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We live in an era that normalized the absurd and the abnormal. From successive economic and environmental chaos, the world is now facing a pandemic with a lethal footprint across the planet. The pandemonium has gone global. This article places the current COVID-19 pandemic in the context of an infinite plethora of devastating sagas pushing humanity into an unimaginable regression. In so doing, the article examines how this pandemic reflects the very colors of an intentional epistemological blindness that frames Eurocentric reasoning, paralyzed the political economy of global capitalism by deepening and accelerating an endless and non-stop crisis that began in 2008. It also explores the social construction of the current pandemic and advocates alternative ways of thinking and doing education and curriculum theory to challenge modern Western Eurocentric reasoning. In doing so, it advances the itinerant curriculum theory as a fair approach, a "now theory" just alter-curriculum, which respects the pluri-epistemological diversity of the world and aims to move from utopias framed within the borders determined by coloniality towards an anti-decolonial climax and "heretopia". Vivimos en una era que normalizó lo absurdo y lo anormal. Tras el sucesivo y devastador caos económico y medioambiental, el mundo se enfrenta ahora a una pandemia con una huella letal en todo el planeta. Pandemonium se ha vuelto global. Este artículo coloca la pandemia actual de COVID-19 en el contexto de una plétora infinita de sagas devastadoras que empujan a la humanidad a una regresión inimaginable. Al hacerlo, el artículo examina cómo esta pandemia refleja los colores mismos de una ceguera epistemológica intencional que enmarca el razonamiento eurocéntrico, paralizó la economía política del capitalismo global al profundizar y acelerar una crisis interminable e ininterrumpida que comenzó en 2008. También explora la construcción social de la pandemia actual y aboga por formas alternativas de pensar y hacer teoría de la educación y del currículo para desafiar el razonamiento eurocéntrico occidental moderno. Al hacerlo, avanza la teoría del currículo itinerante como un enfoque justo, una "teoría del ahora" simplemente alter-currículum, que respeta la diversidad pluri-epistemológica del mundo y apunta a pasar de las utopías enmarcadas dentro de las fronteras determinadas por la colonialidad hacia un clímax anti-decolonial y "heretopía". Vivemos em uma era que normalizou o absurdo e a anormalidade. De sucessivos caoses econômicos e ambientais devastadores, o mundo está agora diante de uma pandemia com uma pegada letal em todo o planeta. O pandemônio se tornou global. Este artigo situa a atual pandemia de Covid-19 no contexto de uma infinita pletora de sagas devastadoras, empurrando a humanidade para uma regressão inimaginável. Ao fazer isso, o artigo examina como essa pandemia reflete as próprias cores de uma cegueira epistemológica intencional, que enquadra o raciocínio eurocêntrico, paralisou a economia política do capitalismo global aprofundando e acelerando uma crise sem fim e sem parar, que começou em 2008. O artigo também explora a construção social da pandemia atual e defende formas de pensar e fazer educação e teoria do currículo, alternativamente, para desafiar o raciocínio eurocêntrico ocidental moderno. Ao fazer isso, avança a teoria itinerante do currículo como uma abordagem justa, uma “teoria do agora“ apenas alter-currículo, que respeita a diversidade pluri-epistemológica do mundo e visa se deslocar de utopias enquadradas dentro das fronteiras determinadas pela colonialidade em direção a um clímax anticolonial e “heretópico”.

Do symbols have any meaning or are they just meant to make literary works attractive? Many scholars and researchers have argued that symbols are important stylistic features. They contend that symbols are a royal road to the interpretation of the absurd life. Symbols portray actual absurd life situations of human existence. Leech (1969) argues that symbols have meanings accessible to interpretation and that they have functions. This paper therefore, purposed to investigate how symbolism is used to convey the absurdity of life in Kichomi. The paper will use Stylistic Theory advanced by Leech, which will help to investigate how symbolism was used to convey the absurdity of life in Kichomi. Content analysis technique will be used in the analysis of symbolism and findings presented descriptively. The writer intends to investigate how symbols were used to weave the absurdity of life in Kichomi. The outcome of the paper will create an inspiration to the upcoming writers since it will enable them understand the styles they can use to weave their works and hence come up with better works in the literal world.

This research work, “The Black Man’s Burden and the Existentialist Challenge: Unchaining the African consciousness to action,” is a critical analysis of the human condition in Africa that has remained intractable right from political independence to the present and the right approach to stem the tide towards the Africa of the future. How is it that none of the about forty-eight nations South of the Sahara have made appreciable and sustained progress since most achieved independence in the 1960s, except maybe a few with exceptional natural resources. It has been found out that what has become known as the Black Man’s burden is a consequence of unacceptable poverty rate, endemic corruption, civil strife, wars, terrorism, banditry, and a generally low level of human growth and development. The idea that Western countries of Europe and America hold the key to Africa’s development is a myth that is not worth patronizing. The answer to the Black Man’s burden lies as they should in the hands of African countries themselves and especially the individuals and their governments. It is not the case that Africa has been the only continent in history that has suffered this human condition. Europe in the aftermath of the world wars was in shambles, and it took some conscious efforts of individuals and governments to consciously revolt against the absurd through a commitment to come out of the vicious cycle of finger-pointing as causes. The Black Man’s burden can also be addressed using the existentialist movement as a theoretical framework to bring Africa out of the present malaise of backwardness. An acceptance of the absurd and a conscious revolt against the same is what we need in Africa to address this sisyphusian like scenario.

First staged at the Edinburgh Festival fringe in 1966, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard garnered acclaim by presenting an inverse play in which the two peripheral Elizabethan courtiers in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, remain the focus whereas the characters in Hamlet have only minor roles, make brief appearances and enact fragments from the original play in scenes where the two plays converge. The crux of this existential comedy revolves around the exploits of the duo, who were summoned by the king to “glean what afflicts” the Prince of Denmark, and whose tragic deaths go unnoticed amidst the chaotic turmoil at the end of the original play. Stoppard’s absurdist text expands against the backdrop of Hamlet and lays bare the mishaps of the two childhood friends of Hamlet off the stage. This article is committed to exploring the central conflicts in Stoppard’s play such as identity, memory, and personal history through the lenses of Derridean “spectres”, and investigating how far the characters’ conception of the past, present and future accord with the narratives of “hauntology”.

The purpose of the article is to understand the archetypal root of the whole-tone constructions of Fret structures of A. Scriabin and A. Messian in reflecting the detachment from the harmonic system that is relevant for the twentieth century in favor of a linear-melodic approach, determined by the archaic structures of the Indo-Iranian melodic basis. The methodology of the research is a cultural and historical concept in the traditions of A. Losev, in which certain means of expressing art are tested by the cultural genesis and cultural ideas of the time. We use analytical, comparative-historical, and genre-nominative musicological approaches based on aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical positions. The hermeneutical lines of the intonation approach in musicology in the traditions of B. Asafyev and B. Yavorsky in Ukraine, which are in contact with the verbal-centrist approach to music in the French tradition and are clearly expressed by J.-J. Rousseau and his followers of the level of Y. Kristeva, are also important for the work. The scientific novelty is determined by the primacy of the author of the study in the statement of the origins of the sacred determination of Fret thinking and O. Scriabin, and O. Messian in the cultural incentives of Indo-Iranian archaism. This stimulated "scythism" in the Slavic art world of the early twentieth century and Celtic-eastern references to the developments of C. Debussy, determining the Indo-philosophical orientation of Fr. Messian's franciscanism. Conclusions. Cultural and social sources of interval-fret constructions by A. Scriabin and A. Messian point in both cases to the Iranian-Indian basis of European archaism, which in the French composer finds a frank bias towards Hindu-philosophical and rhythmic borrowing. IN O. Scriabin paradoxically closes the search for Scythian-Iranian roots of archaic semantic positions, multi-vector discussed in the circles of Russian Futurists (led by N. Kulbin) and Polish Symbolists. The semitone-whole-tone melodic basis, which encourages support for the quart in A. Scriabin and K. Debussy, fueled the discovery of a new modality of A. Messian, which established in the vanguard of the second wave Scriabin's "nerve" as a mysterious and liturgical interpretation of the musical expression in "Light" by K. Stockhausen, the memorial symbolism of L. Nono and absurdist abstractionism of the works of P. Boulez, others.

The philosophical stance about the existence of being and the meaning of life has been a widely discussed subject among philosophers and critics. Existentialism says that a man can construct his own meaning of life by making judicious use of his awareness, free wills and personal responsibilities, but absurdism believes that there is no meaning of life out there. The focus of this study is to explore the absurdist and existential aspects in Kafka's fiction The Metamorphosis (1915) and The Trial (1925). This is qualitative comparative research, and the data which have been collected for this purpose is through purposive sampling techniques. In this study, Camus' theory of absurdism and theory of existentialism has been adopted as a theoretical framework. The study explores in what ways the traces of absurdism and existentialism are present in Kafka's fiction The Metamorphosis and The Trial. The findings show that characteristics of absurdism and existentialism are found in both the works of Kafka and are comparable with each other. For future recommendations, a comparative stylistic analysis of these selected novels can be carried out.

This article undertakes a chosen journey through the various avant-garde manifestations that flourished since the end of the 19th century to the 60s. The reasons for their emergence and the excesses of their creations constitute the axes of this essay. Starting from the fanciful imaginary of Alfred Jarry incarnated by King Ubu, we will arrive at the sarcasms of Boris Vian singing La Java des bombes atomiques, to end with the convulsive beauty of Paul Éluard. By proclaiming themselves as the defenders of anti-art, they reject reason and rely on the absurd. They are characterized by chaos and imperfection, which leads them to sometimes commit destructive acts of mythical works whose sacred value is rooted in popular opinion. In turn, they advocate non-signification and contradiction as the guiding principles of their creation. Consistent with their aspirations for total independence and in whatever fields, including politics, they experience absolute creation freedom. Provocation, transgression, and subversion animate these texts eager to open new poetic horizons of writing and reading. From a double approach, theoretical and critical, we will try to forge a renewed vision of this disconcerting creation through contemporary expectations.

What can memes teach us about shifting popular-cultural understandings of nature? While a certain form of environmentalism with proclivities for dour, self-righteous, sentimental, or apocalyptic tones is often taken to be hegemonic, Nicole Seymour argues that a more irreverent ‘low environmental culture’ should not be occluded. Humor and irony can serve as emotional registers for environmental media that provide openings for the emergence of playful environmentalisms perhaps more amenable to a diverse audience. Such ‘bad environmentalism’ mobilizes humor by transgressing the emotional norms of piety within environmentalism. This article deepens the concept of bad environmentalism through an examination of the emergence of ‘nature is healing’ memes during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Implicitly critical of nefarious arguments that the death-dealing pandemic would provide a ‘pause for nature’ and thus that ‘humans were the real virus’, the formal and easily reproduced ‘nature is healing’ genre subverts conventional understandings of ‘the natural’ as well as the naturalization of social order and political economy. In particular, I extend Seymour’s argument – and pop cultural studies of the environment – by parsing five modes through which the ‘nature is healing’ genre plays ironically on differing understandings of the natural. These are the out-of-place in nature; nature out-of-place; drawing attention to a naturalized social order; naturalizing social transformation; and absurdity in the natural world. Close attention to different modes of humor provides insight into the ambivalence of affect within ecological and political movements; ‘bad affect’ can, after all, produce careful and critical aesthetics. Such research demonstrates the utility of a widened and potentially counterhegemonic repertoire of affective responses to environmental and political crisis.

The article is devoted to the analysis of a sarcastic evaluation of a person, which leads to their discrediting in media texts. Sarcastic evaluation is considered in terms of linguistic praxeology: the language and compositional means of nomination, description, and actions are analyzed. In a media text, these means interact with the means of expressing the category of deviance and forming semantic nodes. The category of deviance can manifest itself, on the one hand, in exuberance or the absurd, while on the other, in simplification or insufficiency of the sign revelation. Also, specific sarcastic speech techniques are identified. They are based on the discrepancy of referent and illocutionary meanings in the person’s speech portrait. The study of Russian media discourse about Swedish eco-activist Greta Thunberg revealed the active use of linguistic means expressing sarcastic evaluation to demonstrate the opposing viewpoint in relation to the transmitted semantic position of “Other”. When the media represents Greta in the totality of her disadvantages, this enters into a polemic against those who support the ideas of this person. With the help of sarcasm, the media shows the absurdness and failure of these ideas. In this case, a sarcastic evaluation becomes an instrument of discrediting not only the person him/herself, but also his/her views and associates. Linguistic means of sarcastic evaluation are widely represented in discrediting media texts. The most important of them are means such as absurdity, hyperbole, alogism, simplification, etc.

Regarding the mini-text Divine Justice belonging to the book Oficios de Noe by the Colombian writer Guillermo Bustamante Zamudio, an attempt is made to parody the legal discourse in order to question the comprehensive processes involved in the mini-fiction reading and thereby reveal themes, strategies and meanings. The purpose is to understand the entire hermeneutical circuit that allows the reader to arrive at possible judgments about the coordinates of the universe sustained in the desacralization, the subversive character and the production of narrative tensions that are debated between the absurd, the uncertainty and the playful as symptoms of an always borderline and unstable text. For the treatment of these aspects, a hermeneutical understanding and a phenomenological approach are used based on the proposals of Piglia and Guillen. As results we have a text judged around the fall of all certainties, which becomes the exercise of a detective reading full of riddles, suspicions and persecutions.

PurposeAccording to thesaurus definitions, the absurd translates as “ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous”; “extremely silly; not logical and sensible”. As further indicated in the Latin root absurdus, “out of tune, uncouth, inappropriate, ridiculous,” humor in absurd registers plays with that which is out of harmony with both reason and decency. In this article, the authors make an argument for the absurd as a feminist method for tackling heterosexism.Design/methodology/approachBy focusing on the Twitter account “Men Write Women” (est. 2019), the rationale of which is to share literary excerpts from male authors describing women's experiences, thoughts and appearances, and which regularly broadens into social theater in the user reactions, the study explores the critical value of absurdity in feminist social media tactics.FindingsThe study proposes the absurd as a means of not merely turning things around, or inside out, but disrupting and eschewing the hegemonic logic on offer. While both absurd humor and feminist activism may begin from a site of reactivity and negative evaluation, it need not remain confined to it. Rather, by turning things preposterous, ludicrous and inappropriate, absurd laughter ends up somewhere different. The feminist value of absurd humor has to do with both its critical edge and with the affective lifts and spaces of ambiguity that it allows for.Originality/valueResearch on digital feminist activism has largely focused on the affective dynamics of anger. As there are multiple affective responses to sexism, our article foregrounds laughter and ambivalence as a means of claiming space differently in online cultures rife with hate, sexism and misogyny.

This paper discusses the absurd character types that exist in Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot. Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky are the four contradictory yet dependent characters in the play. The absurd characters reflect the social condition of the time, post – World War II. The characters are pictured waiting for the completion of the war in the hope that it will come. Their fate can be changed instantly, the same as the state of war. Besides discussing the characters in the drama, this paper also discusses the characteristics of the language used by the characters. The language used is unreasonable, not in accordance with what is said or how they act; it is called “verbal nonsense”. The interpretations of the dialogue among the characters in the play will give a better picture of each character and how they can be related to societal conditions. Keywords: Theater of Absurd, Character Types, Post-War, Social Condition

There are striking differences between Camus’s early and late philosophical essays, but Camus often claimed that his works were part of one consistent project. This paper argues that, although Camus had a significant change in his views on the consequences of the absurd, throughout his life he also had a common concern with the relation of the absurd to morality. Showing this requires us to clarify what Camus meant by the “absurd,” and identify at least three different uses of the term by Camus: lacking a purpose; lacking an explanation; and a tension between purpose and purposelessness. Clarifying the meaning of “absurd” allows one to show that Camus’s late argument against suicide, often dismissed as inadequate, is valid. This also illustrates the consistency of his concerns over time.

In 1969 West Germany, the country was abuzz with anticipation of the approaching Beethoven bicentennial. That year the composer and experimental filmmaker Mauricio Raúl Kagel, born in Argentina to Russian- and German-Jewish parents in 1931 and living in Cologne since 1957, was commissioned by the State to commemorate the momentous occasion. What resulted was a film that surely no West German official had anticipated. Entitled Ludwig van: A Report and strongly inflected by Kagel’s absurdist aesthetic, Kagel’s film critiques the fetish object that Beethoven’s music and person had become in twentieth-century West Germany, touching upon, amongst many topics, East German claims of Beethoven’s “misuse” by the West German government, as well as the rise in the 1960s of the theory that Beethoven was Black. While Ludwig van has been recognized for its sendup of bourgeois music culture, it has yet to be analyzed from the perspective of diasporic experience. Simultaneously a love letter to and deconstruction of Beethoven’s cultural legacy, Ludwig van asks its audience to consider the complex diasporic experiences of avant-garde artists in the wake of WWII. Drawing on work by Brigid Cohen, I argue for the centrality of the theme of migration and displacement in Ludwig van. And in reading two central scenes from the film, I consider, in dialogue with Scott Burnham, what light the fifty-one-year-old film’s critique of the fetishization of origins and genealogy might shed on the celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020, and such acts of memorization more generally. [Please note: This article contains embedded video files. These files cannot be played on all PDF readers. Current Musicology recommends Foxit PDF Reader, Adobe Acrobat, or any other PDF reader capable of reading "enriched" media.]

Deng Nan-guang 鄧南光 (1907–1971) and Chang Chao-tang 張照堂 (b. 1943) are two photographers revered for their immense contributions to the development of photographic practice in Taiwan. Their names and...

The purpose of the work is to reveal the principles of the functioning of the absurdity, where it is characterized as a category of text, which is based on the reduction to absurdity (reductio ad absurdum). The article studies the methods of creating the absurd in poems for children by Y. Moritz (“Bouquet of cats”, “Bureau of burnt things”, “Lemon Malinovich Compress”, “Laughing confusion”, «Wonderful deeds») and A. Givargizov (“Notes of a hunter’s dog”, “No unauthorized entry”, “Uncustomarily”). It also distinguishes between the levels of text organization, at which absurdity is created by two poets. For Y. Moritz, a play is going at the basic level of the object organization of the text (subsystem of episodes), for A. Givargizov, it goes at the external level of the object organization (subsystem of internal vision frames) and at that of compositional speech forms. The article also analyzes the figurative system of poems, which makes it possible to determine the materiality and visuality of Y. Moritz’ and A. Givargizov’ poems as the key features of their poetry. One of the main features of the poetics of the absurd in Y. Moritz’s poems is the activation of materialized phenomena and objects, as a result of what the poems acquire a rich plot and cinematic quality

This paper analyses Albert Camus’s novel The Plague (1947) and by studying Covid-19 delineates the sameness of the situation as presented in the text and as in the world due to Covid-19. The paper aims to find similarities between the state and situation of humans, specifically, and the world, all in all, generally. By explaining the absurdism and fear of the Other in times of contagion and pandemic, this research aims at explaining the isolated selves of people. The paper pinpoints the fact that times may change but human behaviors stay the same, out and out. This paper fills the gap in the field of Covid-19 studies and relates one time to another, with one thing written down and another appearing before humans. Self-isolation, fear, death, defiance, and imprisonment of mind are the subject matters explored in this study. Not only this but also, Covid-19 and the details of the plague in the novel are studied side by side.

Humour traditionally referred to any type of speech, writing, or composition that was ludicrous or amusing. In the past few decades, humour has been rapidly included in the online world, often in t...

While—like all artistic forms—it allows for deviation from this standard rule, rap is heavily reliant on building blocks of sixteen bars and a refrain. In addition, rhyme plays a prominent role in structuring rap, which is why the form is also colloquially referred to as “rhyming.” In view of this, Billy Woods’s record Today, I Wrote Nothing was a considerable departure from the existing rap norm. On the record, Woods stylistically adapted a collection of works by Russian absurdist writer Daniil Kharms, which was also called Today, I Wrote Nothing. Kharms was known for writing short prose without any formal structure. Most of his stories deal with absurd situations and slapstick humour. The structure of the fragmented fiction is adapted into rap on Woods’s record. The long rap verses are replaced by short songs without any specific narrative. The record maintains the non-structure of Kharms’s writing, as well as its absurdity, but it abandons any semblance of traditional rap. The second important stylistic and structural choice made in Woods’s record was the integration of aspects of Flannery O’Connor’s writing, particularly its humour and darkness. The article will focus on how Billy Woods integrates intertextuality into his lyrics to give the songs additional layers of meaning.

The article reveals the preconditions for the emergence and features of surrealism as an artistic direction. The rejection of the traditions of realism, the autonomy of the artist's personality, irony, playfulness in creativity, the scandalous and shocking nature of his presentation are due to the turning point of the era. The study of surrealism is aimed at forming a systematic, holistic view of the art of the past century in the reader, developing his own position in relation to its diverse innovations. The influence of scientific art criticism in the field of surrealism on the formation of aesthetic views of modern Kazakhstani artists is considered. Philosophy, art or the real sciences: life, death, time, memory, war, love - these topics are always relevant for all areas of humanity and worldview. Describes traditional and modern artistic techniques used in the author's works of art based on the symbolic texts of surrealism. In today's era of globalization, when the country seeks to rethink its original culture and form a national idea and ideology, one of the most pressing problems of the modern era is the study of the origins and nature of our national traditional art.

The article’s problematics is examined in the socio-cultural context. The pandemic phenomenon is considered as a metaphor derived from a pandemic of infectious diseases. The latter is nothing more than a model projected on various social evils. It is in this capacity (not in the viral-infectious one) the pandemic is used in the article. The article broadly interprets the concept of a pandemic as a universal type of general massification of a threatening nature. It is accompanied by fear, aggression, ideological delusions, economic and demographic catastrophes.Like the biomedical pandemic, its associative counterparts have been repeated with unpredictable regularity in human history. Even today, we can assume that the unforeseen consequences of information and communication technologies in the digital age bear the signs of impending pandemics. In the article, the infectious disease pandemic serves as a matrix model for characterizing an invariant version of other heterogeneous pandemics. The author builds his theoretical judgments on the material of well-known philosophical and cultural sources (L. Wittgenstein, M. Heidegger, M. Bakhtin, L. Vygotsky, S. Averintsev, R. Girard et al.), as well as on the history of art, its species and genre varieties.Particular attention is paid to the works of art whose authors intentionally give them an ambivalent meaning. A significant role is given to the subtext of the material presented, the importance of which is determined by the goal to realize the main semantic intent of the article. There is an attempt to substantiate the relevance of postmodernism culture to the modern picture of the world, to the highly ambivalent civilizational changes. The article uses the material of extensive artistic practice to trace the manifestations of postmodernism as both a symptom and a mocker of the absurdism of human existence. The final part of the article prognosticates a number of possible post-pandemic changes in various areas of public life.

В статье рассматриваются функции речевых приемов комического, основанных на паронимической аттракции, в абсурдистском тексте. Выявляются цели использования приема парономазии в романе Е. Клюева «Между двух стульев». Определяются разновидности паронимической аттракции и функции ее применения в анализируемом произведении. The article considers the functions of the comic speech techniques, based on the paronymic attraction, in an absurdist text. The goals of the use of the paronomasia technique in the novel «Between Two Chairs» by E. Klyuev are revealed. The types of paronymic attraction and the functions of its application in the analyzed novel are determined.

In a tweet posted on 29 March 2018, a bidūn activist—who was later jailed from July 2019 to January 2020 for peacefully protesting against the inhumane conditions under which the bidūn are living—shared a video. The brief video zooms in closely on an ID card, recognizable as one of those issued to the bidūn, or long-term residents of Kuwait who are in contention with the state regarding their legal status. More precisely, the mobile phone camera focuses on the back of the ID card, on one line with a special mention added by the Central System (al-jihāz al-markazī), the administration in charge of bidūn affairs. Other magnetic strip cards hide the personal data written above and below it. A male voice can be heard saying that he will read this additional remark, but before even doing so he bursts into laughter. The faceless voice goes on to read out the label in an unrestrained laugh: “ladayh qarīb … ladayh qarīna … dālla ʿalā al-jinsiyya al-ʿIrāqiyya” (he has a relative … who has presumptive evidence … suggesting an Iraqi nationality). The video shakes as the result of a contagious laugh that grows in intensity. In the Kuwaiti dialect, the voice continues commenting: “Uqsim bil-Allāh, gaʿadt sāʿa ufakkir shinū maʿanāt hal-ḥatchī” (I swear by God, it took me an hour to figure out the meaning of this nonsense), before reading the sentence again, stopping and guffawing, and asking if he should “repeat it a third time,” expressing amazement at its absurdity. The tweet, addressed to the head of the Central System (mentioned in the hashtag #faḍīḥat Sāliḥ al-Faḍāla, or #scandal Salih al-Fadala), reads: In lam tastaḥī fa-'ktub mā shaʾt (Don't bother, write what you want).

Human existence is essentially characterised by habit. It is habit that carries us most of the times, from one day to another as our daily activities are mostly routine in nature. As Albert Camus (1942) notes, most of our daily activities are commanded by habit. This is why Camus compares the human condition to that of Sisyphus. Camus submits that like Sisyphus, the same rhythm carries us from one day to another and this makes our actions automatic, if not robotic. Furthermore, Camus notes that habit usually leads to monotony, boredom and meaninglessness of our actions. This is what he refers to as the absurdity of human existence; a feeling of futility we may experience when we become aware of the repetitiveness of our routines and rituals (Craig, 2005); grosso modo, a lack of fundamental meaning in life. In this paper, our analysis of Camus’ play, ‘The Misunderstanding’ (1943) is hinged upon Sartre’s existentialism, which has close affinities with Camus’ philosophical concept of the absurd. In ‘Being and Nothingness’ (1943), Sartre submits that the problem of being is the most important phenomenological problem. According to Sartre, there are essentially, two modes of existence; Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself. Being-in-itself is the type of being that objects in this world have; for example, Being-foritself is the being of human beings. In this article, we have submitted that habit robotises the characters in Camus’ play in that it (habit) transforms them into Being-in-itself whose existence is passive and absurd.

The article analyzes the contemporary artistic activity of the musical theater, which based on the idea of absurdity. The absurdist attitude is viewed as an aesthetic position that includes an ironic component as an integral part of it. New artistic practices rejected the aesthetic canons of rationalism, the means of universal logic, exposed the inside of meaning and opened the absurd sides of man’s existence through laughter. Throughout the twentieth century absurd ideas were in a great demand and found themselves in a variety of embodiments in the practice of the musical theater. Absurd motifs that provoke the audience are accompanied by the musical theater throughout the twentieth century. The spectator is given a new optics of perception of the performance, forcing him/her to participate, to be involved in an exciting quest, which puts into the question not only the system of wellestablished dispositions, but also the idea of the self stability. The absurdity is etymologically connected with deafness (ad absurdum), impossibility to perceive sense, and in this respect it borders with nonsense. The absurd is thus capable to provide a transgressive transition from the intolerable emptiness of nonsense to the acquisition of new meanings. The article explores the actual art practices that transform the aesthetic canons of rationalism with the help of transgression, thus calling into question the foundations of the traditional constitution of the viewer’s identity. The author reveals the consequences of the new optics of the comic, based on the deconstruction of the traditional aesthetic binar «laughter – serious». The analysis is made on the basis of the material of current musical performances and composer creativity of the second half of the 20th century. and the beginning of the XXI century.

This article explores how the repeated use of proper nouns in the absurdist works of Daniil Kharms diminishes the overall cohesiveness of the text by creating unusual focus on the subject rather than the predicate, thus breaking up the storyline, making it harder for the reader to follow. As a result, the events of the story are dulled, which helps produce impervious characters and self-destructive plots. These, in the end, were desirable qualities in the belief system of Kharms, who felt that a pure reality could only be attained by separating out the parts of the whole and that perfection consisted in reducing things to a state of zero. Consequently, the overuse of proper nouns is instrumental in reflecting Kharms’ philosophical views and creating the world of the absurd in his works.

The notion that King Lear can be interpreted through Samuel Beckett’s theatre has now become a critical truism. Peter Brook’s production of the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in the e...

Esse artigo visa apresentar duas concepções que apresentam possíveis encontros na análise da narrativa do escritor brasileiro José J. Veiga. Primeiramente, demonstraremos como se desenvolve uma das teorias de análise contemporâneas do fantástico na literatura sob a perspectiva do professor David Roas (2011, 2014). A seguir, através do estudo da obra do filósofo e escritor argelino Albert Camus, em especial seu livro O mito de Sísifo (2019), iremos apontar em linhas gerais as características mais discutidas da chamada filosofia do absurdo defendida pelo escritor. A partir dessas comparações iremos apontar as semelhanças entre os estudos filosóficos de Camus e a teoria da literatura fantástica desenvolvida por Roas e apontar como ambas apresentam pontos de intersecção na literatura do autor brasileiro José J. Veiga, em especial em dois de seus contos “O galo impertinente” e “ Onde andam os didangos?”, ambos do livro A estranha máquina extraviada (2010), conduzindo a uma leitura fantástica-absurda da obra do autor em conexão com uma possível ontologia de mundo.

The aim of the article is characteristics of mechanisms of pragmatics distraction in communication of active participants of modern Ukrainian plays with features of the theatre of the absurdity. Structural and contextual mechanisms of dialogic speech depragmatization are singled out on factual material. In a dramatic dialogue absurdity is explained as a purposeful instruction to convey the thought about illogicalness and chaotic nature of reality, the aimlessness of a human being. The main methods of the study are descriptive, context-interpreting and presuppositional. Study results. One of absurdity occurrence mechanisms is depragmatization – purposeful non-normative usage of language pragmatic resources. We identify structural and contextual violations within depragmatization. Structural violations are characteristic for an absurdist drama in which characters’ cues do not have illocutionary and thematic coherence. Another type of structural violations is conscious violations of formal structure of linguistic units. Role exchange, during which an active participant takes over someone else’s communicative role, is an example of contextual depragmatization. Within contextual violations we also identify the group of cognitive violations which is based on non-observance of causally consecutive and logical connections. Anomalies based on an arbitrary choice of language stylistic means, which are uncoordinated with general principles of stylistic formalization of the text, are considered the contextual variety of depragmatization. Conclusions. Structural and contextual communicative violations are used by playwrights to activate the sense of the situational absurdity depicted in a work. Active participants of drama of the absurdity communicate without communicative purpose and taking into account situational needs, which results in actualization of pragmatic potential of used linguistic units, falsification of meaningful speech.

Stephen Carleton's The Turquoise Elephant and David Finnigan's Kill Climate Deniers have each won Griffin Theatre's national award for best new Australian play over recent years, placing these thea...

Camus unreservedly condemned and strictly criticized and rejected suicide and existential leap because suicide is a total surrender to absurdity and a total confession that life is too much on the individual. His interest in existentialism is to explain the meaninglessness of life through his explication of the absurd which is found in human existence; and which continues to torment man until the finality of his existence which is death. The knowledge that life is absurd is already a step towards conquering the meaninglessness of life. For Camus therefore, since absurd has no meaning, man must hold himself apart from it and revolt against it. This is why he suggested philosophical suicide as a solution to reverse the absurdity of life. The question then is, since man’s belief in the absurdity of existence, then how and where should he direct his conduct, does suicide solve this problem? The consequences of Camus’ submissions are enormous; but be that as it may, this work attempts a study of the absurdity inherent in human existence with a view to answering the following questions: How far did Camus achieve the idea of absurdity of life? How realistic is Camus’ attempt to analyze life as meaningless apart from the meaning we give to it? Did Camus actually succeed in his attempt to show that life is absurd? Finally, what are the implications of Camus’ absurdity to philosophy and to life in general? This work will adopt expository and analytic methodological approaches. Here we shall with a detailed and deep reflective inquiry expose the place of absurdity in Camus’ philosophy in order to fully understand his understanding of life.

The article is devoted to the study of the thematic and poetic features of the late prose “Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man” of the American writer Joseph Heller. Developing the concept of lateness Theodor W. Adorno and Edward W. Said discovered that the last work may possess hidden complexity under the illusional formal simplicity. Risk and rebellion became the main motives in Heller’s novel as he goes to rediscover The Great American Novel and compare himself\narrative “reflection” with its creators. The author turns reader’s attention to the problem of perception of a writer, composing the theory of “literature of despair” as the visible foe he stands against. This paper aims to discover the distinguishing difference between previous and last novels, foremost in changing the poetics of absurdism and existentialism. The author intentionally depicting himself as an ironic figure Eugene Pota that “is” writing his last novel here and now. This character is a reflected image of Heller himself, through which he analyzes his life and work. The choice to frame the whole narrative as the metaphorical odyssey of Tom Sawyer in search of a literary mentor resonates with John Bart’s essay about “literature of exhaustion”. A complicated canvas of plots, – rewriting Kafka, Twain, Bible – allows to explore gender roles in the narrative, redirect well-known stories into postmodern patterns. The late style appears as the result of history – bringing the forgotten pieces of conventional fictional techniques in an unexpected manner. Heller overcomes the despair before his own death and audience criticism because he strongly believes that art will continue to live.

Through selected close readings from plays by Arthur Adamov and Samuel Beckett, this article examines how language is herein used against itself to expose the impossibility of meaninglessness. By replacing significance with mere surface sounds, language emerges from these plays as a carrier of unexpected—and inescapable—meaning. Tracing a series of comic reversal techniques common to both Adamov and Beckett, famously grouped together under the moniker Theater of the Absurd, the author demonstrates how the attempt to deprive words of sense-making is repetitiously usurped by other sensory elements which doggedly invest the striving for senselessness with profound ambiguity, against all odds. À travers l’analyse des pièces de théâtre d’Arthur Adamov et de Samuel Beckett, cet article propose d’explorer comment le langage y est utilisé contre lui-même pour démontrer l'impossibilité du non-sens. En remplaçant la signification par de simples sons de surface, le langage apparaît dans ces pièces comme porteur d'un sens inattendu - et inéluctable. Retraçant une série de techniques de renversement comique communes à Adamov et à Beckett, tous les deux regroupés sous le nom de Théâtre de l'absurde, l'auteur illustre comment les tentatives de priver les mots de leur sens sont usurpées de manière répétitive par d'autres éléments sensoriels qui investissent obstinément la recherche du non-sens d'une profonde ambiguïté, contre toute attente.

We do not have an absolute knowledge of why are we exist or what are we living for. Therefore, it is possible that every human being has queryed the meaning of life, living or death at least one time on his life. Why do people live? Or why do people commit suicide? Are we looking for meaning in our lives because we think life will end suddenly? These questions and similars must have come into the mind of one of the prominent names of the 20th century, Albert Camus. Because he draws attention to the concept of suicide as the only and priority problem of philosophy. He considered to make a judgment as to whether life is worth living and the meaning of live as a fundamental and philosophical problem. Camus researched the absurd state that occurs when man is alienated from the world he lives in with Incompatible and he approached it in an attitude which is independent from divine being. The purpose of this study is to focus to death suicide, quest about meaning of life and absurd concepts in the light of Albert Camus’ philosophy. It will be tried to point out whether life is an event that is worth living, whether the life has an absolute value in this world where pessimism, difficulty, despair and even pain prevail with his philosphy., Niçin var olduğumuzun ya da ne için hayatta bulunduğumuzun mutlak bilgisine sahip değiliz. Dolayısıyla her insanın, yaşamının en az bir anında hayatın anlamını, yaşamı ya da ölümü sorgulamış olması muhtemeldir. İnsan niçin yaşar? Ya da insan niçin intihar eder? Hayatın aniden sona ereceğini düşündüğümüz için mi hayatımızda bir anlam arıyoruz? Bu ve benzeri sorular 20. yüzyılın öne çıkan isimlerinden biri olan Albert Camus’nun de aklından geçmiş olacak ki intihar kavramına dikkat çekmiştir. Hayatın anlamını ve yaşanmaya değer olup olmadığı hakkında bir yargıya varmayı esas ve öncelikli felsefi problem olarak görmüştür. Camus insanın, yaşadığı dünyaya ve kendine yabancılaşmasıyla ortaya çıkan absürd durumu incelemiş ve buna tanrısal bir varlığa bağlanmayan bir tavırla yaklaşmıştır. Bu çalışmanın amacı Albert Camus felsefesi ışığında yaşama dair bir anlam arayışı, ölüm, intihar ve absürd kavramlarına odaklanmak olacaktır. Onun felsefi çatısı altında hayatın yaşanmaya değer bir olgu olup olmadığı, karamsarlığın, zorluğun, umutsuzluğun hatta acının hüküm sürdüğü bu dünyada yaşamın mutlak bir değer taşıyıp taşımadığı hususuna değinilmeye çalışılacaktır.

Inmersa en una época influenciada por la corriente filosófica del existencialismo, la obra de Saramago entra en un diálogo irónico y descarado con el lector de una sociedad que se aleja de la iglesia, porque siente que Dios todopoderoso cohíbe al hombre de una elección libre por el miedo del castigo. En Memorial del Convento, se destaca el sufrimiento a través del castigo injusto y cruel de la Santa Inquisición, compuesta por hombres tan pecaminosos o más que otros, provocando la interrogación en el lector sobre su relación con un (im)posible divino. La narración demuestra la naturaleza humana corruptible, inseparable del pecado de la carne, y el absurdo de un dios que crea al hombre con un cuerpo pecaminoso. Se evidencia un dios que castiga el amor verdadero cuando este debería ser el protagonista de la religión cristiana.)

The intention of this paper is the semantic disfiguration of the cultural subtext of black-humorous elements in Dušan Kovačevićʼs comediography, and a method of research is to synthetically discover the meaning on a symbolic plane of the text. The comic elements of Kovačević‘s plays are presented based on the plays: The Marathon Family, Radovan III, Balkan Spy, Claustrophobic Comedy, The Professional, Roaring Tragedy, also, based on film adaptations of plays Balkan Spy and The Professional. The subject of this paper is to determine the genre charcteristics of Dušan Kovačevićʼs comedies, as well as a comparative analysis of parodic in the context of Serbian literature history. An analysis of comic elements is performed based on the theory of drama, comedy and absurdity. This paper discusses the concept of parody and grotesque. The second part of the paper refers to extratextual characterictics that are scenic type of nature and contribute to the atmosphere of black-humorous social regression. The goal of this paper is to relate the characterisation of Dušan Kovačevićʼs dramatic prosèdē as tragicomic. His comedies demonstrate internal aspects and characteristics of tragedy, but the actions of the characters from plays are comic in nature.

portuguesO artigo preconiza a relevância pedagogica da filosofia da nao-significacao de Albert Camus, especialmente em O Mito de Sisifo. O eixo argumentativo segue a ultima frase deste livro: “E preciso imaginar Sisifo feliz”. A certeza da existencia e a estranheza de se inserir num cenario de catastrofe, sem esperanca, suscita em estudantes, especialmente da rede publica, um “sentimento da absurdidade”, mas esse estado nao ha de ser visto como maldicao. A liberdade paradoxalmente advem quando se assume o absurdo como meio de se afirmar a vida, contra os suicidios fisico e filosofico, tornando Sisifo o “heroi absurdo”. Camus atribui ao pensamento de Soren Kierkegaard a proposta do suicidio filosofico como sacrificio do intelecto pelo salto kiekegaardiano da fe porque ele entende a felicidade encontrada na vida eterna como uma superacao e cura da doenca mortal do desespero. O esforco dialetico de autorreflexao da consciencia entre o finito e o infinito faz da resignacao infinita uma preparacao para o salto da fe. Para nosso autor, porem, o pior mal e nao ter sofrido desespero, pois e a partir dele que imaginativamente o absurdo, como potencia existencial, transfigura-se numa “revolta metafisica” — uma posicao a ser desenvolvida no processo de ensino-aprendizagem em Filosofia. EnglishThe article praises the pedagogical relevance of Albert Camus’ philosophy of meaninglessness, especially on The Myth of Sisyphus. The argumentative axis follows the last sentence of this book: “One has to imagine Sisyphus happy.” The certainty of existence and the strangeness of being inside in a catastrophic scenario, without hope, arouses in students, chiefly of the public school system, a “feeling of absurdity”, but this state of affairs is not to be seen as a curse. Freedom paradoxically comes when one assumes the absurd as a means of affirm life, against physical and philosophical suicides, making Sisyphus the “absurd hero.” Camus attributes to Soren Kierkegaard’s thought the proposal of philosophical suicide, which would be an intellectual sacrifice through the leap of faith because he understands the happiness only can be found in eternal life as an overcoming and cure of the deadly disease of despair. The dialectical effort of self-reflection of the consciousness between the finite and the infinite makes infinite resignation a preparation for the leap of faith. For our author, however, the worst evil is not to have suffered despair, because it is departing from him that the absurd, as an existential power, is imaginatively transformed into a “metaphysical revolt” – a position to be developed in the teaching-learning process on Philosophy.

Critics of organ donation after circulatory death (DCD) argue that, even if donors are past the point of autoresuscitation, they have not satisfied the “irreversibility” requirement in the circulatory and respiratory criteria for determining death, since their circulation and respiration could be artificially restored. Thus, removing their vital organs violates the “dead-donor” rule. I defend DCD donation against this criticism. I argue that practical medical-ethical considerations, including respect for do-not-resuscitate orders, support interpreting “irreversibility” to mean permanent cessation of circulation and respiration. Assuming a consciousness-related formulation of human death, I then argue that the loss of circulation and respiration is significant, because it leads to the permanent loss of consciousness and thus to the death of the human person. The DNR request by an organ donor should thus be interpreted to mean “do not restore to consciousness.” Finally, I respond to an objection that if “irreversibility” has a medical-ethical meaning, it would entail the absurd possibility that one of two individuals in the same physical state could be alive and the other dead—an implication that some think is inconsistent with understanding death as an objective biological state of the organism. I argue that advances in medical technology have created phenomena that challenge the assumption that human death can be understood in strictly biological terms. I argue that ethical and ontological considerations about our nature bear on the definition and determination of death and thus on the permissibility of DCD.

This paper analyzes the critical approach to Aureliano Buendia's battles in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. It explores the events related to historic wars and analyzes the satire behind those episodes as they are narrated in the novel. The discussion shows how the effect of the absurd not only shapes a satirical view of the National History, but it also de- velops an acute criticism of war. In addition, the paper poses some ideas about our current wars, taking into account both the notion of »trace« developed by Paul Riceur, and Aureliano Buendia's satire of war.

The structure of feeling that has been called the absurd suggests a placeless and irrational world. Yet such a structure of feeling is sometimes produced in response to quite a specific context. This essay considers the way absurdity arises and is treated within Anna Seghers’s Transit, a novel about the plight of refugees from Nazi Germany trying to leave unoccupied France after the signing of the Armistice between France and Germany in June 1940. The essay explores the treatment of space and time in the novel and suggests that there is a significant distinction between absurdity as resignation and absurdity as dissent. The essay also claims that absurdity is explicitly countered in the novel in the pursuit of a politics of responsibility and a resistance in solidarity.

In paper the boundaries of funniness in musical-dramatic art are researched. Musical performance goes out from the semiotic space of the original genre into a field of meanings and signs, which are unstabled, opened, containing and suggesting many interpretations, including ironic ones. It is argued in contemporary aesthetics, on the one hand, that the art cannot exist without a discourse interpreting it. On the other hand, there is a demand to avoid the interpretation, which at the same time legitimizes the aesthetic effect and castrates an object of art. Provocation is used for solving the problems of observing the object of art in a new way and understanding of modern reality, and it’s not complete without irony and self-irony. Wit, irony, comicalness are transformed as fitting into the style of the absurd and deconstructing the border between the funny and serious. The purpose of such provocations is to introduce the viewer into a position of uncertainty and aesthetic shock. Such stupor inevitably orients the spectator to a meeting with an object of art and allows for a new understanding of oneself. The paper considers organicity of the elements of laughter culture and comic devices for the music and drama theater is considered.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the peculiarities of the perception and understanding of Sonnets written by W. Shakespeare by the students of the Faculty of Foreign Languages. The methods of the research are: in order to study the features of perception and understanding of the absurd in the sonnets of W. Shakespeare we used the method of associative experiment. In our research we examined the dependence of the latent period of awareness of the absurd meaning of speech acts, depending on the nature of stimulation. For comparing we proposed to students high-frequency phrases, emotionally colored ones (chosen from the sonnets of W. Shakespeare), low-frequency statements, stylistically colored phrases, statements which include slang. The results of the research. At the end of the procedure of the experiment, a total of 1958 verbal responses of the students were received. From them, 897 reactions are for high frequency phrases; 458 – for emotionally colored ones; 293 are for low frequency phrases; 256 – for stylistically colored ones and only 54 reactions are for slang. At the stage of the analysis of the results we arranged the groups of words depending on statistical differences in the average time of the associative reaction for each group in order from the smallest one to the largest group: 1) high-frequency and emotionally colored; 2) stylistically colored: 3) low-frequency; 4) phrases with slang. Conclusions. It was proved that students adequately perceived and understood the emotionally colored phrases that were selected by us from W. Shakespeare’s sonnets and contained explicit and implicit absurd meaning. This gives us reason to argue that these statements, with their expressive context and absurd content, in a great degree attracted students that they perceived these phrases as personally significant, experienced them in such a way that they already entered their sphere of personally significant experience.

Drawing on the work of Albert Camus this paper offers a critique of certain discourses around ‘novel ecosystems’. These new species ‘assemblages’ are frequently defended, or even celebrated, as exemplifying resilience and adaptability to the environmental repercussions of a global situation inaccurately glossed as ‘The Anthropocene’. Here the increasing prevalence of economically generated changes, including the accelerating translocations of species, are set against earlier conservation values emphasizing protection of ‘natural’ and ‘native’ ecologies. The proliferation of novel ecosystems, together with an instrumental emphasis on their functional, ‘pragmatic’, and economic benefits, appears to make environmentalists’ ethical concerns about the loss of endangered others seem ‘absurd’ and frames conservation as a Sisyphean task. Yet Camus early work provides arguments for ethical / political resistance in just such absurd and extreme circumstances.

“Story of Sanatorium Zone” by Mykola Khvylovyi, fi rst published in 1924 under the title “Sanatorium Zone”, has been considered in two interconnected contexts – the one of European modernism of the initial decades of the 20th century and that of the so-called Ukrainian ‘latent’ modernism of the 1920s – 1930s. The mentioned fact of the story’s relation to the ‘sanatorium’ theme in the works of European writers (“The Magic Mountain” by T. Mann, “The Last Chapter” by K. Hamsun, “Sanatorium” by S. Maugham, “Sanatorium under Clepsydra” by B. Schultz, “Health-Resort Visitor” by H. Hesse) is considered as a testimony of the writer’s concentration on the confi ned area, which is one of the conceptual signs of the modernist aesthetics. The analysis of the confined space, shown in the story, is carried out in several aspects: a) a metaphor of ‘zone’ as a factor of forming the semantic field of the confined space; b) typology of confined spaces: pragmatic, prophanic, social and historical, space of memory, existential, mythological, absurdist; c) relation of the sanatorium space to the out-of-sanatorium one, frontiers and borders, verticals and horizontals, collision ‘inside/outside’; d) composition of the textual space of the story (frame composition, the beginning and the end as compositional elements, assembly, principle of counterpoint, doubling of the narration subject; e) the structure of the confined space as a Text (‘beginning/end’ as structural component, binary oppositions, intertextuality – ‘autointertext’, intertextual ‘Dostoyevsky’ palimpsest). The analysis of poetics, structure, and semantics of the confined space in “Sanatorium Zone” gives the basis for marking the innovative role of the story by Mykola Khvylovyi in the establishment of the Ukrainian model of modernism.

This essay examines two oppositional figures in Paul Beatty’s debut novel, The White Boy Shuffle (1996), and most recent novel, The Sellout (2015): the exalted race leader and the excoriated race traitor. Positioned at extreme ends of the spectrum of exceptionalism, these figures function to perpetuate a phenomenon that the essay’s author terms the necropolitics of black exceptionalism, the paradox of justifying the violent oppression of the majority of black people by celebrating or censuring a single black figure. In exploring the absurd dimensions of these extreme figures through the lens of satire, both novels denounce black exceptionalism as a necropolitical tool of oppression that entrenches the social death and civic exclusion of black people in a modern US society that purports to be color-blind and postracial. Emerging within the postmodern turn of the African American literary tradition, these novels take on a nihilistic tone to raise questions about how the black community might effectively (if at all) achieve civil progress in the contemporary age. Ultimately, these satirical novels reimagine historically necropolitical spaces, such as the basketball court, the plantation, and the segregated urban neighborhood, as potential, albeit vexed sites of black agency, empowerment, and community building.