Belousova N.O. Absurd Drama's Search for Meaning

Abstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of the Theatre of the Absurd as the cultural and artistic phenomenon of the 1950s-1970s. The researcher analyzes the phenomenon from the point of view of universality and uniqueness. Belousova describes the prerequisites for absurd drama that existed in that period such as the crisis of culture and consciousness in the post-war period, orientation at the total denial of overall rules of physical and social life and alogical 'distortion' of the essential universals of human existence. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the tragic characteristics of absurd existence in art and philosophy and destruction of a hero in paradoxical antiplays. Following the principles of the philosophical and cultural research, the author of the article applies the activity approach to culture which requires to view the methods of confirmation of the idea of uniqueness and spheres where the unique was opposed to the universal as well as results of such opposition expressed, in our case, in the realities of artistic culture. The main contribution of the research is the author's statement about the total disharmony between essential man's aspirations and the absence of 'response' from the reality. According to the author, that was the source of the absurd phenomenon. The novelty of the research is caused by the fact that the author defines the antinomy of the philosophy of the absurd as the collision of its two dimensions, nigilistic and existential. However, existential absurdity cannot stop nihilistic tendendies of denial univeral forms of existence such as reason, morals, order and necessity. 

Keywords: