Clowning ethics or about red-nosed morals
Clowning ethics or about red-nosed morals

Author(s): Andreea Jighirgiu
Subject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Fine Arts / Performing Arts
Published by: Editura ARTES
Keywords: clown; ethics; norms;
Summary/Abstract: We know throughout history several human categories or distinct groups that place themselves outside of ethics. People suffering from mental illnesses, children, fools/pranksters or acrobats, etc. This category could, of course, also include sex workers, stigmatized but accepted as part of the world in which we live. Beyond all these categories of individuals that transcend ethics and morality, there is another character, a cultural archetype born at the dawn of human civilization, having a winding, unpredictable and determining evolution at the level of the collective unconscious: the clown. The clown, a hypersensitive being who does not have a security of identity and who is characterized by confusion of consciousness, violates all the rules of ethics. In this sense, he uses the abnormal and the unusual as tools of manifestation. But can its expression be considered a breach of ethics, as long as it is born outside the norms, outside the generally accepted morality, its role being to highlight what lies beyond the limit? If we assert that this archetype is useful to ethics, what then are the attributes of this utility?

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