also explains the use of cruelty, as a means to undo this posthuman, desireless existence. Consequently, the tragic hero has become a spectator in his own drama.