Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd is an innovative collection of essays, written by leading scholars in the fields of theatre, performance and eco-criticism, which reconfigures absurdist theatre ...through the optics of ecology and environment. As well as offering strikingly new interpretations of the work of canonical playwrights such as Beckett, Genet, Ionesco, Adamov, Albee, Kafka, Pinter, Shephard and Churchill, the book playfully mimics the structure of Martin Esslin's classic text The Theatre of the Absurd, which is commonly recognised as one of the most important scholarly publications of the 20th century. By reading absurdist drama, for the first time, as an emergent form of ecological theatre, Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd interrogates afresh the very meaning of absurdism for 21st-century audiences, while at the same time making a significant contribution to the development of theatre and performance studies as a whole. The collection's interdisciplinary approach, accessibility, and ecological focus will appeal to students and academics in a number of different fields, including theatre, performance, English, French, geography and philosophy. It will also have a major impact on the new cross disciplinary paradigm of eco-criticism.
Legal systems across the world contain the obligation to prevent ‘absurd interpretations’ of law. In international law, an instruction to avoid ‘manifestly absurd’ interpretations can be found in ...Article 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This gives rise to at least two questions that I will take up in this article. First, what is meant by the ‘absurd’ that is to be avoided in legal interpretation. The short answer to this question is: no one knows exactly. The absurd, by its very nature, resists definition in pre-given categories, as I will argue on the basis of four core thinkers on the absurd: Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Thomas Nagel. The second question is more technical and easier to answer: how should lawyers try to avoid absurd interpretations? Here, I turn to absurdist writing and the theatre of the absurd for assistance. Absurdist writing and theatre have developed a number of techniques to make the absurd appear, to let the audience experience that something is fundamentally out of tune. Lawyers use similar techniques, but in reverse and with an opposite purpose: they add exposition, narrative, reasonable language, and stable, rational legal personae. In this way, they boost the rationality and reasonableness of the legal order. However, to come full circle, it is exactly the pretension of rationality and reasonableness that makes the law vulnerable to manifestations of the absurd. The rationality of law is the springboard for the very same absurdity it tries to suppress.
There is no doubt that one of the cruelest and incomprehensible events of humanity has been the Shoa, since it makes us reflect on the great uncertainty of the human being that lies in the problem of ...evil and the suffering of the Other. When verifying the testimonies of Primo Levi in Si esto es un hombre, we observe the crudeness and brutality to the point of nonsense. Thus, the objective of this work is to propose a closer approximation about the human behaviors and attitudes using some concepts of Emmanuel Levinas. From some fragments of Levi’s testimonies, the paradox posed by the philosopher regarding the Other is perceived, that is, how the author-protagonist faces a revelation of himself when considering the responsibility of the Me towards his neighbor. Levi’s texts, therefore, explain the human being from an alternative perspective, in which, following Levinas, the proximity or the event of face-to-face relationships is necessary to perceive the epiphany of the Infinite. In this way, some forms of intersubjectivity interpreted under the gaze of the Face will be addressed.
Es indudable que uno de los acontecimientos más crueles e incomprensibles de la humanidad ha sido la Shoa, ya que nos hace reflexionar en torno a la gran incertidumbre del ser humano que radica en el problema del mal y del sufrimiento del Otro. Al constatar los testimonios de Primo Levi en Si esto es un hombre observamos la crudeza y la brutalidad hasta el sinsentido. Así, el objetivo de este trabajo es plantear una aproximación más acerca de los comportamientos y actitudes del ser humano utilizando algunos conceptos de Emmanuel Levinas. A partir de algunos fragmentos de los testimonios de Levi, se percibe la paradoja planteada por el filósofo en torno al Otro, es decir, cómo el autor-protagonista enfrenta una revelación de sí mismo al considerar la responsabilidad del Yo frente a su prójimo. Los textos de Levi, por tanto, explican al ser desde una mirada alternativa, en la que, siguiendo a Levinas, es necesaria la proximidad o el acontecimiento de las relaciones humanas cara-a-cara para percibir la epifanía del Infinito. De esta manera, se abordarán algunas formas de intersubjetividad interpretadas bajo la mirada del Rostro.
Resumen El presente artículo quiere reflexionar sobre el cómo diseccionando el panorama del arte actual, fundamentándonos en pensadores partidarios en instaurar su declive como poder cultural ...potencial, podemos recuperar de la manera más sensible el verdadero valor del arte contemporáneo e instaurarlo dentro del marco de la educación; recuperando lo utilitario y elevando su condición al grado de lo fundamental. El en lugar del arte, muchos son por tanto los creadores transformados en artistas lo que llevan a las aulas la pretensión por fomentar el pensamiento crítico, por querer enseñar arte. A este tenor, el método para enseñar las artes pasa entonces por desestimar las artes y situarlas en su contexto ideológico actual; enfrentar este absurdo -que tiene de creación y permutación fútil- al lugar en que la intención se transforma en un acto de reflexión creativa ligada a la nadería. Y de ese lugar de las cenizas, empoderar al arte y alumno en el proceso meramente creativo para esclarecer que el arte en la pedagogía, se transforma con el objetivo de (re)crear para explicar; y de esa flexibilidad se empodera lo inefable perdido del arte. Abstract This article wants to reflect on how to dissect the current art panorama, based on ourselves on party thinkers in establishing its decline as a potential cultural power, we can recover in the most sensitive way the true value of contemporary art and establish it within the framework of education; recovering the utilitarian and elevating its condition to the degree of the fundamental. In place of art, many are the creators transformed into artists that lead to the classroom the pretension to encourage critical thinking, for wanting to teachart. To this extent, the method to teach the arts then passes by rejecting the arts and placing them in their current ideological context; to confront this absurdity - which has a futile creation and permutation - to the place in which the intention is transformed into an act of creative reflection linked to the nudity. And from that place in the ashes, to empower art and student in the purely creative process to clarify that art in pedagogy is transformed with the aim of (re) creating to explain; and from that flexibility is empowered the ineffable lost of art.
Born to a French-Canadian mother and Algerian father, Ouanessa Younsi is a bold and unique voice in modern Francophone poetry. In this intensely personal recitation on identity and ethnicity, Younsi ...takes the reader on a surreal odyssey through a liminal world of belonging and unbelonging, absence and presence, mind and body. Her visionary work, first published in French and translated here by Rebecca Thompson, is unsettling, riveting and guaranteed to leave readers contemplating the existential mysteries of “self.”
In A Confession, a memoir of his philosophical midlife crisis, Tolstoy recounts falling into despair after coming to believe that his life, and for that matter all human life, is meaningless and ...absurd. Although Tolstoy's account of the origin and phenomenology of his crisis is widely regarded as illuminating, his response to the crisis, namely, embracing a religious tradition that he had previously dismissed as “irrational,” “incomprehensible,” and “mingled with falsehood” seems unpromising, at best. Nevertheless, I argue, Tolstoy's account of his response makes a valuable contribution to contemporary thought about the meaning and absurdity of life. I begin by drawing on classic discussions in the philosophical literature, and on Tolstoy's memoir, in order to characterize the problem of meaning and the problem of the absurd, and to clarify the relation between these problems. I then draw on Tolstoy's account of his response to his crisis in order to characterize a form of faith in our deepest values. I argue that such faith supplies one important part of the story concerning how we might respond to the problem of the absurd — a part that has been overlooked by more recent discussions of these issues.
Ironia verbal: marcas, funcionamento, efetivação e absurdo Wendell Pereira da Silva
Odisséia (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Linguagem),
08/2022, Volume:
7, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Verbal irony is the subject of numerous scientific research in the field of language studies, with no consensus as regards its specificities, namely concerning its nature and its marks or textual ...indexes. In this article, we debate the functioning of irony and the resources mobilized for its fulfillment and detection. To this end, we adopted the studies by Ducrot (1987), Maingueneau (1997), Muecke (2008), Guimarães (2001) and Attardo (2000) as a theoretical framework, with the corpus consisting ofA modest proposal and other satirical texts, by Swift (2005); an excerpt by Montesquieu (apud Maingueneau, 1997); and Cuca fundida, by Allen (2013). As a preliminary result, we anticipate that the verbal irony presupposes the assumption of an absurd enunciator (or point of view) and the discretionary nature of its would-be intrinsic marks.
This article explores the philosophical implications of Samuel Beckett’s dramatic work and his encounter with Gilles Deleuze at the level of sensations and thoughts. In Endgame, Beckett’s tragic ...vision of human existence resonates with Deleuze’s perception of the subject’s exhaustion and situatedness in a clinical state. The subject suffers from physiological and logical exhaustion. Beckett exhausts the space to dramatise the subject’s existential struggle and the limitations of his will within the absurd confines in (post)modernity. Thus, the exhausted seated person has no potentialities to construct other possibilities of a livable world.
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