MAPPING THE FUTURE: , Premediation, and the War on Terror

Abstract

Operation is name of 2003-2012 plan implemented by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detail and deport all removable aliens and suspected terrorists. Evocatively, this strategy of detaining an alien population bears same name as Beckett's 1957 play. If performing, enacting and gaining an audience reaction to imprisonment, waiting, uncertainty and loss are at core of each discourse, each Endgame - theatre and state agency - then in what ways might we say that earlier play predicts and prophesies our current War on Terror?Despite controversies over last decade concerning waterboarding, secret renditions, and Guantanamo Bay, it is surprising that not more scholars have turned to Beckett in order to better understand motivations and consequences of state oppression and paranoia. While Tyrus Miller in 2000 explores theme of torture in later drama, he interprets interrogation scenes in What Where and Rough for Radio II largely as allegories for suffering of artistic expression. A decade later, in 2011, David Lloyd reads Comment c'est in terms of a postcolonial subjectivity constructed via contorted speech. The focus in my article, however, is on connection between Beckett's play Endgame and more contemporary desire by some state officials in United States to secure national territory from seemingly immanent threat of illegal aliens.In pages that follow, as I discuss pain that surrounds Beckett's Endgame - both form and content of work as well as Beckett's biography during years of its creation - I'm aware that many facts will be familiar to a scholarly audience. I stress, however, particular details, such as Hamm's toque and gaff or, indeed, Beckett's own medical history, in order to better highlight my thesis: that Beckett's theatre prefigures contemporary debates and events surrounding illegal immigration to United States in wake of 9/11, concerns that range from indefinite detention to threat of torture.In 2012, a colleague in History department placed in my mailbox a copy of then current guiding document of US Department of Homeland Security's Office of Detention and Removal. This document is entitled Endgame (figure 1). At first glance, connection between immigration enforcement and Samuel Beckett's play seemed humorous, but coincidental. At same time, it seemed too provocative a repetition to ignore. Operation has been guiding document for DHS Office of Detention and Removal, a government agency formed in wake of 9/11 and War on Terror.1 As Director of Agency, Anthony Tangeman, puts it in preamble, this strategic plan provides endgame to immigration enforcement and that is removal of all removable aliens. This is essence of our mission and golden measure of our success. We must endeavor to maintain integrity of immigration process and protect our homeland by ensuring that every alien who is ordered removed, and can be, departs United States as quickly as possible. We must strive for 100% removal rate (DHS, 2). The state's Endgame strives for totality, completeness, and precision. It aims to reconcile sovereignty, government and population. By contrast, Beckett's Endgame challenges certainty and promotes doubt. If DHS document longs for unity, Beckett's elevates the negatively dialectical, Adorno's famous phrase for thinking about limits of knowing, pursuit of contradiction, and the denial of conclusive structure (Adorno 1979, 147).In Beckett's Endgame, two main characters, Clov and Hamm, are contained in a cell-like room, apparently unable to leave. With Hamm's aging parents in ashbins, neglected and running out of basic supplies, this forgotten, disconnected family is in a perpetual state of waiting and decline. At times something seems to be taking its course, but as they look out small windows on sea from their offshore location, no signs of life, salvation or happiness appear. …