Yakshagana – Bhasmasura Mohini
Karnataka, India – A vibrant fusion of myth, music, and dramatic movement
Thinking Through Michel Foucault (1926-1984)’s Philosophy on the Art Essence
“Theatrical Seduction and the Technologies of the Body”
1. Subjectivation through Spectacle
In Yakshagana, Bhasmasura Mohini stages a cosmic trick: the demon Bhasmasura gains the power to incinerate anything he touches, only to be seduced and destroyed by Mohini, the enchantress-avatar of Vishnu. This myth is not simply a tale—it is a dramatic allegory of subjectivation: how one becomes a subject not by resisting power, but by being folded into its performance.
Foucault's understanding of subjectivity involves practices that both constrain and constitute the self. The actors in Yakshagana inhabit stylized personas—heroes, demons, deities—through elaborate costumes, thunderous vocalizations, and ritualized gestures. But these roles are not masks: they are practices that cultivate the performer’s inner transformation through repetition and self-discipline, forming what Foucault would call ethopoiesis, the crafting of one's ethical being.
2. The Aesthetic Body as Power-Play
In Yakshagana, the body is exaggerated, ceremonial, and de-naturalized. Mohini’s seduction of Bhasmasura is not erotic in a Western sense, but rather an aesthetic maneuver—a choreography of divinely coded movements. Foucault’s notion of the aesthetics of existence applies here: Mohini’s body becomes an artifice that generates ethical knowledge, a visual argument against hubris. Her gestures are not simply beautiful—they are tactical, philosophical, and political.
The theatre becomes a laboratory for ethical experimentation: can beauty trick brute power? Can performance undo violence without repeating it?
3. Genealogy of Desire and Control
Yakshagana itself is a genealogical form—born from temple ritual, epic poetry, and folk tradition. In this performance, desire is both weapon and vulnerability. The demon Bhasmasura represents uncontrolled desire empowered by divine boons. Mohini, in contrast, is a disciplined, deliberate manifestation of divine māyā (illusion). Foucault's model of power-as-productive is seen here: power creates desire, enables identity, and then destabilizes it.
The seduction of Bhasmasura is not about deceit, but revelation. His destruction is the unveiling of his own undisciplined self, a fall not through external violence but through internal excess. Mohini’s performance is a philosophical act — a dramatization of care, control, and the limits of divine force.
4. Truth as Embodied Illusion
Foucault rejected the idea of truth as a fixed correspondence with reality. Instead, he pursued the idea of truth games — localized practices in which what is considered “true” is conditioned by culture and discipline. In Yakshagana, truth is not uttered but danced. Mohini reveals the demon’s truth not through words, but through embodiment. The stage itself becomes a technē, a space of epistemological performance.