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The Absurd and an Agonistic Opportunity

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Kent argues that the absurd is not an apolitical refusal to engage with the issues of the contemporary moment in “The Absurd and an Agonistic Opportunity.” Drawing on Chantal Mouffe's notion of agonism as enabling democratic discourse and Claire Woodford's proposal that the absurd has political potential, Kent explains how the absurd's refusal to commit is the moment of challenge for audiences and spectators to develop their own critical criteria.

Keywords: absurd ; agonism ; antagonism ; Chantal Mouffe ; Clare Woodford ; contemporary art ; Marshall McLuhan ; Martin Esslin ; postmodernism ; technology ; theater of the absurd

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The Absurd and an Agonistic Opportunity
Intellect , 112 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789389067_8
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References

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References

  1. Braidotti, Rosi (2019), Posthuman Knowledge, Medford: Polity Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. de Certeau, Michel (1980), ‘On the oppositional practices of everyday life’, Social Text, 3–43.
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  3. Derrida, Jacques (1997), Of Grammatology (trans. G. Chakravorty Spivak), Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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  6. Esslin, Martin ([1961] 2004), The Theater of the Absurd, New York: Vintage.
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  7. Foster, Hal (2019), What Comes after Farce? Art and Criticism at a Time of Debacle, London, New York: Verso.
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  8. Hyde, Lewis ([1998] 2010), Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art, New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux.
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  17. Woodford, Clare (2016), Disorienting Democracy: Politics of Emancipation, Abingdon: Taylor & Francis Group.
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