The absurd as a representation: Towards a hermeneutics of the inexplicable (the problematic case of Godot)
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Date
2016
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
This article attempts to re-signify the already extensively discussed conception of the
absurd attributed to the aesthetic phenomenon presented by the so-called theatre of the
absurd by critically reconsidering its paradigmatic work Waiting for Godot in relation to
philosophical hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur). The fact that Beckett’s
artistic method invalidates the transparency of the mirror-like relation between reality
and art is known, and yet the potential theoretical consequences of such a literary
revolution do not seem to have been exhausted – particularly in respect to the category
of the absurd. Hence, the presented inquiry aims to view the phenomenon quite against
its common conceptualizations derived from existentialist philosophy in order to
indicate a possible route of exploring it from a hermeneutic perspective and thereby
challenging, to some extent, Simon Critchley’s (2004: 165) famous assertion that
Beckett’s oeuvre seems “uniquely resistant to philosophical interpretation”.
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Keywords
absurd, hermeneutics, truth, Beckett, representation
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 51.4(2016), pp. 67-86