Mon. March 30 (4:30-6PM) Brian Berry (Comparative Literature) “Beginning to Mean Something: Stanley Cavell’s Reading of Beckett’s Endgame.”

Please join the Theater & Performance Studies Workshop for Brian Berry’s paper, “Beginning to Mean Something: Stanley Cavell’s Reading of Beckett’s Endgame.” The problem of meaning emerges frequently in Beckett’s writing, and it is tempting to say that his work is about the meaninglessness of the universe. In this paper, Berry considers Stanley Cavell’s reading of Endgame within the context of his philosophical work on ordinary language philosophy and the topic of meaning. We might see Beckett’s project as at odds with ordinary language philosophy, but Cavell shows that it is the sense of the unavoidability of ordinary language that gives Endgame its impetus. Endgame does not represent meaninglessness, but the desire for meaninglessness. 
 
Brian Berry is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature, in the Literature and Philosophy track. His dissertation, “Serious Doubt: Skepticism and the Ordinary in Samuel Beckett and Stanley Cavell,” hopes to bring out certain philosophical preoccupations in Beckett’s work and examine how they function within a literary context, informed by Cavell’s account of the skeptical tradition.

Location: Logan Seminar Terrace Room, 801

Light refreshments will be served.

People with disabilities who believe they may require assistance, please contact Anne Rebull at anner@uchicago.edu or Amy Stebbins at amystebbins@uchicago.edu.