Domestication in waiting: Beckett under the tempography of domination

Abstract

In these words, we will attempt to address the way in which theater is fundamental to articulate philosophical problems. Based on the work of the Irishman Samuel Beckett (1906-1982), we will attempt to bring to the stage two concepts that are intertwined with a type of temporality that is very characteristic today: the temporality that elapses in the act of waiting. We will analyze two ideas from the play Waiting for Godot (1952).

In first place, the way in which a very particular mode of waiting is characterized: absurd waiting, and, secondly, the conflict of temporalities that arise in the two elements that mark time in the play: the tree and Pozzo's clock. By analyzing these two ideas, we will be able to engage in dialogue with Javier Auyero's play Patients of the State (2013). From a sociological perspective, he studies how waiting, when it becomes systematic, is experienced as domination. Finally, these words will end with an apology celebrating and defending the importance of dialogue among disciplines —e. g., sociology, philosophy, and theater— always aiming to better understand the present that constitutes us.