Psychosocial or Mythological: Sam Shepard’s Kicking a Dead Horse as a Liberal Ironist

Muhammad Hussein Oroskhan,Bahee Hadaeg

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.10n.3p.68

Muhammad Hussein Oroskhan, Bahee Hadaeg

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.10n.3p.68

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Abstract

American West has conjured up a shining image in the media but a complex subject in the research studies. Among the iconic elements that represent the American West, the image of cowboy has occupied a unique place. Relatively, mythological or psychosocial methods may contribute to the comprehension of the image of cowboy. In this vein, an examination of cowboy with regard to the aforementioned perspectives are studied but proved insufficient because it is almost impossible to draw a fine distinction between these two matters. Nevertheless, the core of this study by attributing to one of Shepard’s late plays entitled Kicking a Dead Horse tries to address the issue of cowboy with regard to Richard Rorty’s liberal ironist to prove that neither mythological nor psychosocial approach is appropriate enough to study the image of cowboy whereas Shepard’s emphasis on self-creation as buttressed by Richard Rorty’s liberal ironist is the suitable method for analyzing the image of cowboy.

Highlights

Neither John Watkins Chapman, an English painter who “spoke of ‘postmodern painting’ around 1870” (Best & Kellnor, 1998, p. 11) nor Rudolf Pannwitz in his book, Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur, “ to describe the nihilism and collapse of values in contemporary European culture” could guess that the term that they are using for the first time would provoke so many controversies among the intellectuals of latter part of twentieth century
Our reasoning behind siding with Stephen Hicks’ bold gesture of canonical postmodern theorists is the persistent occurrences of these philosophers in literary criticism. They have been the handy tools of literary critics to approach different literary genres; among them all, Richard Rorty is himself opening up a new perspective in literary criticism that can be of great value if fully apprehended
Shepard himself can be considered as a liberal ironist since his characters and the main character of this play are unable to hang on a specific basis and instead always wander around futilely

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Neither John Watkins Chapman, an English painter who “spoke of ‘postmodern painting’ around 1870” (Best & Kellnor, 1998, p. 11) nor Rudolf Pannwitz in his book, Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur, “ to describe the nihilism and collapse of values in contemporary European culture” (ibid.) could guess that the term that they are using for the first time would provoke so many controversies among the intellectuals of latter part of twentieth century. Our reasoning behind siding with Stephen Hicks’ bold gesture of canonical postmodern theorists is the persistent occurrences of these philosophers in literary criticism They have been the handy tools of literary critics to approach different literary genres; among them all, Richard Rorty is himself opening up a new perspective in literary criticism that can be of great value if fully apprehended. 7) which is not possible in the world of philosophy since in philosophy, constant arguing is always done with the purpose of achieving one and the same result whereas developing the ability of speaking differently creates the chance of having endless possibilities for the self to recreate itself again and again In this vein, Rorty has created the notion of a liberal ironist that avoids being stagnated in one fixed mindset and flows freely to redescribe himself for a better goal and purpose. The core of this study will lend pervasiveness to Shepard’s Kicking a Dead Horse with respect to Rorty’s theory of a liberal ironist to be situated in a better place to understand the nuances of Shepard’s view of cowboy and Rorty’s contribution on literary criticism

DISCUSSION

Experimental Procedures

AND DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION