This document discusses postmodernism and the theater of the absurd. It provides context on how World War II led to the development of the theater of the absurd genre, which focuses on the philosophy that all human efforts to find meaning are useless. Key features of postmodernism discussed include an emphasis on style over substance, pastiche, mixing of high and low culture, skepticism of absolute truths, and the decline of metanarratives. Examples used to illustrate postmodern concepts are reality television, which blurs the line between surveillance and entertainment, and Disneyland, which substitutes simulated reality for authentic experiences. The document also addresses how religion and art have adapted in a postmodern age.

1. ELIT 46C: CLASS 21
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5aKknj-q3o
For the Post-modernist poets, including
Philip Larkin, the identity of the poet is
stripped off its glamour and the poet
becomes an ordinary man talking about
things in a language - though versified -
sounds quite prosaic. As a human being
the poet is in no way special, nor is there
any reason to glorify his self. These poets
present series of disillusionment that they
underwent which led them to negative
feelings. This is Philip Larkin's attitude in
poem after poem.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is one of Britain's pre-
eminent Twentieth Century poets.

2. Chair Poet?

3. AGENDA
Discussion
Queering Mrs. Dalloway
Lecture
Postmodernism/Absurdism
Discussion
Waiting for Godot

4. Clarissa kissed a girl.
(And she liked it.)

5. “She and Sally fell a little behind. Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole
life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on
the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared;
there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped
up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it — a diamond, something infinitely precious,
wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the
radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!” (2175)
What is this passage saying?
More generally, how are we supposed
to read Clarissa’s relationship
with Sally?

6. Explore and discuss the
relationship between Sally and
Clarissa.

7. HOW TO READ CLARISSA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH SALLY
Surprisingly enough, most critics have avoided reading this moment in
terms of actual queer sexuality.
◦many of them chalk it up to silly adolescent over-enthusiasm.
◦Elaine Showalter called it a “girlhood fascination”
Elizabeth Abel reads this moment as a step in Clarissa’s development from an adolescent
into a heterosexual adult.
--reads Clarissa’s affection for Sally as love for a surrogate mother figure (because
Clarissa lost her own mother).
--an affection that Clarissa must grow out of in order to become an adult.
--In this sense, Abel echoes Richard Dalloway when he tries to explain Elizabeth’s
affection for Miss Kilman:
◦ “But it might be only a phase, as Richard said, such as all girls go through.” (2161)
--And sure enough, Abel argues, Clarissa does indeed move on. She finds a man, marries
him, and lives the mature heterosexual life.

8. FROM “QUEERING MRS. DALLOWAY”
According to Thomas Peele, “Clarissa's sexual
infatuation with Sally is frequently read as a
symbol of her withdrawal from the patriarchal
order, and not as a cause of her alienation
from it. Unfortunately, however, when critics
diminish the importance of homosexual desire
in Mrs. Dalloway, they more or less
unconsciously enact cultural pressure to
maintain the secret.”
But whynot read this as a queer moment?

9. HOW DOES CLARISSA FEEL ABOUT WOMEN?
“She could not resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman […], she did
undoubtedly feel what men felt. Only for a moment, but it was enough. It was a
sudden revelation, a tinge like the blush which one tried to check and then, as it
spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there
quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance,
some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured with an
extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores! Then, for that moment, she had
seen an illumination; a match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost
expressed. But the close withdrew; the hard softened. It was over — the moment.
Against such moments (with women too) there contrasted (as she laid her hat down)
the bed and Baron Marbot and the candle half-burnt.” (2173)

10. HOW DOES SHE FEEL ABOUT SALLY?
• “But this question of love (she thought, putting her coat away), this
falling in love with women. Take Sally Seton; her relation in the old
days with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?” (2173)
• “But the charm was overpowering, to her at least, so that she could
remember standing in her bedroom at the top of the house holding the
hot-water can in her hands and saying aloud, ‘she is beneath this roof.
. . . She is beneath this roof!’” (2174)
• Is this just a phase?

11. “No, the words meant absolutely nothing to her now. She
could not even get an echo of her old emotion. But she could
remember going cold with excitement, and doing her hair in
a kind of ecstasy (now the old feeling began to come back to
her, as she took out her hairpins, laid them on the dressing-
table, began to do her hair), with the rooks flaunting up and
down in the pink evening light, and dressing, and going
downstairs, and feeling as she crossed the hall “if it were
now to die ’twere now to be most happy.” That was her
feeling — Othello’s feeling, and she felt it, she was
convinced, as strongly as Shakespeare meant Othello to feel
it, all because she was coming down to dinner in a white
frock to meet Sally Seton!” (2174-75)

12. THE QUEER MOMENT
The scene with Sally functions as a
“queer moment”—as conceptualized
by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
◦a “moment” that recurs, that returns,
again and again, in its power and lives
alongside the “now.”
◦It refuses to be relegated to the past or to
take its place in a chronological narrative.

13. • In this way, Mrs. Dalloway is not a novel
of development as Abel and other critics
suggest:
The adolescent Clarissa hasn’t become
the adult Clarissa.
Rather, the adolescent Clarissa—the
Clarissa that was in love with Sally—
coexists with the narrative of Clarissa’s
adult life and marriage to Richard.
The “present” that Sally gave her is still
present—even after all those years.
• What this means is that Clarissa is not
a unified subjectivity that exists
coherently in the present as an endpoint
of a developmental process.

14. “She would not say of any one in the world now
that they were this or were that. She felt very
young; at the same time unspeakably aged.”
(2159)
“She pursed her lips when she looked in the glass. It
was to give her face point. That was her self —
pointed; dartlike; definite. That was her self when
some effort, some call on her to be her self, drew
the parts together, she alone knew how different,
how incompatible and composed so for the world
only into one centre, one diamond, one woman
who sat in her drawing-room and made a meeting-
point” (2176)

15. 1. Explore and discuss the
relationship between
Septimus and Evans.
2. Using the idea of "Other,"
consider how you might read
the relationship between
Septimus and Rezia as queer.
3. QHQ: How do Clarissa and
Septimus experience
homosexuality differently?

16. FROM MODERNITY TO POST-MODERNITY
Modern age Post modern age
• production
• Community life
• Social class
• Family
• A role of education
• A one-way media
• Overt social control
• Nationhood
• Science aided progress and finding
the truth
• consumption
• fragmentation (individualism)
• Identity from other sources
• Families (many options)
• Education for what?
• Duality of media (choice/interchange)
• Covert control (CCTV etc)
• Global
• Science is only one source of
knowledge – plurality of truths now
Structure/security/place/stability
YOU KNEW WHO YOU WERE
Confusion/lack of structure/
incessant choice
YOU CREATE WHO YOU WANT TO BE

17. KEY FEATURES OF POST-MODERNISM• Truth is relative
• Consumerism is all
• Transformation of the self (‘pick ‘n’ mix’)
• Disillusionment with the idea of progress
• Uncertainty
• Increased fragmentation of social life
• Incessant choice
• Globalisation
• The impact of ICT on social life

18. 1. Emphasis on the centrality of style, at the expense of substance
2. Recycling past cultures and styles – pastiche
3. Playful use of ‘useless’ decoration
4. Celebration of complexity and contradiction. Mixture of high and low culture.
5. Sensitivity to the subtleties of image, language and signs
6. Intermixing – different styles – collaging
7. Accepting the collapse of distinction and difference
8. Rejection of monolithic definitions of culture – celebrate pluralism and
diversity
9. Scepticism towards metanarratives and ‘absolutism’
10. Decline of the idea of only one source of meaning –truth.
10 POINTS OF POST-MODERNISM & STYLE

19. POST-MODERNISM ILLUSTRATED – ‘REALITY
TV’
Reality TV illustrates the
interchange between the consumer
and the media
They are ‘real people’ who people
can be observed and scrutinised.
They do not entertain – rather than
exist…they are a mish-mash of cctv
surveillance and gameshow
In the real world they are talentless
nobodys who are treated as stars

20. POST-MODERNISM ILLUSTRATED –DISNEYLAND
Disneyland is a simulacra. It is a
simulated reality.
It is artificial – yet ‘real’
It is a place that exists and is
accepted because our imagination
makes it so.
The fine line between reality and
fantasy is‘greyer’
The power of the symbol over
substance.

22. RELIGION IN A POST-MODERN AGE
Faith could re-emerge as scientific thinking loses
significance
Religious symbols have new life in new contexts
Faith is now ‘up for grabs’ in the absence of absolute truth
People can blend elements of various faiths to suit their
lifestyle
Globalisation has divorced faiths from locations and
cultures
Fundamentalism is a response to a moral vacuum
People can make choices which are more personal and
meaningful
Collective worship no longer needs to be based on ‘face to
face’ interaction

23. POSTMODERN ART

24. POSTMODERN SCULPTURE

25. POSTMODERN PHOTOGRAPHY

26. THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD:
ANOTHER WAR; ANOTHER CHANGE
• The spiritual and physical devastation of World War II birthed the idea of Theater of the Absurd. The term
refers to a series of dramas that focused on the philosophy that came out of Albert Camus' essay "The Myth
of Sisyphus,” which postulated that all the energy man spends searching for meaning is life is useless.
• In opposition to the idea of literature aiding the search for meaning, the Absurdists latched onto Camus’ idea
and created literature that highlighted the absurd in man's behaviors and explanations of those
behaviors. These plays, including Waiting for Godot, used humor, slapstick comedy, wordplay, and other
devices to achieve their purpose.
• Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter, among others, pushed against the realistic thesis play that had
thus far dominated serious theater. They worked to create drama that reflected a world now seen as devoid of
purpose, a moral center, and human dignity.

27. WAITING FOR GODOT: THE
PLAYERS• Vladimir
• Estragon
• Pozzo
• Lucky
• The boy
• Godot

28. THE PLOT
• Waiting for Godot set forth a new direction for theater, and it made Beckett one of the
most notable dramatists of that decidedly different but dark trend.
• The play is an unrelenting picture of angst, hopelessness, and futility.
• In the first act, Vladimir and Estragon, tramps and longtime friends, appear on a
desolate country road in the middle of nowhere to wait for the obscure Godot. They
have never seen Godot, but they are certain he will save them from their empty,
boring lives.
• The second act repeats the first, emphasizing the uselessness of their behavior and
ultimately acting as a metaphor for the human condition in the modern world.

29. GROUPS

30. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Discuss the setting used in the play. How is it important? What is the symbolism?
• What are the basic differences between Estragon (Gogo) and Vladimir (Didi)?
• Who is Godot? How do you know?
• Why are Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot? How do you know?

31. THE HOMOEROTIC?
Estragon: Didi...
Vladimir: (without turning). I've nothing to say to you.
Estragon: (step forward). You're angry? (Silence. Step forward.) Forgive me. (Silence. Step
forward. Estragon lays his hand on Vladimir's shoulder.) Come, Didi. (Silence.) Give me your
hand. (Vladimir half turns.) Embrace me! (Vladimir stiffens.) Don't be stubborn! (Vladimir softens.
They embrace. Estragon recoils.) You stink of garlic!
Vladimir: It's for the kidneys. (Silence. Estragon looks attentively at the tree.) What do we do
now?
Estragon: Wait.
Vladimir: Yes, but while waiting.
Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
Estragon: (highly excited). An erection!
Vladimir: With all that follows.

32. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Why is it that in Act II--on the second evening Vladimir
and Estragon wait--the tree has leaves, Pozzo is blind, and
Lucky is mute? Why do things change so drastically?
• What is the function of the boy in Waiting for Godot?
That is, what his significance in the play. Why is he--and
what he does--important?

33. • Discuss the function of the audience in Waiting for Godot.
After all, do we not wait with Didi and Gogo? Are we not
caught up in their dilemmas? Are we not as uncertain
about Pozzo and Lucky as they? Are we not as confused?
Is Beckett, then, using us? How? and to what end?
• Why is the idea of suicide important in the play?
• What is the significance of the moments of silence in the
play?
• What is the significance of Estragon’s eating a carrot?

34. • Compare and contrast the roles of Pozzo/Lucky and
Vladimir/Estragon.
• What is the significance of Lucky’s speech and philosophy?
• What is the 'Christian imagery in Vladimir and Estragon’s
/relationship with Godot? What other aspects of the play
can be interpreted as Christian symbols?
• Make an argument for Waiting for Godot as either a
Christian or anti-Christian play.

35. • Identify characteristics of “theatre of the absurd,”
in the context of Godot.
• Discuss the motif of pairs of characters in the
play. Is this doubling as we have seen in earlier
works? If so, how? If not, why not? What is the
purpose of the doubling?
• Will Godot ever come? How do you know?

36. QHQS
Question: How do the
characters in “Waiting
for Godot” define their
existence? Is their
existence meaningless?

37. HOMEWORK
Write Essay #2
Review for exam