The Failure of Man’s Dominance over the World in the Beckettian Drama: Endgame Case Study

Authors

  • Majid SHIRVANI PhD Student, University of Vienna, Austria
  • Cristina Georgiana VOICU Romanian Academy, Iasi Branch

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18662/po/25

Keywords:

failure, identity, (in)humanity, material world, existentialism,

Abstract

This article leads a phenomenological reading towards the dramaturgy of Samuel Beckett and more specifically his Endgame with recourse to the doctrine of Merleau-Ponty. By mapping out a drama that decentralizes subject-ivity, Beckett‟s Endgame textualizes the subversion of the constancy of identity (“être-pour-soi”) of the modern man who holds a dichotomous look on subject and object in his dominating view on the world. From this perspective, Endgame exudes an atmosphere of existential Angst which peaks in a potential way of being that prevails in the hope for an authentic life but yet at the same time falls in a cosmic exile that emanates from man‟s failure in his dominance over the world. Here, the examples of the Hegelian master-bondage concept and experimental psychology are felicitous reflections of this tragic relegation of man. Accordingly, registering the Pontian phenomenology of disembodiment delineates the characters of the Endgame as (in)human beings lost in a meaningless space that abandons all attempts to influence the progress of the mechanistic material world they live in. Nevertheless, this case study traces the humanistic resonance of man to bestow new methods of exploring Beckett‟s „art of failure‟ as a relevant aesthetic reaction of the destabilized man in the modern world.

Author Biographies

Majid SHIRVANI, PhD Student, University of Vienna, Austria

Majid Shirvani is a junior researcher who recently completed his M.A. studies (2016) at the Department of English Language and Literature of Lorestan University, Iran. His scientific interests include social sciences, comparative and postmodern literature, deconstructive studies, and psychoanalytical criticism. He has also held a junior assistant position at the University of Kuhdasht, Iran (2016-2017).

Cristina Georgiana VOICU, Romanian Academy, Iasi Branch

Cristina-Georgiana Voicu is a former Post-PhD Fellow at The Romanian Academy, Iasi Branch. She received her PhD in Humanities/Philology (2012) from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi. Her scientific interests focus on cultural studies, philosophy of language, discourse analysis, epistemology and cognitive science. Her overall 3 h-index score shows both her productivity and citations in Google Scholars.

References

Adorno, T.W. (1988). „Trying to Understand Endgame‟. In H. Bloom (ed.). Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.

Anderton, J. (2013). Beckett’s Creatures: Art of Failure after the Holocaust. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29143/1/606800.pdf, Accessed on November 25, 2017.

Beckett, S. (2010). The Selected Works of Samuel Beckett, I-IV, Paul Auster (ed.). New York: Grove Press.

Bullington, J. (2013). The Expression of the Psychosomatic Body from a Phenomenological Perspective. New York: Springer.

Coe, R.N. (1964). Beckett. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd. Carr, P. (2008). Spiritual exercises and the aesthetic refinement of the moral self. In C. Palmer and D. Torevell, The Turn to Aesthetics: An Interdisciplinary Exchange of Ideas in Applied and Philosophical Aesthetics. Liverpool: Liverpool Hope University Press.

Marks, D. (2014). “Gathering Thinglessness”: Samuel Beckett’s Essayistic Approach To Nothing. PhD Thesis. Louisiana State University. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1598&contex t=gradschool_dissertations, Accessed on December 28, 2017.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2013). Phenomenology of Perception. Translate by Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge.

Yeganeh, F. (2010). Literary Schools. Tehran: Rahnama.

Downloads

Published

2018-07-05

How to Cite

SHIRVANI, M., & VOICU, C. G. (2018). The Failure of Man’s Dominance over the World in the Beckettian Drama: Endgame Case Study. Postmodern Openings, 9(2), 145-160. https://doi.org/10.18662/po/25

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 2 (2018): Postmodern Openings

Section

Theoretical articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant this journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work, with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g. in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as an earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Postmodern Openings Journal has an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND

CC_BY_NC_ND