Who Said It?
V: He didn't say for sure he'd come.
E: And if he doesn't come?
V: We'll come back tomorrow.
E: And then the day after tomorrow.
V: Possibly.
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Modernism)
(Pinter was inspired by theater of the absurd).
"Philosophy and poetry, of a particularly tragic variety, might not go down as easily as beer, but it’s a better preparation for living in a difficult world."
‘Liberal? Hosh-kosh nonsense!’ No one was more liberal than anyone else anywhere else. It was only that here, in Willesden, there wasn’t enough of any one thing to gang up against any other thing and sending itrunning to the cellars while windows were smashed.”
- Idea behind Imperialism is social/religious mission (however, things begin to fall apart).
- turn logic of math/science on its head, it becomes tyrannous- accountant is so focused on numbers he is concerned with a dying man (dehumanizing)
- science developed for evil/mass destruction rather than making a better world
Individual acts as a "free agent" - actions determined by free will
Explain Homi Bhabha's hybridity or the hybrid moment
Bhabha suggests that two cultures opposed to one another seem to combine/merge - HOWEVER, there remains a sense of tension between the two identities - they don't merge, but rather coexist simultaneously
- Fish in heaven
- notion of pastoralism
- critique of English myopticness/narrowness
- critical of social/middle class, shaping of divinity from within the economic system you exist (God is a big fish)
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave,
Proves the child ephemeral
- stream of consciousness
- duality of time (both past and present)
- sense of duration, can't pinpoint an exact moment (illusion of time in our minds)
- Burgsonian philosophy - different impressions fall on us (music notes - don't experience them separately)
What is his critique of liberalism/fanatacism?
- Liberalism has the ability to be as violent and hypocritical as fanaticism - this is illustrated in the figure of Parvez
- instability of binary/oppositional thinking - sense of religious instability in England. Geographical location does not determine fanaticism / ideological beliefs.
"the numerous ways that peoples condemned to colonization ended up invading and putting to their own use the colonial state’s legal rules and political alliance games, or appropriating colonial markets and production niches in ways that furthered their own life strategies while undercutting colonial monopolies" - Bhabha
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. …
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, …
Explain Woolf's conception of "modernist" fiction. How does this function in Mrs. Dalloway?
Woolf's novel is focused on the individual and their consciousness/psyche - investigates their experiences/interpretations
1) moves away from realism (Wilde, Shaw)
2) reflects the unconscious, illogical elements of humanity
3) actions don't have expected consequences, they are defamiliarized. ("the divorce between man and his life").
- capitalism coming up against nationalism.
- neglects (long) history of British Imperialism and the ironies of this.
- Derivation = evolution over time (a way to reclaim the language)
- Corruption = ugly, crude, incorrect, etc; (not allowing colonized to own the language)
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
2) Forlorness - nothing to justify our behavior (i.e., God, human nature), sense of emptiness and freedom is a form of condemnation.
Samad
Clara
Archie
"Niece-of-Shame" - Neena
Ardashir (Samad's cousin)
Shiva (handsome waiter that works with Samad)
- Both individual and group failings
- The one who wants to be loved alone thinks only of his own needs and wants them praised, similar to the state that functions for its own good.
-The individual experiences an intense selfishness (tied into national ideology and patriotism) - "Not universal love, but to be loved alone"
- The working middle classes become resentful, still caught up in individual issues, nationality as a myth governed by economic needs they pursue of their own, rather than communal good