[Thesis defense] 26/01/2026 - Agustín PEREZ BAANANTE: «Aesthetics of compassion: The theatre of Angélica Liddell and Juan Mayorga in the light of Martha C. Nussbaum's theory of emotions» (UPR ICTT)

Mr Agustín PEREZ BAANANTE will publicly defend his thesis entitled: «Aesthetics of compassion: The theatre of Angélica Liddell and Juan Mayorga in the light of Martha C. Nussbaum's theory of emotions», supervised by Ms Antonia AMO-SANCHEZ, ARNO GIMBER and Cristina Oñoro Otero, under the joint supervision of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), on Monday 26 January 2026.

Laboratory

UPR 4277 ICTT - Cultural Identity, Texts and Theatricality Laboratory

Composition of the jury

Mr José Julio VéLEZ SAINZ	Universidad Complutense de Madrid	Examiner
Mr Jorge Santiago MASSó CASTILLA	Universidad Complutense de Madrid	Examiner
Mr Paola RANZINI	Avignon University	Examiner
Mr Ángel Eugenio ABUíN GONZáLEZ	University of Santiago de Compostela	Examiner
Ms Isabelle RECK	University of Strasbourg	Examiner

Summary

It is often said that Angélica Liddell and Juan Mayorga, although belonging to the same generation of theatre artists (Corrales Díaz-Pavón 2022), are aesthetically poles apart: Liddell is said to embody a visceral, performative theatre (Bottin 2012; Eguía Armenteros 2013; Vasserot 2015), while Mayorga practices a reflective, dramatic theatre of ideas (Otero García 2020). However, a close reading shows that, beneath the differences in language, the same concern emerges: to articulate emotion and thought in the stage experience as a compassionate response to human suffering. This is the framework for the thesis entitled Aesthetics of Compassion: The Theatre of Angélica Liddell and Juan Mayorga in the Light of Martha C. Nussbaum's Theory of Emotions. She argues that these aesthetics are not antagonistic but antigonal, in that they confront injury and law in order to challenge the spectator and propose compassion as a horizon of meaning. Drawing on Martha C. Nussbaum's philosophy, which is rooted in the affective turn but marked by a neo-stoic and neo-Aristotelian reading, the research conceives of emotions as evaluative judgements with a cognitive content capable of orienting perception and action. Vulnerability is seen not as a lack to be overcome but as a constitutive condition of ethical and political life. Nussbaum's thinking, attentive to the material causes of well-being and the aspiration to a shared good life, enables us to analyse the stage as a moral laboratory where embodied forms of judgement are tested.

The thesis has five aims: (1) to offer new readings of Liddell and Mayorga based on the theory of emotions; (2) to show the potential of this approach for thinking about the relationship between aesthetics, ethics and politics; (3) to examine the contemporary stage from the perspective of vulnerability and community reflection; (4) to update Aristotelian thought re-read by Nussbaum in order to analyse the ethical-political dimension of suffering; (5) to propose the concept of the aesthetics of compassion as a theoretical tool for approaching contemporary theatre. Methodologically, the work combines textual analysis, scenic study and theoretical reflection according to an elliptical device, a notion borrowed from Benjamin (2011) that Mayorga reactivates: two distant foci - in this case, Liddell and Mayorga - generate a productive space for interpretation. The analysis takes up Aristotle's cognitive structure of compassion (judgements of gravity, non-guilt and similarity of possibilities), reinterpreted by Nussbaum through the eudaimonist judgement, according to which the suffering of others is part of our common aspiration to a good life. Each chapter is organised around one of these judgements: the first explores the gravity and vulnerability at the heart of the theatrical experience; the second addresses non-guilt through scenic responsibility; the third examines similarity and the emotions that hinder openness to the other, drawing on Winnicott (1965, 1971) and Bollas (1978, 1987). All this leads to the idea of a contemporary catharsis without terror, based on the formation of compassionate communities.

Comparative analysis shows that, in Liddell, passion is not an end but a means of developing a poetic reason born of shared vulnerability, while in Mayorga, thought reaches its fullness when it is embodied in emotion. These two theatres, far from being opposed, form an antigonal relationship: the passion that opens the way to thought and the idea that is fulfilled in emotion converge towards the same conviction - that of a compassionate culture capable of resisting structural violence and reminding us, in the face of fictions of omnipotence and dogmatic closure, that we can only live in relationship, supported by each other.

Keywords : Compassion, Contemporary theatre, Liddell, Mayorga, Nussbaum