Endgame?

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In what is taken to be a depiction of the aftermath of a nuclear war in Endgame, Samuel Beckett depicts the destruction of nature taking on a specific spatial configuration in which time, itself, has seemingly come to a standstill. He represents in unsentimental though often ribald terms the obsolescence of human beings, reduced as they are to mere existence, and subordinated to the inscrutable machinations of geopolitical forces beyond their understanding.

The necessary supplement to Endgame, according to US philosopher, Stanley Cavell, is Kubrick’s Cold War masterpiece Dr. Strangelove. The effects of the social division of labour are crippling: Hamm cannot stand, his servant, Clov cannot sit. “Every man his specialty,” declares Hamm. Once they’ve outlived such social utility, Hamm’s parents are reduced, figuratively, to history’s dustbin, having been confined, literally, to garbage bins.

Today, this calls to mind, painfully, nursing homes, which have become funeral parlours for the living who await an end to the excruciating game of waiting. Amidst this newest aspect of the ecological crisis, states seem prepared to sacrifice the elderly, the infirm, the poor, indigent, black and brown, to the logic of the market.

But its domination was always already discernible with each breathless press release from myriad corporate head offices of massive downsizings producing inevitable, dramatic rises in the prices of their shares. The ante has simply been upped. For example, Republican Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, recently suggested to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that the elderly might consider sacrificing themselves for the sake of their off-spring, which is to say for “the economy.” “Go and see is she dead” Hamm directs Clov towards his mother. The capitalist market lives on death.

This piece was first published in the June Splinters column.

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