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Beckett and Nothing Beckett’s reception was characterised in its early stages by a sustained BECKETT AND NOTHING attention to nothing as a philosophical concept. Theodor Adorno, however, was quick to argue that Beckett’s plays resisted – unlike Sartre’s – having their nothing transformed into something. Nothing remains both a central preoccupation in the criticism and a pedagogical problem in the classroom. This Beckettian nothing, moreover, is often invested with the aura of the genius, either for eulogical or dismissive purposes. This volume invites its readership to understand the complex ways in which the BECKETT Beckett canon both suggests and resists turning nothing into something by looking at specific, sometimes almost invisible ways in which ‘little nothings’ pervade the Beckett canon. AND The volume has two main functions: on the one hand it looks at ‘nothing’ not only as a content but also a set of rhetorical strategies, to Trying to understand Beckett reconsider afresh classic Beckett problems, such as Irishness, silence, value, marginality, politics, and the relationships between modernism and postmodernism and absence and presence; on the other, it focuses on ‘nothing’ in order to assess how the Beckett oeuvre can help us rethink contemporary preoccupations with materialism, neurology, sculpture, � music, and television. Caselli The volume is a scholarly intervention in the fields of Beckett studies which offers its chapters as case studies to use in the classroom. Both advanced students and scholars of Beckett will find the volume of interest. (ed.) It comprises jargon-free chapters that analyse Beckett’s prose, drama, film, television, manuscripts, and marginalia. It will prove of interest to advanced students and scholars in English, French, and Comparative Literature, Drama, Visual Studies, Philosophy, Music, Cinema, and TV Studies. Daniela Caselli is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture in the School of Arts, Histories, and Cultures at the University of Manchester ISBN-978-0-7190-8019-7 edited by Daniela Caselli Daniela Caselli - 9781526146458 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/30/2021 12:23:07AM via free access Beckett and nothing Daniela Caselli - 9781526146458 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/30/2021 12:23:07AM via free access Daniela Caselli - 9781526146458 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/30/2021 12:23:07AM via free access Beckett and nothing Trying to understand Beckett Edited by DANIELA CASELLI Manchester University Press Manchester Daniela Caselli - 9781526146458 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/30/2021 12:23:07AM via free access Copyright © Manchester University Press 2010 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/ Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 07190 8019 7 hardback First published 2010 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guar- antee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset in Charter by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Daniela Caselli - 9781526146458 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/30/2021 12:23:07AM via free access Contents List of fi gures page vii List of contributors viii Acknowledgements xiii Foreword: Nothing new xiv TERRY EAGLETON Introduction: Beckett and nothing: trying to understand Beckett 1 DANIELA CASELLI 1 On not being there: going on without in Beckett 20 JOHN PILLING 2 Nothing of value: reading Beckett’s negativity 28 PETER BOXALL 3 Nothing has changed 48 MLADEN DOLAR 4 ‘A tangle of tatters’: ghosts and the busy nothing in Footfalls 65 STEPHEN THOMSON 5 Nothings in particular 84 BILL PROSSER 6 Unwords 107 SHANE WELLER 7 Into the void: Beckett’s television plays and the idea of broadcasting 125 JONATHAN BIGNELL Daniela Caselli - 9781526146458 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/30/2021 12:23:07AM via free access vi Contents 8 Beckett, Feldman, Salcedo . Neither 143 DERVAL TUBRIDY 9 From Film to literature: theoretical debates and the critical erasure of Beckett’s cinema 160 MATTHIJS ENGELBERTS 10 Beckett and unheard sound 176 CATHERINE LAWS 11 It’s nothing: Beckett and anxiety 192 RUSSELL SMITH 12 ‘Something or nothing’: Beckett and the matter of language 213 LAURA SALISBURY Coda: The no-thing that knows no name and the Beckett envelope, blissfully reconsidered 237 ENOCH BRATER Bibliography 245 Index 261 Daniela Caselli - 9781526146458 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/30/2021 12:23:07AM via free access List of fi gures Figure 1 Human Wishes P71, 2007, Ballpoint on paper, 34cm. ✕ 34cm. 91 Figure 2 Human Wishes P63, 2007, Ballpoint on paper, 34cm. ✕ 34cm. 92 Figure 3 Human Wishes P77, 2007, Ballpoint on paper, 34cm. ✕ 34cm. 93 Figure 4 Human Wishes P69, 2007, Ballpoint on paper, 34cm. ✕ 34cm. 94 Figure 5 Human Wishes P17, 2007, Ballpoint on paper, 34cm. ✕ 34cm. 96 Figure 6 Human Wishes P54, 2007, Ballpoint on paper, 34cm. ✕ 34cm. 98 Figure 7 Human Wishes P18, 2007, Ballpoint on paper, 34cm. ✕ 34cm. 99 Figure 8 Human Wishes No.8, 2008, graphite on paper, 60cm. ✕ 42cm. 101 All are drawn translations by Bill Prosser from the Human Wishes manuscript with the kind permission of Edward Beckett. Figures 9–10 The empty envelope sent by Beckett to Brater. Photo courtesy of Jonathan P. Brater 241, 242 Daniela Caselli - 9781526146458 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/30/2021 12:23:07AM via free access List of contributors Jonathan Bignell is Professor of Television and Film and Director of the Centre for Television Drama Studies at the University of Reading. Among Jonathan’s recent publications are Big Brother: Reality TV in the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), The Television Handbook, third edition (Routledge, 2005) (with J. Orlebar), Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives (Manchester University Press, 2005) (ed. with S. Lacey), An Introduction to Television Studies (Routledge, 2004), Media Semiotics: An Introduction, second edition (Manchester University Press, 2002), and ‘How to watch television?: pedagogy and paedocracy in Beckett’s television plays’, in Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui, 2005, and ‘Beckett at the BBC: the production and reception of Samuel Beckett’s plays for television’, in L. Ben-Zvi (ed.), Drawing on Beckett: Portraits, Performances, and Cultural Contexts (University of Tel Aviv, 2003). Peter Boxall is Reader in English at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Since Beckett: Contemporary Writing in the Wake of Modernism (Continuum, 2009), Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction (Routledge, 2006), 1001 Novels You Must Read Before You Die (Cassell, 2006), Endgame and Waiting for Godot: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), editor of Beckett/Aesthetics/Politics (Rodopi, 2000) and co-editor of the Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory. He is the editor of Textual Practice. Enoch Brater is Kenneth T. Rowe Collegiate Professor of Dramatic Literature at the University of Michigan. Among his works on Daniela Caselli - 9781526146458 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/30/2021 12:23:07AM via free access List of contributors ix Beckett are: Essential Samuel Beckett (Thames & Hudson, 2003); The Drama in the Text: Beckett’s Late Fiction (Oxford University Press, 1994); Beyond Minimalism: Beckett’s Late Style in the Theater (Oxford University Press, 1987; 1990; 2000); Why Beckett (Thames and Hudson, 1989); Beckett at 80 / Beckett in Context (Oxford University Press, 1986); Approaches To Teaching Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (Modern Language Association, 1991); Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern drama (University of Michigan Press, 1990); The Theatrical Gamut: Notes for a Post- Beckettian Stage (University of Michigan Press, 1995). Daniela Caselli is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Beckett’s Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism (Manchester University Press, 2005), Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes’s Bewildering Corpus (Ashgate, 2009). Her articles on mod- ernism, Beckett, Djuna Barnes and critical theory have appeared in Textual Practice, Critical Survey, Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui and The Journal of Beckett Studies. Mladen Dolar is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana. Co-founder of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis, he is the author of studies on Hegel, aesthetics and psychoanalysis, of A Voice and Nothing More (MIT Press, 2006) and, with Slavoj Žižek, Opera’s Second Death (Routledge, 2002). Terry Eagleton is Professor at
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