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This paper explores the intersection between posthumanism and ecological thought in Beckett's Endgame. Based on a reception-informed approach, this article revisits Beckett's Endgame with a special focus on how the recent context of pandemic affects our reading of the human in his work. Building on the existing body of critical response to Beckett's re-evaluation of the human, we particularly contend that Beckett's conception of the (post)human as a molecular being overcomes the humanist notion of human sovereignty and affirms, instead, continuity and relatedness of all lifeforms. We further want to argue that the metaphor of molecular (d)evolution evoked in Endgame undermines the unity of the self-contained subject and serves as a basis for an ethical response to the human and nonhuman other. To explicate this molecular vision, we examine how the play's metaphorical engagement with cross-species contagion undermines humans' claims to species exceptionalism and allows for inter-species connections. In this connection, we seek to align Beckett's apocalypse in Endgame with Colebrook's conception of the apocalypse as an 'inhuman event,' with 'a sense of a certain mode of humanity reaching its end and giving way to other forms.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the spirit of praxis, I connect Lacanian theory with the practice of making a video. Lucky in Savannah, which is an experimental adaptation of "Lucky's speech" from Samuel Beckett's (1954/1984) masterpiece, Waiting for Godot--"[t]he prototype of a modernist text" according to Slavoj Žižek (1991). For Žižek (2017), Beckett--rather than Shakespeare--is "a kenotic writer, a writer of utter self-emptying of subjectivity, of its reduction to a minimal difference" (p. 300). Will Greenshields (2017) argues that Žižek goes further than Lacan, and even performs an anti-Žižekian move when choosing Beckett over Joyce: "While for Joyce the beginning and end were so close as to be indistinguishable...for Beckett there is such a thing as a beginning, a bare minimum, and if the truly revolutionary act is to be achieved, one must return to it" (p. 13). For these reasons, it is certainly worthwhile to consider Beckettavec Žižek and others (cf. Greenshields, 2017; Moder, 2015). In my video, I employ a Beckettian aesthetic informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis, which leads me to the following question: Is Lucky's speech an example of "full speech" par excellence (Lacan, 1953), or is it a Real manifestation of the sinthome as "the meaningless letter that immediately procures jouissense, 'enjoyment-in-meaning,' 'enjoy-meant'" (Žižek, 1991)? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article addresses the problems of setting up definitive chronological frameworks of modernism/the international modern movement: it points at the asynchronicities between the histories of the visual arts, architecture, and literature, addressing some of the lacunae of mainstream accounts of (European) modernism, and offers up for consideration simultaneist mappings of modernism by scholars like J M Rabaté. Most importantly', it shows the multiple ways in which chronologies are intertwined with considerations of aesthetics/poctics, especially with a view to the modernist/postmodernist divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dysfunctional, fragmented, and restricted bodies are a cornerstone of Samuel Beckett's stage, a place where characters and actors alike find themselves forced to express the inexpressible, with notoriously diminished resources. Historically, existentialist readings of the Beckett canon have offered an insight into works which seem to raise essential questions regarding what it means to be when normative metanarratives have ceased to govern and "realist" escapism is denied. When it comes to discussions of phenomenological existentialism and its proponents, however, the works of Simone de Beauvoir often seem to be eschewed, or assimilated into those of the more famous Jean-Paul Sartre. This essay argues that if we revisit Beauvoir's The Second Sex we can gain fresh insight into Beckett's construction of his female characters (who, like Beauvoir, tend be overlooked), and a new existentialist reading of parts of his oeuvre can begin to emerge. Beauvoir, as well as being a figurehead of feminist theory, was a phenomenologist in her own right, and by using Happy Days as a case study her theories can be applied to Beckett just as readily as those of her male existentialist counterparts. This essay argues that in Happy Days, we are presented with a protagonist, Winnie, who does much to illustrate the limitations placed on the female body, which in this case is enclosed literally within the earth, and figuratively in its own immanence. I propose that Winnie presides "happily" over reduced but familiar circumstances which see her rendered captive not only by the demands of a relentless and punishing text, but also by a "cultural script" that would fix her to the spot. In her attempts to transcend herself as object, Winnie actually makes of herself her own "other", and demonstrates what it means, for her, to "become" a woman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Anglophone literary studies, the phrase 'the archival turn' is gaining currency as a term to denote something that has arguably always been part of our discipline, but that has not always been appreciated to the same degree. The 'archival turn' may create expectations that are too high. What is to be found by digging in literary archives is rarely spectacular. Manuscript research is hard and patient work, and it is often serendipitous. The occasional truffle is seldom discovered because one was looking for it. In order to find truffles without running the risk of untimely discouragement, it is probably best to be intent on finding only turnips. Starting from a turnip in the manuscripts of Beckett's novel UInnommable, this article argues for a steady, constant investment in textual and archival studies as an important aspect of literary studies. The urgent need for a critical edition in Beckett studies serves as a case study to, first of all, suggest a rationale for a digital scholarly edition, and more generally make a case for a revaluation of manuscript studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Samuel Beckett quotes Giacomo Leopardi when discussing the ablation of desire in his monograph Proust. In this context, the two authors have been read as key thinkers within the Quietist tradition. I argue that while the two writers' attempt to reach the respective existential cores of Beckettian 'suffering of being' and Leopardian ' souffrance' might seem to point towards the celebrated nothingness and desire-free state of their existential quest, closer examination reveals that the attempt to still desire common to both authors is frustrated and outdone by a combative desire that remains pivotal. Hence, while the desire to cease desiring is at the philosophical kernel of both authors' oeuvre, it also draws attention to and exacerbates the inextinguishable quality of desire. Indeed, despite having been brought together because of their similar aspiration for stoic ataraxic bliss and its aesthetic potential, it is an interesting occurrence that both Leopardi and Beckett go beyond the question of the ablation of desire. The two authors can thus only partially be read within a secular Quietist tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on longitudinal research into a partnership between a youth arts organisation and an inner city secondary school, using case study and reflective practitioner methodological approaches. Earlier projects in this same field of study explored a mimetic model of theatre practice, based on young people's dramatised stories that culturally diverse teenage participants described both as 'real' and delivering moral messages to their peers and wider community. In 2009 a play-building process, combining text from Shakespeare's King Lear with original material inspired by Beckett's Waiting For Godot and a devised contemporary narrative, was used to generate a new play called Searching For Lear. This work wove tragic and absurdist perspectives into a contemporary young person's street story. In this article, the project is analysed using literary theory and an analysis of mimetic processes. The play utilised a model of mimesis that complicated the relationship between the audience and the dramatic narrative, interrogating the basis on which dramaturgical meaning was constructed. These theoretical perspectives are considered in relation to research data, revealing participant and community audience perceptions of this work and its significance in its local cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an analysis of the intrinsically ambiguous representation of the maternal figure in Carlo Emilio Gadda's and Samuel Beckett's writings (with a particular focus on La cognizione del dolore and Beckett's prose Trilogy), which is characterized both by an absolute kind of love and by aggressive desires vented against her. Adopting a Kristevan theoretical framework, a close relationship between the literary trope of matricide and the fragmented notion of the self is identified. In this context, particular emphasis is paid to the narrative imagery of abjection (prevalently in the form of defilement and obscenity) accompanying the maternal trope, a literary and cultural phenomenon which according to Kristeva disturbs identity, system, and order. The present investigation identifies the intrinsically disruptive effect of the maternal figure on both narrative linearity and on the very notion of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here I begin with Lecercle's assumption that language is a "problem" for Deleuze, who like Beckett wants to demonstrate the limits of (literary, poetic) language yet can only do so by writing. In "He Stuttered" Deleuze says truly experimental poets stretch the two (initially associative and syntactic) axes of langue to a point "far from equilibrium" where they begin to "stutter" and words (like atoms) begin to self-divide and redouble. After exploring this model and Deleuze's related discussion of Beckett's narrative praxis of "exhausting logical possibilities" in "The Exhausted," I point out that although he specifically rejects "metaphor" as a term tied to classical semiotics, and in his discussions of Beckettian exhaustion and the stuttering Iangue-machine (which vibrates the classical metaphoric-metonymic axes beyond recognition) does seem to overthrow semiotics, Deleuze's own discourse seems constantly driven by metaphorical language. For instance, the notion that beyond langue lies "silence" is itself a poetic (metaphorical) rather than "logical" one, as is the argument that Beckett's inclusive-disjunctive "non-style" tries to "give the possible a reality that is itself exhaustible." In a final section I show how a model based on the background noise (not sound/silence) of information theory can be fruitfully compared with Deleuze's vibrating-langue model, and suggest that the former may actually be a simpler, more "efficient" model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores Samuel Beckett's urgency of writing, which this paper aims to substitute a psychoanalytic frame for the existential and even nihilistic context. A philosophical interpretation of the metaphor for the human condition that characterizes the ensemble Beckett's work is noted to be an interest.

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