Bowie, Beckett and Being: The Art of Alienation

(Hardback)

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Through an exploration of the artistic practices of Samuel Beckett and David Bowie, this work illustrates how both artists articulate shared forms of human experience otherwise silenced by normative modes of representation. By documenting their shared passion for literature, art, and music the book shows how Beckett and Bowie used the arts in all forms (painting, drama, film etc.) to produce extraordinarily empathetic creative outputs. Through the creation of alternative theatrical, musical, and philosophical spaceswhich help frame the power relations of the psychological, verbal, and material places we inhabittheir work demonstrates how individuals are disciplined and punished by an implicitly repressive social order. And in making the injunctions of this social order apparent, Beckett and Bowie also transgress its terms, opening up new spaces beyond the conventional identities of family, nation, and gender, until both artists finally coalesce in the quantum space of the posthuman.

Author Bio

Rodney Sharkey is Professor of English at Weill Cornell Medicine, Qatar. His specialized fields of interest are in Anglo-Irish literature, critical theory, performance dynamics, and popular culture. He publishes regularly in journals such as Modern Culture Reviews, Journal of Beckett Studies, Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, and Reconstruction.