Waiting
for Godot: A Deconstructive Study
Javed Akhter
University of Balochistan
Quetta Balochistan Pakistan
Abstract
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) is the most eminent French philosopher
and literary theorist of deconstruction. He challenges the logo-centric Western
tradition of the metaphysics of presence, which has been dominant from Plato’s “Phaedrus”
until Edmund Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry” in Western philosophy. His trend-breaking
theory of deconstruction attacks the metaphysical presuppositions of Western
philosophy, ethics, culture, politics and literature. It may give a new meaning
and perspective to Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, which has always been
a focal point for the world’s literary critics.
They have applied various theories to it, but this paper tries to
scrutinize the different facets of the play from Derridean deconstructive
theory.
Applying Derridean deconstructive hermeneutics to the text of
the play under discussion, the author of this paper introduces a new portrait
of the personages of the play. The study will retrace the pathways of Western
tradition of the metaphysics of presence and its compelling influences, which
have proved to be the inhibiting and fossilizing deadlocks of aporia of meaning
and authoritative structures of human thought to explore the new horizons. In
its concluding mode, the study exposes preventive stumbling aporic blocks of
centralized structure of the minds of characters in the given play.
Keywords: Jacques Derrida, deconstruction, metaphysics of presence
and messianic, aporia, binary oppositions, delogocentrism
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