Pejorism

2018 D Van Hulle: Negative Modernism: Beckett’s Poetics of Pejorism and Literary Enactment. Oxford University Research Archive https://ora.ox.ac.uk This search for the worst and worse is part of Beckett’s poetics of "pejorism". . . characterized by acts of linguistic pejoration, by a "fidelity to failure", a sustained effort to question the efficacy of language and challenge the certainty of meaning, the asymptotic attempt at writing ‘worser’ and never reaching the ‘worst worst’. There are at least two aspects to this poetics of pejorism: the quest for the worst, and the awareness of the impossibility to say "this is the worst". The quest for the worst is a journey toward "pessimum". The term ‘pessimism’was coined by Jesuit reviewers of Candide. . . But whereas ‘pessimism’ is a static concept. . . Beckett was inspired to conceive of a more dynamic negative modernism. . . , the philosophy holding that, by interfering in natural processes, human beings can bring about progress, that is improvements over the natural state of things. Beckett wrote the neologism "Pejorismus". . . which would be the opposite, holding that humanity is nothing to be boasting about since human interference can bring about serious regress vis-à-vis the natural processes. The hypothesis that our world might be the worst rather than the best of all possible worlds may lead to a static pessimism. Beckett’s "pejorism" is more dynamic, but it does not imply progress, nor necessarily regress.