scholarly journals Identity Construction In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot

ATAVISME ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-140
Author(s):  
Yusri Fajar

This paper scrutinizes the formation of the identity of the characters in Samuel Beckett’s famous play Waiting for Godot. One of the characters whose identity is constructed is Godot, a mysterious absent figure. The other characters, such as Vladimir and Estragon actively construct Godot’s identity. Thus, the formation of identity cannot be separated from the social construction in which a lot of characteristics are attributed by the members of the large community. The theory of identity elaborated by Stuart Hall and Erikson is employed to examine the play. The study shows that Godot and other characters’ identity is unstable and fluid. The characteristics of their identity are ambiguous and even challenged. Abstrak: Artikel ini mengkaji pembentukan identitas karakter dalam drama terkenal Waiting for Godot karya Samuel Beckett. Salah satu karakter yang dikonstruksi identitasnya adalah Godot, sosok misterius yang tidak pernah muncul. Karakter lain, seperti Vladimir dan Estragon secara aktif mengonstruksi identitas Godot. Oleh sebab itu, pembentukan identitas tidak dapat dipisahkan dari konstruksi sosial yang dimasuki banyak karakteristik oleh anggota masyarakat luas. Teori identitas Stuart Hall dan Erikson digunakan untuk menganalisis drama tersebut. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa identitas Godot dan karakter lain tidak stabil dan cair. Karakteristik identitas mereka ambigu dan bahkan meragukan. Kata-­Kata Kunci: identit; ambiguitas; Godot

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
Tess Moeke-Maxwell

In the bicultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori (people of the land) and Tauiwi (the other tribe, i.e. Pākehā and other non-indigenous New Zealanders), continue to be represented in binary opposition to each other. This has real consequences for the way in which health practitioners think about and respond to Māori. Reflecting on ideas explored in my PhD thesis, I suggest that Māori identity is much more complex than popular representations of Māori subjectivity allow. In this article I offer an alternative narrative on the social construction of Māori identity by contesting the idea of a singular, quintessential subjectivity by uncovering the other face/s subjugated beneath biculturalism’s preferred subjects. Waitara Mai i te horopaki iwirua o Aotearoa, arā te Māori (tangata whenua) me Tauiwi (iwi kē, arā Pākehā me ētahi atu iwi ehara nō Niu Tīreni), e mau tonu ana te here mauwehe rāua ki a rāua anō. Ko te mutunga mai o tēnei ko te momo whakaarohanga, momo titiro hoki a ngā kaimahi hauora ki te Māori. Kia hoki ake ki ngā ariā i whakaarahia ake i roto i taku tuhinga kairangi. E whakapae ana au he uaua ake te tuakiri Māori ki ngā horopaki tauirahia mai ai e te marautanga Māori. I konei ka whakatauhia he kōrero kē whakapā atu ki te waihangatanga o te tuakiri Māori, tuatahi; ko te whakahē i te ariā takitahi, marautanga pūmau mā te hurahanga ake i tērā āhua e pēhia nei ki raro iho i te whainga marau iwiruatanga. Tuarua, mai i tēnei o taku tuhinga rangahau e titiro nei ki ngā wawata ahurei a te Māori noho nei i raro i te māuiuitanga whakapoto koiora, ka tohu au ki te rerekētanga i waenga, i roto hoki o ngā Māori homai kōrero, ā, ka whakahāngaia te titiro ki te momo whakatau āwhina a te hauora ā-motu i te hunga whai oranga.


Author(s):  
Teresa Sofia Pereira Dias de Castro ◽  
António Osório ◽  
Emma Bond

Within the scope of how technology impacts on society three theoretical models: the social shaping of technology (SST), social construction of technology (SCOT) and the Actor-Network theory (ANT) are frameworks that help rethink the embeddedness of technology within society, once each is transformed and transformative of the other. More attention will be given to the ANT approach since it solves the technology/society dualisms unresolved by the previous proposals. This is a flexible epistemological possibility that can reach the ambiguity of contemporary life and the remarkable transformations brought by progress that have changed drastically childhood and children's contemporary lives.


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 266-267
Author(s):  
Cynthia Weber

Conceptualizing the sovereign nation-state remains a core concern in the discipline of international relations (IR). Yet, as the volumes by Sarah Owen Vandersluis and Beate Jahn demonstrate, the theoretical location of this conceptual debate is shifting. Questions of identity, like those regarding sovereign nation-states, were answered in the 1990s with reference to terms like social construction. In the new millennium, “the social” is increasingly joined by “the cultural” as an intellectual marker of how serious IR scholars must pose questions of identity. Why this shift? And what difference does it make to our understandings of sovereign nation-states, not to mention IR theory more generally?


2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-324
Author(s):  
Noel Dyck

This revised address for the 2019 Weaver-Tremblay Award revisits some underlying questions about the practice of anthropology that have figured in my own work. First, why might one choose anthropology as a means of intellectual and practical inquiry into social and cultural phenomena? Second, what kinds of anthropological practice can be pursued? Finally, what types of knowledge can be acquired through anthropological approaches, and to what purposes might this knowledge be applied? These questions are considered within the context of two rather different fields of anthropological inquiry I have pursued: relations between Indigenous Peoples and state governments, on the one hand, and the social construction of sport, on the other. As well as sharing some unexpected analytical commonalities, these ostensibly disparate fields speak to the power that resides in illuminating details of the type that anthropologists are particularly adept in recognizing.


2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 77-81
Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe ◽  
Rose McDermott

AbstractWhy are differences so political significant? Too often political science discussions of differences assume they are immutable. The attendant implication is that the political divisions attached to these variations—in religion, ethnicity, race, or any of the other dissimilarities that frequently enter political life—are considered rigid and inflexible. This commentary draws on recent work in moral and social psychology and evolutionary biology to suggest that the critical political factor surrounding differences is not their immutability but rather the moral and political salience we accord such differences. Simple experiments in social identity theory—and a conversation with an incensed 12-year old—demonstrate that the psychological process by which differences between people and groups become deemed ethically and politically relevant is totally socially constructed and hence can be restructured in a fashion that leads to more tolerant treatment of those judged different.


Author(s):  
Teresa Sofia Pereira Dias de Castro ◽  
António Osório ◽  
Emma Bond

Within the scope of how technology impacts society, three theoretical models—the social shaping of technology (SST), social construction of technology (SCOT), and the actor-network theory (ANT)—are frameworks that help rethink the embeddedness of technology within society, once each is transformed and transformative of the other. More attention will be given to the ANT approach since it solves the technology/society dualisms unresolved by the previous proposals. This is a flexible epistemological possibility that can reach the ambiguity of contemporary life and the remarkable transformations brought by progress that have drastically changed childhood and children's contemporary lives.


Finisterra ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (65) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacobo García-Álvarez

The "social construction" of otherness and, broadly speaking, the ideological-political use of "external" socio-spatial referents have become important topics in contemporary studies on territorial identities, nationalisms and nation-building processes, geography included. After some brief, introductory theoretical reflections, this paper examines the contribution of geographical discourses, arguments and images, "sensu lato", in the definition of the external socio-spatial identity referents of Galician nationalism in Spain, during the period 1860-1936. In this discourse Castile was typically represented as "the other" (the negative, opposition referent), against which Galician identity was mobilised, whereas Portugal, on the one hand, together with Ireland and the so-called "Atlantic-Celtic naionalities", on the other hand, were positively constructed as integrative and emulation referents.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Carlos Böes De Oliveira

RESUMO: Este artigo pretende estudar a relação da construção do ethos e da identidade no personagem principal do filme Pequeno Grande Homem (Little Big Man, 1970) de Arthur Penn, além de salientar as representações do Outro (os nativos norte-americanos) na narrativa fílmica. Através de um encontro interdisciplinar entre componentes da Análise do discurso (AD), da linha francesa de Maingueneau, e os estudos culturais, propomos uma visão mais ampla sobre a questão do eu e do Outro no gênero de faroeste. Os referencias teóricos estão focados em Tzvetan Todorov e Stuart Hall, para analisarmos a questão do Outro, a cultura e a identidade. Para enveredarmos na temática do ethos, buscamos teorias do discurso baseadas nos estudos de Dominique Maingueneau, que, por sinal, pertencem à linha de pesquisa da AD de linha francesa. Pretendemos, através deste estudo, problematizar a questão do Outro, entendendo que o personagem principal do filme desconstrói um ethos pré-discursivo, estabelecido na cultura norte-americana, em que a tradição via o nativo como selvagem e bestial. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Pequeno Grande Homem; outro; ethos; identidade; faroeste.   ABSTRACT: This paper intends to analyze the relation of ethos and identity construction in the protagonist of the film Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970), besides stressing out the representations of the Other (the North American natives) in the filmic narrative. Through an interdisciplinary approach between components of the Discourse Analysis from the French studies of Maingueneau, and cultural studies, we propose a substantial vision about the matter of the other and I in the western genre. The theoretical references are focused on Tzvetan Todorov and Stuart Hall, to analyze the matter of the other, culture and identity. To analyze the discursive ethos, we relied on discourse theories based on the studies of Dominique Maingueneau, that, by the way, belong to the French Discourse Analysis. Through this study, we intend to problematize the issue of the other, understanding that the protagonist of the film deconstructs a pre-discursive ethos, established on the North American culture, where tradition saw the native as a savage. KEYWORDS: Little Big Man; other; ethos; identity; western.


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