Beckett's Present Moments

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-25
Author(s):  
Rodney Sharkey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
European Society ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Liberal Capitalism ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

As a comfortable middle-class Protestant in Southern Ireland, Beckett was well placed to live the life of what Badiou ironically refers to as ‘the deserving body’ (59). However, Beckett moved beyond such home comforts to witness at close hand some of the most disruptive moments of twentieth century European history. This essay proposes that his work is both a manifestation of that history and a complex response to it in its content, and, particularly, in its form. In Aesthetic Theory, Theodore Adorno proposes that ‘the unsolved antagonisms of reality return in artworks as immanent problems of form’ (7). Exemplifying Adorno's proposition that ‘aesthetic form is sedimented context’ (9) Beckett's work remains disruptive of Western late capital commodification through the restatement of historical antagonisms that involve characters having to choose between privilege and impoverishment, quietism and protest, and being and its obliteration. The result is a body of work that continues to present, for its readers’ consideration, the parameters of a politics of choice which are repeatedly instantiated by the traces of the tumultuous history the work carries within itself. As the decisions facing Beckett's characters reflected those faced by late twentieth century European society, so too his work now resonates in the present moment as the contemporary world struggles in the shadow of neo-liberal capitalism and COVID-19.

Walls of Silence and Late Twentieth Century Representations of the Foreign Female Domestic Worker: The Case of Filipina and Indonesian Female Servants in Malaysia

1997 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine B. N. Chin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Domestic Worker ◽  
Labor Legislation ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Employment Agencies

This article analyzes the distinct ways in which public walls of silence continue to surround the absence of labor rights and benefits for foreign female domestic workers in the receiving country of Malaysia. Key state and nonstate actors involved in regulating and/or encouraging Filipina and Indonesian female domestic workers’ migration to, and employment in, Malaysia are identified. It is argued that the actions and perceptions of labor-sending and receiving state officials, middle-class employers, and representatives from private domestic employment agencies have had the effect of representing Filipina and Indonesian female domestic workers respectively as economic soldiers, criminal-prostitutes and pariahs, girl-slaves, and/or commodities. Taken individually and collectively, such representations obscure the fact that foreign female domestic workers are workers who ought to be protected by labor legislation.

Green versus Ecosocialist Economic Programmes: The Market Rules OK?

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Eckersley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Economic Planning ◽  
The Political ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ecological Problems ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Liberal Capitalism ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall there has been a chorus sounding the death of the command economy and the triumph of liberal capitalism. It does seem to be the case that ‘capitalism is everywhere receiving the flattery of imitation’.1 It is also the case that socialist thought – both western and eastern – is undergoing a profound shake-up in response to the economic and ecological challenges of the late twentieth century. Whether a new socialism will withstand these momentous challenges and emerge as the political saviour of our time is an open question. What is clear, however, is that the growing momentum of the ecological critique of capitalism is likely to ensure that the 200-year-old debate concerning the respective merits and demerits of the market versus economic planning is not going to disappear, although the debate is likely to be considerably reformulated. This paper is concerned to review the arguments for and against the market economy versus the planned economy in the light of the social and ecological problems of the late twentieth century and to compare and evaluate the alternative economic programmes defended by ecosocialists and Green economists in response to these problems.

A study of/on India’s middle class

Novos Debates ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
Soumodip Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Economic Liberalization ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

In order to establish the context of its emergence and the contemporary nature of the Indian middle class, this paper briefly presents its intricate link with colonialism and with economic liberalization. While this debate is focused and concentrated on the discussions in India, it also outlines how international approaches have been used to study it. In doing so, it assesses the ways in which contemporary scholarship is expanding on the theories of class as designed by late nineteenth and early twentieth century thinkers, Karl Marx and Max Weber. It then examines how the ideas of late twentieth century theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu are integrated in understanding and comprehending the new middle class in its relationship with capitalism.

Nine Centuries of Man

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Police Reports ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries? Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ‘hard man’, has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of masculinity in a wider context. This interdisciplinary collection examines a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, exploring the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour. How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romances, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men – work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce – the book also illustrates the range of masculinities that affected or were internalised by men. Together, the chapters illustrate some of the ways Scotland’s gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how, more generally, masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history

Trey Ellis's Platitudes: Redefining Black Voices

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Quan Manh Ha
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Black Voices ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
One Year ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Trey Ellis has emerged as a prominent African American writer of the late-twentieth century, despite the small number of his published works. “The New Black Aesthetic,” an essay that he first published in CaUaloo in 1989, one year after the publication of his first novel, Platitudes, stands as a manifesto that defines and articulates his perspective on the emerging black literary voices and culture of the time, and on “the future of African American artistic expression” in the postmodern era.1 According to Eric Lott, Ellis's novel parodies the literary and cultural conflict between such male experimental writers as lshmael Reed and such female realist writers as Alice Walker.2 Thus, Ellis's primary purpose in writing Platitudes is to redefine how African Americans should be represented in fiction, implying that neither of the dominant approaches can completely articulate late-twentieth-century black experience when practiced in isolation. In its final passages, Platitudes represents a synthesis of the two literary modes or styles, and it embodies quite fully the diversity of black cultural identities at the end of the twentieth century as it extends African American literature beyond racial issues. In this way, the novel exemplifies the literary agenda that Ellis suggests in his theoretical essay.

A New Denominational Historiography?

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263
Author(s):  
John F. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
General Factor ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Religious Institution ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Society ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Over the last decade, a noteworthy number of published studies have, in one fashion or another, been defined with reference to religious denominations. This is an arresting fact, for, coincidentally, the status of religious denominations in the society has been called into question. Some formerly powerful bodies have lost membership (at least relatively speaking) and now experience reduced influence, while newer forms of religious organization(s)—e.g., parachurch groups and loosely structured movements—have flourished. The most compelling recent analysis of religion in modern American society gives relatively little attention to them. Why, then, have publications in large numbers appeared, in scale almost seeming to be correlated inversely to this trend?No single answer to this question is adequate. Surely one general factor is that historians often “work out of phase” with contemporary social change. If denominations have been displaced as a form of religious institution in society in the late twentieth century, then their prominence in earlier eras is all the more intriguing.

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