This chapter considers the reciprocal productivity between Beckett’s Endgame and Shakespeare’s romance The Tempest. It examines the settings of the two plays, their dialectics of making and unmaking, their dynamics of confinement and release, the materiality of air and earth, and the notion of ending. It looks at the insular dominions of Prospero’s island and the space inhabited by Beckett’s characters in Endgame, and argues that the imperfections and shortcomings of a medium are not an end in themselves but become the grounds on which plays such as The Tempest and Endgame transcend the finitude of their art and reflect back on it, asserting its very finitude as a condition of possibility.In both plays, the game of chess figures as a structural and thematic component and reflects on the art of the playwright. The chapter analyses the brief scene in which Prospero discovers Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess. The scene functions as a mise-en-abîme, as a play-within-the-play, and becomes a metaphor for the play itself. In the many references to chess in Beckett’s works, above all in Endgame, chess, as this chapter argues, presents a matrix of multiplicity that remains tied to form.

Cavell’s problematic concerning the art critic is taken to mistake imposing upon for finding meaning in an artwork, reading into it for hearing it out. Modernist artworks must diverge from traditional forms of expression and thus toward hermeticism to achieve their voices. If an artwork remains too close to tradition, it becomes automatic and thereby fails to achieve its voice. If an artwork moves too far into hermeticism, it becomes silent and thereby fails to achieve its voice. The critic discerns both what an artwork says and whether it speaks at all. Because the critic cannot fulfill these tasks simply by appeal to tradition or the artist’s intentions, she must interview the work itself with her own devices to identify elements in the work as keys to unlock its voice. Her vindication, however, comes not from a final analysis, but from the clarity she brings to the work, which is always subject to contestation. As the world becomes increasingly multicultural, we increasingly encounter unfamiliar people bearing complex relations to unfamiliar forms of life, heightening the challenge of hearing others out; as Cavell notes, our ways of regarding artworks resemble those of other people.

By 1953, the communist-led Resistance had been marginalized in much of the Mekong delta. But the cost was high. "Traditional" institutions of the village had, in large swaths of the delta, been destroyed. The Franco-Vietnamese "coalition" had defeated the communist-led Resistance. But who would win the peace? The militia leaders, so skilled in war, were not fluent in the arts of peace. This chapter looks at the endgame of empire, when France was withdrawing from rural areas all over the South, downsizing its military presence, and shifting its support to the State of Vietnam. The end result by 1954, however, was a balkanized southern Vietnam with fragmented sovereignty where militias entrenched themselves in rural fiefdoms. The chapter shows how Ngo Dinh Diem, faced with this divided South, won the battle for post-war control of the South. It pays particular attention to his expulsion to Cambodia of the Cao Dai leader Pham Cong Tac, the co-optation of the Hoa Hao militia leader Tran Van Soai, and the arrest, trial, and execution of the Hao Hao militia leader Ba Cut. The chapter also examines the regional, national, and international legacies of the war.

In Beckett’s Murphy in Chapter 9, we find that the eponymous character’s quest for self-validation is an aspect of an autistic spectrum disorder and that it is his relentless attraction to patterns that draws him to Mr. Endon. In the game of chess between Endon and Murphy, it is the former’s refutation of any kind of analogy that spins Murphy out of himself and ultimately leads, in an absurd but also interconnected concatenation of small steps, to his death by a gas explosion in his garret. As in other works of Beckett, our attention is rivetted on the absurd semiotic of language itself as an aspect of hermeneutical delirium. This is closely tied to Murphy’s aporetic speech that is also part of his autistic syndrome. The failure to find a reflection of himself in the mind of Mr. Endon is what ultimately undoes Murphy’s sense of self-integration and triggers his rapid unravelling.

The human existential emergency: describes the 10 intersecting threats to the human future and the role/impact of food in each. Calls for cross-cutting solutions for all ten issues. Learning to think as a species.Women ‘must lead’ in all spheres of human activity.