The Word in Crisis: Variations on a Theme by Samuel Beckett

Dobrez, Livio

doi:10.1163/18757405-014001042

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...

The Enlightenment Idea Of Progress1

Citation Types

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Year Published

2014

Publication Types

Select...

Article1

Relationship

Self Cite1

Independent0

Authors

Journals

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Following Coppola's 1979 movie title, this might be headed Apocalypse Now-though the extent to which the term "apocalypse" applies is a matter for discussion below. (For previously-published comments on what follows in this article see Dobrez [24][25][26]). Enlightenment orthodoxy, buoyed by the anti-authority, "freethinking" ideal of an increasingly dominant commercial middle class and excited by possibilities opened up by experimental science and developing technologies, read linear temporality as Progress, simply secularizing the Christian legacy of time as ultimately redemptive.…”

Section: The Enlightenment Idea Of Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Culture of Endings

Dobrez

2014

Humanities

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article analyses the cultural state of mind characteristic of historical periods at some kind of endpoint: the end of a world or even of the world or, most hypothetically, of the universe. This is the idea of Last Days. In order to contextualize it, it is necessary to consider varying conceptions of temporality: a hunter-gatherer model, models of cyclical time and of linear time. At least in the West, this last may be understood as a product of Judaeo-Christian thinking, of which the article gives an account focussed on the motifs of eschatology, apocalypse and messianism. Finally the article proposes that the present moment in history, characterized as "Post-Modernity", may readily be read as a time of endings, perhaps even of a conclusive end.

show abstract

Section: The Enlightenment Idea Of Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%