Seminar  “P raises his head”. Acts of Resistance in Samuel Beckett

Convenors:

Davide Crosara (“Sapienza” Università di Roma) davide.crosara@uniroma1.it

Rossana Sebellin  (Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”) sebellin@lettere.uniroma2.it

Abstract

Despite the fact that is is often characterized by nihilistic interpretations, Beckett’s oeuvre depicts several acts of resistance, from Word’s final sigh in Words and Music (1962) to the upward gaze of   the Protagonist in Catastrophe (1982). The weight and inescapability of mortality marks Beckett’s work since its very beginning, as testified by his first poetry collection, Echo’s Bones (1935). Beckett’s meditation on finitude is nonetheless accompanied by an enquiry into the residual possibilities of language, even when his goal is to dissolve “that terrible materiality of the word surface” (Beckett, 1937), testing the limits of the linguistic medium. Beckett’s postwar considerations on painting are imbued with explicit ethical undertones, as clearly indicated in the “obligation to express” which concludes The Three Dialogues (Beckett, 1949). The intermedial experiments that follow often stage acts of domination and torture, frequently alluding to contemporary historical events, from the Algerian War to the Cold War. Strongly opposed to the idea of writing as repository of a political message, he conveys his ethics by means of a rigorous reshaping of form. The aim of this panel is to examine the presence and meaning of resistance in Beckett’s corpus. 

Proposal may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

-Beckett and Resistance

-Beckett and Testimony

-Beckett and Anti-Totalitarian Dissent

-Beckett, Nationalism and Internationalism

-Beckett and Censorship

-Beckett and Ethics

-Political Interpretations of Beckett

-Philosophical Interpretation of Beckett

-Modalities of Resistance: the Dissolution of Identity

-Modalities of Resistance: the Dissolution of Form

-Modalities of Resistance: the Dissolution of Language

-Beckett as a Director: Freedom and the Marketplace

-Beckett and his Publishers: Freedom and the Marketplace

-Alienation, Commodification and the Marketplace in his Prose, Plays, Essays, Poetry.

-Alienation, Commodification and the Marketplace in Beckett’s Correspondence

-Hybrid Bodies in Beckett

-Ecocritical Interpretations of his Work

-Beckett and Popular Culture

-Acts of Resistance in Beckett and his Contemporaries

-Political Reappropriations of Beckett

-Postcolonial Rewritings of Beckett

References

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DAVIES, W. & BAILEY, H., Beckett and Politics. Palgrave: London & New York, 2011. 

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