Stultifying in Straws: The Existential Ethics of a Pseudo-Activist in Edward Bond’s Saved

Resumo

Pseudo-activity as a mode of engagement devised by contemporary politics has become a proper channel through which the systems have enabled themselves to engage people all the time with complex local and global governmental issues, the resolving of which is beyond the ordinary individuals’ sphere. Pseudo-activity on the one hand, ensures the systems that people’s passivity is disrupted and on the other, this consistent preoccupation distances them from focusing on their existential priorities and ultimately leads to a form of self-forgetfulness and lack of responsibility towards their own existence. This study perceives the setting of Edward Bond’s play Saved as a similar context where the leading outsider character Len has engrossed himself so intensely with the immoral and disturbing actions of people around him that he has almost lost sight of his own existential grounding. By adopting an Existential approach and bonding it to Žižek’s understanding of pseudo-activity, the study will provide Len with a possible opportunity to escape pseudo-activity and to be saved.