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Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot
Plot[edit] Act I[edit] Estragon soon dozes off, but, after rousing him, Vladimir is not interested in hearing about Estragon's dreams—another recurring motif. Vladimir and Estragon begin to reflect on the encounter, with Vladimir suspecting that they have met Pozzo and Lucky before. Act II[edit] Pozzo and Lucky unexpectedly reappear, but the rope is much shorter than yesterday, and Lucky now guides Pozzo, rather than being driven by him since Pozzo apparently cannot see in front of him. While Estragon sleeps on, Vladimir is encountered by (apparently) the same boy from yesterday, though Vladimir wonders whether he might be the other boy's brother. Characters[edit] Beckett refrained from elaborating on the characters beyond what he had written in the play. Vladimir and Estragon[edit] Vladimir and Estragon (June 2010 production of the play at the The Doon School, India) Vladimir's life is not without its discomforts too but he is the more resilient of the pair. Pozzo and Lucky[edit]

Untimely Meditations Cover of the first edition of Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben (the second essay of the work), 1874. Untimely Meditations (German: Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen), also translated as Unfashionable Observations[1] and Thoughts Out Of Season[2]) consists of four works by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, started in 1873 and completed in 1876. The work comprises a collection of four (out of a projected 13) essays concerning the contemporary condition of European, especially German, culture. Publication[edit] Many different plans for the series are found in Nietzsche's notebooks, most of them showing a total of thirteen essays. Nietzsche abandoned the project after completing only four essays, seeming to lose interest after the publication of the third.[4] David Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer[edit] On the Use and Abuse of History for Life[edit] Draft for the first chapter of the second Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung Schopenhauer as Educator[edit] Notes[edit] References[edit]

The Wittgensteinian Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (French: [ʁɔlɑ̃ baʁt]; 12 November 1915 – 26 March[1] 1980) was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, anthropology and post-structuralism. Life[edit] Roland Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in the town of Cherbourg in Normandy. He was the son of naval officer Louis Barthes, who was killed in a battle in the North Sea before his son was one year old. Barthes showed great promise as a student and spent the period from 1935 to 1939 at the Sorbonne, where he earned a license in classical letters. Barthes spent the early 1960s exploring the fields of semiology and structuralism, chairing various faculty positions around France, and continuing to produce more full-length studies. By the late 1960s, Barthes had established a reputation for himself. Writings and ideas[edit]

Being and Nothingness Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (French: L'Être et le néant : Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique), sometimes subtitled A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.[1] Sartre's main purpose is to assert the individual's existence as prior to the individual's essence. His overriding concern in writing the book was to demonstrate that free will exists.[2] In Sartre's much gloomier account in Being and Nothingness, man is a creature haunted by a vision of "completion", what Sartre calls the ens causa sui, literally "a being that causes itself", which many religions and philosophers identify as God. Overview[edit] In the introduction, Sartre sketches his own theory of consciousness, being, and phenomena through criticism of both earlier phenomenologists (most notably Husserl and Heidegger) as well as idealists, rationalists, and empiricists. Part 1, Chapter 1: The origin of negation[edit] Part 1, Chapter 2: Bad faith[edit]

André Malraux Early years[edit] Malraux was born in Paris in 1901, the son of Fernand-Georges Malraux and Berthe Lamy (Malraux). His parents separated in 1905 and eventually divorced. There are suggestions that Malraux's paternal grandfather committed suicide in 1909.[1] Malraux was raised by his mother, maternal aunt Marie and maternal grandmother, Adrienne Lamy-Romagna, who had a grocery store in the small town of Bondy.[1][2] His father, a stockbroker, committed suicide in 1930 after the international crash of the stock market and onset of the Great Depression.[3] From his childhood, associates noticed that André had marked nervousness and motor and vocal tics. The young Malraux left formal education early, but he followed his curiosity through the booksellers and museums in Paris, and explored its rich libraries as well. Marriage and family[edit] In 1922, Malraux married Clara Goldschmidt. Career[edit] Early years[edit] Indochina[edit] Spanish Civil War[edit] World War II[edit] After the war[edit]

Jean-Paul Sartre His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. Sartre has also been noted for his open relationship with the prominent feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".[2] Biography[edit] Early life[edit] Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, an officer of the French Navy, and Anne-Marie Schweitzer.[3] His mother was of Alsatian origin and the first cousin of Nobel Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer. In 1929 at the École Normale, he met Simone de Beauvoir, who studied at the Sorbonne and later went on to become a noted philosopher, writer, and feminist. World War II[edit] French journalists visit General George C. Cold War politics and anticolonialism[edit]

'Atlantic Rim': Chomsky v. Zizek An online dustup between two pop star penseurs shows them staggering through afterlives. Pacific Rim offers a somewhat messy allegory. In the East, a monstrous alien power is rising in the form of kaiju, or alien sea monsters. Humans counter with jaegers, robotic war machines. About the Author Joshua Clover Joshua Clover (@bookofriot) is a professor at the University of California, Davis, where he writes about poetry... Also by the Author Squarepop—public squares of refusal—is the broken madness of the world stood on its head. Mainly, however, the film consists of slugfests between ponderous titans thigh-deep in the Pacific Ocean. Just so the current online war between Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek: megafauna of political philosophy, pop star penseurs from the great generation of intellectuals ringing the Atlantic. These are inevitably caricatures. One distinguishing question centers on why this process has not already commenced in earnest. Zizek is not hostile to facts.

Simone de Beauvoir Simone-Lucie-Ernestine-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, commonly known as Simone de Beauvoir (French: [simɔn də bovwaʁ]; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986), was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. She did not consider herself a philosopher but she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.[1] Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography and monographs on philosophy, politics and social issues. She is best known for her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, as well as her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. Early years[edit] Beauvoir was born in Paris, the elder daughter of Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a legal secretary who once aspired to be an actor,[2] and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), a wealthy banker’s daughter and devout Catholic. Middle years[edit]

'The Fate of an Honest Intellectual', by Noam Chomsky (Excerpted from Understanding Power) I'll tell you another, last case—and there are many others like this. Here's a story which is really tragic. How many of you know about Joan Peters, the book by Joan Peters? There was this best-seller a few years ago [in 1984], it went through about ten printings, by a woman named Joan Peters—or at least, signed by Joan Peters—called From Time Immemorial. It was a big scholarly-looking book with lots of footnotes, which purported to show that the Palestinians were all recent immigrants [i.e. to the Jewish-settled areas of the former Palestine, during the British mandate years of 1920 to 1948]. And it was very popular—it got literally hundreds of rave reviews, and no negative reviews: the Washington Post, the New York Times, everybody was just raving about it. Well, he got back one answer, from me. Well, he didn't believe me. By this time, he was getting kind of desperate, and he asked me what to do. But let me just go on with the Joan Peters story.

Propaganda model The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social and political policies is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda. The theory posits that the way in which news is structured (through advertising, concentration of media ownership, government sourcing and others) creates an inherent conflict of interest which acts as propaganda for undemocratic forces. Overview[edit] First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Ownership of the mediumMedium's funding sourcesSourcingFlakAnti-communism and fear ideology

Absurdism Absurdism is very closely related to existentialism and nihilism and has its origins in the 19th century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who chose to confront the crisis humans faced with the Absurd by developing existentialist philosophy.[3] Absurdism as a belief system was born of the European existentialist movement that ensued, specifically when the French Algerian philosopher and writer Albert Camus rejected certain aspects from that philosophical line of thought[4] and published his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. The aftermath of World War II provided the social environment that stimulated absurdist views and allowed for their popular development, especially in the devastated country of France. Overview[edit] "... in spite of or in defiance of the whole of existence he wills to be himself with it, to take it along, almost defying his torment. Relationship with existentialism and nihilism[edit] Related works by Søren Kierkegaard[edit] What is the Absurd? What, then, is the absurd?

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