What are the assumptions of artists that ART should be portrayed as eternally redemptive?
In a tradition of phenomenological readings of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, critics argue that the play stands in mimetic or even symbolic relation to "the human condition",! an argument that tacitly depends upon the romantic valorization of the symbol, upon an intrinsic unity between appearance and essence which retains a quasi-sacred function.
In such readings, the play has a symbolic relation to existential phenomenology, and existential phenomenology itself is assumed to have a transparent relation to the human condition. Phenomenological critics imply or even contend that "the value of negative images becomes transmuted through Beckett's artistry into a positive affirmation of human dignity, thus participating in what Leo Bersani calls the "culture of redemption", which assumes that "a certain type of repetition of experience in art repairs inherently damaged or valueless experience".
Most readings that assign humanist status to Waiting for Godot evade the consequences of acknowledging such dissonance between the literal and proper meanings of the characters; they explain the characters' "subhuman" appearance as a result of their previous histories and of their symbolic function. Such readings argue that suffering has caused the degeneration of full human subjects into the subhuman bums on stage, thus assuming some pretextual time not represented on stage, and subsuming the dissonance between the literal and proper meanings of the characters.
In a tradition of phenomenological readings of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, critics argue that the play stands in mimetic or even symbolic relation to "the human condition",! an argument that tacitly depends upon the romantic valorization of the symbol, upon an intrinsic unity between appearance and essence which retains a quasi-sacred function.
In such readings, the play has a symbolic relation to existential phenomenology, and existential phenomenology itself is assumed to have a transparent relation to the human condition. Phenomenological critics imply or even contend that "the value of negative images becomes transmuted through Beckett's artistry into a positive affirmation of human dignity, thus participating in what Leo Bersani calls the "culture of redemption", which assumes that "a certain type of repetition of experience in art repairs inherently damaged or valueless experience".
Most readings that assign humanist status to Waiting for Godot evade the consequences of acknowledging such dissonance between the literal and proper meanings of the characters; they explain the characters' "subhuman" appearance as a result of their previous histories and of their symbolic function. Such readings argue that suffering has caused the degeneration of full human subjects into the subhuman bums on stage, thus assuming some pretextual time not represented on stage, and subsuming the dissonance between the literal and proper meanings of the characters.
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