The Aura of Againness

Abstract

By examining the complexities of aura, authenticity, materiality, and reception in the context of adaptation studies, Chapter 35 argues against the idea that adaptations are a specific kind of text and in favor of the idea that adaptations are actively constituted as such through performance: through live and embodied acts of identification that have significant material consequences. Drawing on several foundational concepts in adaptation studies and performance theory, Chapter 35 articulates a reception model of adaptation that is relevant not only to theatrical adaptations but across media and genres by showing the ways the aura of adaptation is generated as much through the unique spatiotemporal presence of an artwork as through its momentary disappearance from its place and time.