From Modern to Post-Modern: A Sociological Analysis of Genet’s The Balcony

Abstract

Genet’s The Balcony is a sociologically relevant play for contemporary society. The play depicts a world-view troubled by a proletariat revolution against the unjust, self-serving and irresponsible power structures like the judiciary, the defence system and religion. Common men get fascinated by these power structures and want to impersonate the roles of the Bishop, the Judge and the General in Madame Irma’s studios. The revolution against these power structures is thwarted by the fascination of the masses for the power vested in these power positions. However, the chief of police and Irma form an alliance to overtake these slow and delinquent power structures and establish a more potent and more abiding power regime called the technocratic society. In this regime, things move fast and there is no time to waste. Simultaneously, there is a sense of sacrilege of values and splintering of meaning itself due to proliferation of images created by the photographers at the behest of the Chief-of-Police. However, the Chief-of-Police, intoxicated with his own powerposition mistakes his ascesis as permanent and absolute. It is the court ambassador. The Envoy, who articulates his power positions as sure to be surpassed by another powerstructure just as he superseded the traditional powerstructures of the Bishop, the Judge and the General. The paper hence undermines the fortification of any one power structure or episteme as ultimate, absolute and final and presents a postmodernist view of inconclusivity, unfinalizability and indefinite recession of meaning.