TURNING LANGUAGE INSIDE OUT IN BECKETT'S NOT I

Beckett's dramatic works push the limits of language and subjectivity so far as to reach apoint of total rupture from within. The stretching of these limits is indeed a bold attempt atoverthrowing epistemological categories structured within and through them. Not I (1972)is one of such works in which the possibilities of language and subjectivity are taken to thefurthest extent in which both turn upside down and inside out and nally reach theirlimits. The radical experiment with the inside and the outside of language and subjectivityin Not I becomes almost a metonymic embodiment of Lacan's ideas with regard to theformulation and dissolution of the self. In exposing how language and subjectivity goexhausted and are torn apart, however, Beckett, compared to Lacan, assumes a relativelyafrmative position. While language and the subjects in fragments mark a psychoticbreakdown and constitute a source of pain and lament in Lacanian psychoanalysis, theyfunction as a creative and transformative resistance in Beckettian world. In this regard,this paper aims to examine Not I in the light of Lacanian theory and illustrate how the playboth literalises and criticizes the problematic position of the female subject in language,exposing the points of intersection and divergence between Beckett and Lacan.

BECKETT'İN NOT I OYUNUNDA DİLİN TERSYÜZ EDİLMESİ

Beckett'in tiyatro oyunları dilin ve öznelliğin sınırlarını, dil ve öznenin içten yıkımını gerçekleştirene değin zorlar. Bu sınırların zorlanıp esnetilmesi, aslında bir bakıma bu sınırlar içerisinde ve bu sınırlar sayesinde yaratılan epistemolojik kategorilerin ortadan kaldırılma girişimidir. Not I (1972), dilin ve öznelliğin olasılıklarının en son noktasına kadar zorlanıp esnetildiği ve sonuç olarak dil ve öznenin ters yüz edilip kendi sınırlarının dışına ulaştığı oyunlardan biridir. Dilin ve öznelliğin içi ve dışıyla yapılan bu radikal oynamalar, Lacan'ın özün oluşumu ve yıkımına dair teorilerinin somut birer yansıması gibidir. Ancak dilin ve öznelliğin sınırlarını irdelerken, Beckett Lacan'a göre oldukça olumlayıcı bir yaklaşım sergiler. Lacancı psikanalizde, parçalanmış dil ve özne psikotik çöküntünün belirtisi olarak kabul edilip bir acı ve sorun kaynağı olarak görülürken, Beckett'te yaratıcı ve iyileştirici bir karşı gelişi temsil eder. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışma Not I oyununu Lacan'ın teorileri ışığında incelemeyi ve oyunun öznenin dil içerisindeki konumunu bir yandan nasıl somutlaştırdığını ve bir yandan da nasıl sorunsallaştırdığını, Lacan ve Beckett'in düşünceleri arasındaki benzerlik ve farklılıklara ışık tutarak irdelemeyi amaçlamaktadır.

PDF

___

Barreca, Regina. “Metaphor-into-Narrative: Being Very Careful with Words.” Women’s Studies 15.1-3 (1988): 243–256.

Barthes, Roland. “The Grain of the Voice.” Image-Music-Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. 179-189.

Beckett, Samuel. “Not I (1972).” The Complete Dramatic Works. Kent: Faber and Faber, 2006. 376-383.

Beckett, Samuel. Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment (1983). Ed. Ruby Cohn. New York: Grove, 1984.

Boulter, Jonathan. Beckett: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum, 2008.

Brater, Enoch. Beyond Minimalism: Beckett's Late Style in the Theater. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.

Catanzaro, Mary. “Recontextualizing the Self: The Voice as Subject in Beckett’s “Not I”.” South Central Review 7.1 (1990): 36-49.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology (1974). Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.

Derrida, Jacques. Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.

Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sources.” Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978. 278-293.

Derrida, Jacques. “For the Love of Lacan.” Resistances of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Peggy Kamuf, Pascale-Anne Brault, and Michael Naas. Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1998. 39-69.

Freud, Sigmund. “Female Sexuality.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 21 (1927-1931). Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1961. 223-243.

Gillette, Kyle. “Zen and the Art of Self-Negation in Samuel Beckett’s Not I.” Comparative Drama 46.3 (2012): 283-302.

Herzogenrath, Bernd. An American Body-politic: A Deleuzian Approach. New Hampshire: Dartmouth College P, 2010.

Lacan, Jacques. Écrits (1971). Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge, 2005.

Lacan, Jacques. Seminar, Book II. Trans. Sylvana Tomeselli. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978.

Lacan, Jacques. Seminar, Book III. Trans. Russell Grigg. London: Taylor and Francis, 2008.

Lacan, Jacques. Seminar, Book IV. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1988.

Lacan, Jacques. Seminar, Book V. Trans. Russell Grigg. Malden: Polity, 2017.

Lacan, Jacques. Seminar, Book XVIII: On a Discourse that might not be a Semblance. Trans. Cormac Gallagher. Unpublished translation, 1971. Web. 20 August 2018.

Lacan, Jacques. Seminar, Book XX: Encore. Trans. Cormac Gallagher. Unpublished translation, 1972-73. Web. 20 August 2018.

Lacan, Jacques. “Seminar XXII of 21 January 1975.” Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole freudiene. Ed. Juliette Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose. Trans. Jacqueline Rose. New York: Norton, 1982. 162-172.

Salisbury, Laura. “Art of Noise: Beckett’s Language in a Culture of Information.” Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 22 (2010): 355-371.

Sarup, Madan. Jacques Lacan. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992.

Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959.

Weldon, Fay. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

Yuan, Yuan. “From Ideology of Loss to Aesthetics of Absence: The Endgame in Beckett’s.” The Lost Ones. Beckett, Joyce and the Art of the Negative. Ed. Colleen Jaurretche. New York: Rodopi, 2005. 235-246.