Bowie, Beckett, and Being: The Art of Alienation

(Paperback)

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Addressing their shared passion for literature, art, and music, this book documents how Samuel Beckett and David Bowie produce extraordinarily empathetic creative outputs that reflect the experience and the effect of alienation. Through an exploration of their artistic practices, the study also illustrates how both artists articulate shared forms of human experience otherwise silenced by normative modes of representation. To liberate these experiences, Bowie and Beckett create alternative theatrical, musical, and philosophical spaces, which help frame the power relations of the psychological, verbal, and material places we inhabit. The result is that their work demonstrates how individuals are disciplined by the implicitly repressive social order of late capitalism, while, simultaneously, offering an informed political alternative. In making the injunctions of the 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.

Reviews

An audacious and effective double reading, which argues that both Bowie and Beckett, in their various ways, give the lie to false ideas of Capitalist progress. Clear and dynamically written, Sharkeys text convincingly makes the case for Bowie and Beckett as unlikely companions, evoking, engaging with, and disrupting an alienating world. * David Pattie, Associate Professor in Drama and Theatre Studies, University of Birmingham, UK *
A highly innovative and provocative account of the nexus between Samuel Beckett and David Bowie. Sharkeys work is, all at once, highly erudite, accessible, and challenging. * Eoin Devereux, Co-director, Centre for the Study of Popular Music and Popular Culture, University of Limerick, Ireland, and co-editor of David Bowie: Critical Perspectives (2015) *
What at first glance might be a somewhat strange pairing turns out to be an inspired perspective. Rodney Sharkey discovers fascinating parallels between Bowie and Beckett on their arduous, fractious, and intense journey to and through spaces beyond the norm. There are starmen waiting in this book, and Sharkey outlines their social, political, and cultural significance with flair, intelligence, and unique understanding. * Mark Nixon, Co-Director of the Beckett International Foundation, University of Reading, UK *

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.