Abstract
This section places Beckett’s works in dialogue with contemporary media forms that appear to relate to audiences through similar means and to prompt similar affective and cognitive responses, aiming to articulate an even stronger case for Beckett’s relevance in a contemporary context. It shows that, far from speaking to the ethical concerns and aesthetic tastes of another era, Beckett’s diagrammatic textual constructs continue to nourish contemporary audiences through their solidarity-based and cognition-enhancing traits. It also predicts that, as paradox-based discourses continue to gain prominence in contemporary forms of entertainment, interpreters may in fact become better adapted to (rather than increasingly disconnected from) the ethical and aesthetic configuration of Beckett’s texts, continually interacting with them in a solidarity, mutability, and cognitive enhancement-focused mode.
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Notes
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“PACs” are US Political Action Committees that raise funds from individual donors and use them to support/ oppose political campaigns, ballot initiatives, or legislation. PACs are allowed to donate relatively small sums directly to political campaigns, but there is no federal limitation on what they can spend “independently” of a candidate/ political party. Prior to the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision, PACs could not receive contributions from corporations or labour unions but were allowed to receive sponsorship for their administration and fundraising costs from such organizations. So-called Super PACs are Independent-Expenditure Only Committees made possible by two 2010 decisions: the US Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision SpeechNow.org v. FEC. Super PACs are allowed to receive unlimited donations from individuals/ corporations/ labour unions as well as spend unlimited amounts of money “independently” of political campaigns. They are not allowed to coordinate directly with political campaigns/ candidates but can discuss campaign strategy points through the media. Unsurprisingly, countless media commentators have argued that the notion of “independent” expenditures is ludicrous—and, especially since 2010, when it became even easier for major donors to influence the political campaigning process, many comedians have been attacking the Citizens United decision as a most egregious manifestation of today’s increasing corporate control over the democratic process.
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Ionica, C. (2020). Conclusion. In: The Affects, Cognition, and Politics of Samuel Beckett's Postwar Drama and Fiction. New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34902-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34902-8_7
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