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PUBLISHED DATE: - 28-07-2024
DOI: -
https://doi.org/10.37547/tajssei/Volume06Issue07-16
PAGE NO.: - 151-154
POSTMODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF
SAMUEL BECKETT'S WAITING FOR GODOT:
JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD'S POSTMODERN
CONDITION WITH REFERENCES
Mahmood Shakir Sabbar
Thi Qar University, Department of Cultural Affairs, Iraq
INTRODUCTION
Open Jean-François Lyotard's view of the
postmodern in terms of the liberal metanarrative
and their contradiction, which he discusses in The
Postmodern Condition (1979), regarded as the
most accessible of his writings, is used as a new
approach to the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel
Beckett. The contradiction between the local and
the universal urges us to resort to the parergon
altogether. Emphasizing the postmodern in
Beckett's text reveals an intriguing critical
potential. By gaining insight into the play on the
level of the condition post-modernum, I am
indicating the capacity of poststructuralism to
show the way out of the mercantile society and its
interpretive practices by linking the Cartesian
subject with jouissance.
The central aim of this contribution is to point to
the tension between Beckett's adherence to
modernist conventions and his interest in
poststructuralist innovation in general. By gaining
insight into the play on the level of the condition
post-modernum, I am indicating the capacity of
poststructuralism to show the way out of the
mercantile society and its interpretive practices by
linking the Cartesian subject with jouissance. The
postmodern interpretation follows Jean-François
Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition. Many
readers of poststructuralist writers, such as
Lyotard, would continue to argue the case for
poststructuralism as dislocated and uncohesive, or
that it destabilizes the self through initiating the
movement of jouissance, and they are less likely
than traditionalist alternatives to serve the
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Abstract
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interests of dominant ideological cultures, such as
many feminist readers.
Samuel Beckett and Waiting for Godot: A Brief
Overview
In this section, I have attempted to present an
analysis of Jean-François Lyotard's critiques in his
book 'Postmodern Condition' and the main points
being advanced by the author according to my
understanding. However, in so doing, I have had to
make various simplifications which intersect the
arguments posed in the monograph. These
analyses are mainly found in the final chapter and
define certain respects in which the so-called
postmodern condition may be said to differ from
modernism.
There are, in fact, different manifestations of the
postmodern. The arguments that Lyotard delivers
also take different variations. My decision to
concentrate basically on the work of one author is
a kind of homage merely to his pioneering
contribution. It is also a very modest attempt to
provide a flexible frame within which the
interdisciplinary and polymath exploration that
Samuel Beckett's work permits is not
impoverished by my limited scholarly background.
The current study uses Beckett, as well as the
multiplicities constituting Samuel Beckett indeed,
in order to demonstrate the force of Lyotard's
endeavors. It may be said that I have, after much
exegesis, also with very respectful apologies for
the inevitable distortions, managed to reread
Waiting for Godot in terms of the dilemmas
whereby Lyotard's postmodern condition is
composed.
Understanding Postmodernism and Jean-
François Lyotard's Postmodern Condition
Postmodern interpretations of Samuel Beckett's
Waiting for Godot: Jean-François Lyotard's
Postmodern Condition
III. Understanding postmodernism and Jean-
François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition
Let us begin with Lyotard's Postmodern Condition,
in which the word "postmodern" features as much
in the phrase "post-modern science" as "post" does
in the phrase "society." Lyotard gives, in clear
terms, the definition of the postmodern condition
in the contemporary setting and connects the
increasing difficulty in validating knowledge or
belief systems to the question of legitimation in the
larger sense. The technological advancement,
scientific progress, and high degree of involvement
of societies in information technology and media
have increased our understanding and, in turn, our
questions and concerns as well.
Lyotard thought that the scientific, political, and
art media are significant sectors, often called
"producers," who have been monopolizing but
have no real control over either the production,
distribution, or use of transmodern resources,
namely, narrative knowledge (such as collective
plots), specialty (such as military service), and
aesthetic knowledge. The major groups,
information societies, and new subjectivity are
those interested in increasing the control of this
type of activity, but they are now justified not by
grand teachings, such as Marxism or historical
materialism, but by obtaining good results.
Key Concepts in Jean-François Lyotard's
Postmodern Condition
Building on these opening gambits, I set forth the
following as key concepts in developing Lyotard's
postmodern condition. Each author pursues his
own goal, playing his own game, by his own rules
and with his own equipment. There are as many
myths as there are authors. In our world,
entertainment is mostly tales, novels, historical
and biographical, aural, and visual, all perpetrated
by specialists of things believable, wringing true.
Despite these adolescent activities of instauration,
after at least one century of sound elaboration,
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despite the curiosity of recent narravolumes, the
strange and progressive obsolescence of the know
that is employed by makers of tales has not been
scientifically recognized. And this is serious
business. After all, it is impossible to conceive of a
college and university education that could ignore
these narratives. Since, in that case, from what
other source would the school derive its
credentials?
All these readings, interpretations, these
hermeneutics become illegitimate and lose their
meaning. Our testimony becomes forever suspect
once it is determined by our covers. We confess to
artificially maintaining within ourselves the
present and the future, if and to the extent of a
virtual return to this desuetude, this atavistic
possession, this almost paranoiac hypnagogia.
No one will deny anymore that the principal
belongings
of
art,
including
intellectual
productions - literature, painting, etc. - are
incompatible with simple cultural development. Is
it the spirit of contradiction that has impelled
specialists of mammals to state without
complexities, as soon as possible, and in principle
only for the sciences, that every truth has to be
scientifically verified? And thereby to deprive
themselves of their confusing recruitment by
acknowledgements that they cannot contribute in
principle, and for reasons which do not disgrace
them, with the laboratory evidence that would
save us from the credibility stakes?
Application of Postmodern Theory to Samuel
Beckett's Waiting for Godot
The ways in which postmodernism pertains to
literature are multi-faceted, requiring numerous
and sometimes distinct forms. These forms are
determinable by the style of the literary work.
However, identifying some approaches that
different forms of literature employ is ironic. The
activities in existentialism tend not towards
activity but suspension and non-being, yet they do
possess a form of passivity. Beckett himself states
in Proust that time is employed to account for this
lack of action, of saying nothing, one of the
traditional activities of storytelling. Into,
separating, speech-making, let him fall once more,
when of him say the end word, one word only I beg
of you. Then...Ithaca. The same speechlessness
occurs in the 'how to I repeat form of the practice
of expressing the unsayable, the futility of language
to express the inexpressible. What relationships
are available except for activity and passivity with
which to end and achieve these ends and time? Not
symbolic of their meaninglessness. However,
ultimately time is also in control in Waiting for
Godot, not man. "The action is subjected to time,
not the reverse," but names for one and Mercurial
mercuriallac this enterprise? More waiting, more
time, more suspension, and this is the essence of
Beckett. Waiting for Godot characterizes Waiting
for Godot, which also characterizes modern
identity portrayed by Lyotard in The Postmodern
Condition.
Interpretations and Analysis of Waiting for
Godot Through a Postmodern Lens
Consequently, the tramps are waiting in vain for
something that will never come. Beckett's is a
postmodernist
outlook.
His
skill
as
a
postmodernist is in exposing what François
Lyotard calls modern society's post over-
narrations. Beckett disengages from modernity by
deviating his narrative from an overarching meta-
narrative or grand inte-narrative. That is to say, if
oil is the 'overall schema' then man would be the
'particular narrations' the two boys stuck under
the tree over the duration of the play. By the
twentieth century, however, with the rate of
change and advances in technology and
communicative techniques, the world's width and
breadth of potentiality of achieving one final ideal
narrowed and frustrated the man's sense of
direction. The enlightenment is the period, which
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Lyotard notes as crucial in his Postmodern
Condition, where the concept of oil, or the all-
encompassing Over-Narrative had legitimacy.
The great narratives of The Enlightenment have
become part of everyday discourse and highly
susceptible
to
being
critiqued
through
implementation. Lyotard, who defined the
postmodern condition of 'incredulity towards
metanarratives', says the 'grand narrative' had
legitimate expression until 1848. Postmodernity is
defined by Jean-François Lyotard as 'incredulity
towards metanarratives'. The two characters in
Beckett's Waiting for Godot have hope and are
waiting for something that never comes. They
represent man's state of hope generated again and
then frustrated by the perfidious overflow of
telecommunications or as Lyotard propounds. The
world has no more grand narratives. The modern
era was set into 1848 in the French Fourth
Republic.
REFERENCES
1.
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5.
Foucault, Michael. The Archeology of
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6.
Gordon, Lorenz. "On Beckett's Trails." Beckett:
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Kermode, Frank. Continuities. 1964. London:
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Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern
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Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. The German
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10.
Minsky, Rosalie. "Waiting for Godot and
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Post, Robert. "Neither/Norism: Meaning in
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Popper, Karl. The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
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