Waiting for Godot: A requiem for cultural paralysis in post-independence Ireland

Document Type : Original

Author

Department of English, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Among scholars of Irish culture, literature and politics, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a multimodal apparatus; the significance of the use of the concept of anticipation and waiting is twofold: on the one hand, it is a reminder of the national effort to discard intellectual exploitation and to re-imagine the national identity after the revolution and independence of Ireland in 1921 and to dismantle the yoke of British colonialism after 800 years. And on the other, it signifies the continuation of political stagnation, cultural paralysis, and the expansion of the broad lord-servant policy along the internal regulations of the provisional and independent government, from 1922 to early 1950. This article analyzes the logic of anticipation and waiting as a structural feature of colonialism in the direction of exploiting nations, and examines the determining role of the concept of opacity in removing the structure of colonialism, and ultimately achieving the independence of the Irish. Opacity, according to this article, appears as a cultural veil that stands between the structure of colonial subjugation, and the risk of the formation and rise of an internal colonial context. The seemingly mistaken result of opacity is cultural disunity and individual self-referentialism; however, as this article explores these categories are initiatives that coalesce into an understanding of independence and the destruction of the colonial structure.

Keywords

حوزة موضوعی: ایرلند

Scope: Ireland

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Journal of Countries Studies
Volume 1, Issue 2
2023
Pages 257-277

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History

  • Receive Date: 08 April 2023
  • Revise Date: 28 April 2023
  • Accept Date: 03 May 2023

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