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Ss UNMASKING SAMUEL BECKETT's WAITING for GODOT AS A Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.7.Issue 1. 2019 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (Jan-Mar) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) RESEARCHss ARTICLE UNMASKING SAMUEL BECKETT’S WAITING FOR GODOT AS A CANDID PARADIGM OF JACQUES DERRIDA’S DECONSTRUCTION SHABIR AHMAD MIR Student of English Language and Literature Islamic University of science and Technology, Awantipora, Pulwama Jammu and Kashmir, India Email: [email protected] doi: https://doi.org/10.33329/rjelal.7119.355 ABSTRACT Waiting for Godot, written by the most popular Irish writer, Samuel Beckett is originally written in French and then translated into English in 1954. It is the most notorious play in every corner of the world and considered to be the de jour in the modernist movement of which Beckett was also a prominent figure. Therefore, this play has been performed as a drama of the absurd with flabbergasting mega-hit success in Europe, America and the rest of the world in post second world war era. Martin Esslin, known for coining the term “theatre of Absurd” labels it “One of the successes of the post-wartheatre(Esslin, Martin, 1980, p.3).The play concerns two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, who are waiting anxiously and are agog to visit Godot near a dwindled tree in the middle of nowhere. They are not acquainted SHABIR AHMAD MIR about his real name, whether he promises to visit them, or if, in fact, he actually exists. However, they are still waiting and waiting for him. Nevertheless, he did never appear. This futile waiting is the main concern of the play, the playwright explicates. It has become a touchstone in explicating the philosophy of existentialism. The inefficacious wait by the two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon as a ramification of the ‘Derridean Deconstructive’ modus operandi is the premier corollary this paper is going to analyse. Derrida sternly scruples the logo-centric Western tradition of the metaphysics of presence, which has been looked grandiose from Plato’s “Phaedrus” until Edmund Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry” in Western philosophy. The paperhowever purports to highlight the play with the ambit of Derrideandeconstructive hermeneutics with the help of some key terms associated with it (Deconstruction) Keywords: de jour, Existentialism, Deconstruction, inefficacious, Jacques Derrida,logo-centric, Samuel Beckett . Objectives of Research II. To bring out some of the vigorous neologisms employed by Jacques Derrida I. To unravel Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting while putting forward the philosophy of for Godot” and make it applicable for Deconstruction. Deconstructive reading. 355 SHABIR AHMAD MIR Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.7.Issue 1. 2019 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (Jan-Mar) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) III. To unbolt the tactics of meta-theatre Sharon Crowley opines that “Deconstruction (pondering over the nature of its own amounts to reading texts in order to rewrite them” drama) which make the writer of the (qtd. In Theory into Practice 162). “Waiting for Godot” much proficient to Derrida once asked by a Japanese friend to move farther away from the terminus of suggest an approximate definition of the term. He the ethnic stereotypes and ceremonial replied; sundries, grace and traditions of language, theatre and the literary text, which All sentences of the type ‘Deconstruction is continuously gyrate around messianic X or Deconstruction isn’t X….” logocentrism or phonocentrism in the J.A. Cuddon, in his Dictionary of Literary history of philosophy from Plato to the Terms, says that in Deconstruction: A text can be present times or in simple words we can read as saying something quite different from what say to dethrone the authority of it appears to be saying… It may be read as carrying a logocentrismor phonocentrism. plurality of significance, or as saying many different Some vital Questionsassociated with the research things which are fundamentally at variance with, contradictory to and subversive of what may be seen The study will predominantly focus on the questions by criticism as a single ‘stable’, meaning. Thus a text mentioned below: may ‘betray’ itself. (129) to use the terms of Peter I. How does the writer of “Waiting for Godot” Barry, we can say that deconstruction is a kind of propagate the logos, an insignia of life in his “textual harassment” or “oppositional reading”. celebrated play “Waiting for Godot”? Deconstruction aims to show that the text is at war with itself. Further, we can say that deconstruction is II. What is in Beckett’s art that make him a decentring of any philosophical school of thought, convenient to deconstruction? any textual proposition etc. Jonathan Culler’s words Research Methodology are apt to quote here. Culler says that, “to The study is predominantly chorological deconstruct a discourse is to show how it with descriptive and coherent method companion to undermines the philosophy it asserts, or the it. The paper will include some vital textual hierarchical oppositions on which it relies.”(On references that serve as evidence and make the Deconstruction 86). Deconstruction attempts to study more concrete, the terms central to the make manifest that a text has no compact unity or philosophy of deconstruction; transcendental ground to present meanings, that the text is only a signified;aporia, logos, binary oppositions and time series of conflicting significations. In nutshell, we can are discussed in relation to the text in this research. say by using Paul Riceour’s term that deconstruction The list of the works cited in paper are however is “hermeneutics of suspicion”. It looks at everything mentioned at the end under the heading, with a critical and suspicious eye. Everything is a fish References. that comes under the net of deconstruction. Defining Deconstruction Analysing “Waiting for Godot” in the light of “Deconstruction”. Barbara Johnson in her famous critical book ‘The Critical Difference’ defines deconstruction as: It is an uphill task to analyse waiting for “Deconstruction is not synonymous with Godot without taking into consideration some of the ‘destruction’. It is in fact much closer tothe original important notions put forth by Jacques Derrida meaning of the word ‘analysis’, which etymologically while disseminating and expounding the theory of means ‘toundo’…The deconstruction of a text does Deconstruction. The following terms of Derridean not proceed by random doubt orarbitrary deconstruction are simply relevant to the nature of subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring this research. forces of signification within the text”.(5) 356 SHABIR AHMAD MIR Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.7.Issue 1. 2019 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (Jan-Mar) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) Metaphysics of presence of the play, which revolves around the waiting for Godot, who actually surface in the play. Jacques Derrida advocates that the Nevertheless, the two characters of the play, tradition of west European philosophy from Plato Vladimir and Estragon, who are homeless vagrants, until Edmund Husserl has been the metaphysics of appear to be ensnarled in the ambush of illusory presence or logocentrism. Its persuasive impact and world of the metaphysics of presence. They are ramifications on human thought have proved to be cemented with messianic logocentrism or the encumbering and fossilizing quandaries of aporia phonocentrism of the term Godot. Messianic is one of meaning and authoritative fossilized logocentric of the forms of the metaphysics of presence, which structures of human thought to investigate new is evident in the concepts of theocentrism and vistas, stimulating it in the cohesive and pre- anthropocentrism. Any ideological, religious and determined meaning, origin or presence. We cannot political system, which claims to be authorised imagine the end of the metaphysics of the presence, legitimacy, is messianic logocentrism or we can criticise it from within by identifying and phonocentrism. This messianism is dominant in reversing the hierarchies it has established. human thought. Jacques Derrida also calls this way Jacques Derrida regards all Western of thinking messianicity, according to which philosophic tradition logocentric because it spots at Christian hope of a future to come. the centerof our sagacity of the universe a concept Therefore, the word Godot in the play (logos), which charts and construes the universe for connotes both theocentric as well as us while remaining outside of the universe it charts anthropocentric messianic logocentrism, which may and construes. Jacques Derrida says that it is be noted is, the appanage given to it as Jehovah of Western philosophy’s greatest illusion. Each “The Old Testament”, his wrath frightens, and like grounding concept --- Plato’s notion of perfect Messiah (Jesus Christ) of “The New Testament”, his Forms, Rene Descartes’ cogito, structuralism’s Second Coming will redeem the humankind. He may notion of innate structures of human consciousness- stand for salvation, donation, rebirth and promise, --is itself a human concept and therefore, a product which is able to be a link between these logi and the of human language. In this way, he attacks the basic two waiting tramps. However, the tramps are fallen metaphysical assumptions of Western philosophical in the trap of illusory world of the metaphysics of tradition since Plato. He also criticises that the presence and messianism. Therefore, they are notion of innate structures of human consciousness mentally tied up with the logocentric messianic term in structuralism has always presupposed a centre of Godot. Nevertheless, they have taken it for granted meaning of something, which governs the structure, that it is a dominant source of redemption and but is itself not subject to structural analysis (to find salvation.
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