Precariously Sheltered
By Nur Ferrante Morales
Painting by Samuel Bak, Across
1.Introduction
After the end of WWII, many modern artists and philosophers in Europe as well as the United States expressed their despair towards their social milieu in their creations. The project of the Enlightenment had proven a great failure, and was regarded as the forefather of the holocaust. The downfall of this structural base, which had centered the meaning of life on humanity, crushed all social values leaving the world in shock. To see ourselves capable of such levels of destruction was a hard thing to digest, and trying to search for sense elsewhere seemed out of the question. If our humanity had collapsed, where could we turn to for meaning? This inability to make sense of what had happened was reflected in many artistic pieces of the time that could only convey the pervading devastation and distress. Joseph Beuys’ installations, Otto Dix’s paintings, the writings of the Frankfurt School, Marcel Duchamp’s sculptures, Samuel Beckett’s plays, or the art and music of the New York School[1], to name a few, were created and thought at the limit, at a moment when the ideals of society had sunk and no sense for the future could be constructed. The Western world had become a place devoid of significance and, in this sense, Beckett’s Endgame represents a paradigmatic example of this historical moment, a devastation in which human emotions are expressed through their bareness, in their nakedness, and without purpose, remaining only the impressions of emptiness, alienation, and death at the end of all things. The relevance of this piece resonates in our present times. We are still in the wave raised by the holocaust and from where we haven’t really been able to stand up and create a satisfactory meaning for society. Besides, our present status of globalization, overpopulation and exhaustion of natural resources, as well as our multilateral wars and conflicts, expose the fact that we are far from finding a solution, and are not proving Beckett wrong in his pessimistic mood. Endgame forces a peer where no one wants to look, and in this looking, arises a reflection, an invitation to think, and not to avoid. A possible first step for political action would be social self-criticism, and theatre, as a social ritual, provides the means for it. In this particular play, we witness a state of complete dissolution of identity as well as of the collective sense, generating a powerful feeling of dismemberment, and reminding us for a time, while the play lasts, that we are very precariously sheltered.
