المستخلص: |
The present paper maps the utopian visions and the systemic forces that draw the lines of freedom in O’Neill’s America. This issue is to be investigated in the Iceman Cometh relying on philosophical theories (Plato, Aristotle, Arthur Schopenhauer, Thomas More, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser). Politics and economics are at the roots of the emergence of utopia as an alternative model to free the subject from obedience and subjection. Like utopia, desire for freedom is a socio-political construct. The controversy in O’Neill’s philosophy is revealed in his protagonists’ utopian discourses as a mode to emancipate themselves from the oppressive systemic forces. State politics have produced a utopian ideology and pipe dreams to maintain order in the public sphere. Thus, the subject’s free will is repressed by the ideals of the reigning capitalist institutions. The paradox between the subject’s will and the deterministic systemic principles of the state renders freedom a utopian dream inherent in the socio-political history of America. Indeed, the main objective of this paper is to explore the issue of freedom in O’Neill’s America as a utopian systemic construct.
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