The posthumanist subject and the artistic representation of desire: From meta-theatre to digital performance

Abstract

While modern thought constructs the subject as a figure grounded in rationality and wholeness, this model has been increasingly questioned on philosophical and political levels since the late twentieth century. Poststructuralist and post-humanist approaches reconceptualize the subject not as a fixed and autonomous agent but as a dynamic process formed within discursive, technological, and bodily relations. This study examines the historical transformation of the subject through its connection with desire and investigates how this shift is reflected in artistic contexts. Employing a theoretical and interpretive method, it comparatively analyzes the interplay between subject, desire, and representation in aesthetic and performative structures. The findings indicate that desire operates not as an individual lack but as a productive force that reshapes the subject, destabilizes identities, and challenges normative frameworks. Theater and digital performance function as aesthetic-political spaces in which this transformation becomes both visible and experientially enacted. While meta-theatre disrupts representational unity and reveals the constructedness of subjectivity, digital performance intensifies this process by multiplying the body, rendering it permeable, and reconfiguring it through technological layers. In conclusion, the study discusses alternative forms of subjectivity produced through the mediation of desire across the continuum from meta-theatre to digital performance. It argues that these artistic practices invite a renewed consideration of subject, desire, and representation within contemporary theoretical debates and highlight the unique potential of performance arts for exploring post-humanist modes of subjectivity.