The Trauma of the Body in the Drama of Artaud, Beckett and Genet: a Paradox of the Speaking Being
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The Trauma of the Body in the Drama of Artaud, Beckett and Genet: A Paradox of the Speaking Being Sarah Meehan O’Callaghan School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, Dublin City University Thesis Submitted for the Award of PhD Supervisors: Mr Jean Philippe Imbert (Dublin City University) Dr Francesca Counihan (Maynooth University) January 2020 I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of PhD is entirely my own work, that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge breach any law of copyright, and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed: (Candidate) ID No.: Date: 2 Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank all my supervisors for their ongoing support, patience and individual contributions to this thesis. This project would not have been possible, nor would it have been as rewarding without it. I wish to extend my special thanks and gratitude to Francesca Counihan, whose support and guidance with the opening of this project led to its official inception. To Jean-Philippe Imbert for the ongoing support of the vision and trajectory of this project and whose colourful and humorous injections of reality are unforgettable. To Medb Ruane for the continuing and engaging dialogue, support and cultivation of ideas, regarding both literary and clinical subjects. Not to mention the ‘article’ that led in part to the inception of this research. Secondly, I would like to thank and acknowledge members of the psychoanalytic ‘community’ whose influence on my ideas and sustaining of desire in the topic of the body and the unconscious has been paramount. In particular, Olga Cox Cameron, whose ‘teachings’ on the significance of the imaginary on subjectivity, amongst other things, have influenced this project. Thanks also to Rik Loose, for the cultivation of ideas on the trauma of language and the body. An acknowledgement to the Dublin Lacan Studies Group convened and sustained by Carol Owens, which provided a forum where mere mortals could engage with the ideas of Lacan. And all those, including friends, family and colleagues, absent and present, who have not been mentioned by name but are tacitly absorbed in the formations and dialogues of this research. 3 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: ............................................................................................. 10 Setting the Stage: On Not Seeing it All .................................................................. 10 The Body Matters ................................................................................................... 12 Selection of Corpus ................................................................................................. 14 Methodology and Layout ........................................................................................ 16 CHAPTER 1: THE CONSTRUCTION OF A PARADOX ................................................ 21 1.Introduction: On the Origin of a Conflict ............................................................ 22 1.1. The Paradox of the Body ................................................................................. 24 1.2. The Theatrical Body ........................................................................................ 31 2.Rationale for Choice of Authors ....................................................................... 34 2.1. Jean Genet: Theatre of the Image and the Reflection ...................................... 38 2.2. Beckett: Performing the Failure of the Body ................................................... 40 2.3. Artaud: The Impossible Transcendence of Being ............................................ 41 3. Stages of Failure ............................................................................................. 44 3.1. Failure and the Body ........................................................................................ 44 3.2. Recuperating the Tragic ................................................................................... 46 3.3. An Aesthet(h)ics of Failure .............................................................................. 47 4. Performing Paradox ........................................................................................ 49 4.1. The Language of Theatre ................................................................................. 49 4.2. Dislocated Bodies: A Function of Theatrical Space ........................................ 52 4.3. Mediating the Gap ........................................................................................... 54 5. Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 57 CHAPTER 2. ........................................................................................................ 59 THE BODY: A TRAUMA OF THE SPEAKING BEING ................................................. 59 1. From the Perspective of a Divided Subject ...................................................... 60 1.1. Staging the Unconscious .................................................................................. 62 4 2. The Subject and the Body: A Non-Relation ...................................................... 64 2.1. The Trauma of the Body: A Missed Encounter .............................................. 66 2.2. Truth, the Unconscious and Dramatic Structure ............................................. 68 2.3. The Alienated Subject: The ‘I’ is an Other (Body) ......................................... 70 2.4. Formations and Deformations. From the Spectacle to the Non-Specular ....... 74 3. Surplus to A Body ........................................................................................... 79 3.1. Object a: The Remainder of a Body ............................................................... 79 3.2. The Body that Enjoys: Jouissance .................................................................. 81 4. Narratives of the Body .................................................................................... 84 4.1. The Fantasy of the ‘Normal Body’. ................................................................ 84 4.2. The Othered Body: Narratives of Disability ................................................... 87 4.3. The Traumatic Body of Literary Studies ........................................................ 92 5. Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 94 CHAPTER 3: AT THE LIMITS OF MEANING ALIENATED SUBJECTS: WOUNDED FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 96 1. Introduction........................................................................................................ 97 2. Genet: The Maids – Captivated Subjects ......................................................... 99 2.1. Refracted identities. The Perils of the Mirror ............................................... 101 2.2. Dislocations: and Reversals: The Body in a Hierarchy of Space .................. 104 2.3. The Sisters: Paranoid Motifs and Poetic Transformations ............................ 109 3. Artaud: Theatre of Excess ............................................................................. 113 3.1. Spurt of Blood – Disorder from the Heavens ............................................... 116 3.2. Situating the Dismembered Body in Artaud’s Work .................................... 121 3.3. A Poetics of Anarchy .................................................................................... 124 3. Beckett: Endgame’s Chronic Bodies ............................................................... 127 4.1. A Discontinuity of ‘Relations’ ...................................................................... 131 4.2. The Fantasy of Debility ................................................................................. 135 4.3. Next Move? The Drive Toward Inertia ......................................................... 138 5. Conclusion ................................................................................................... 140 5 CHAPTER 4 ....................................................................................................... 142 DRIVING FORCES: THE TRAUMA OF THE SEXED BEING. ...................................... 142 1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 143 1.1. Queer Encounters. Theatre of the Non-Relation............................................ 144 2. Horror in The Cenci: The Nuclear Family and the will to power ...................... 146 2.1. Beyond the Law. Cenci and Beatrice ............................................................. 151 2.2. Marking the Unspeakable. Beatrice’s Dream ................................................ 154 2.3. Performing Destruction: The Jouissance of Fiction ...................................... 157 3. Jean Genet – The Parody of Sex in The Balcony.............................................. 160 3.1. The Glorification of the Image and Reflection .............................................. 165 3.2. The Erotics of the Specular as the Veil of Being ........................................... 169 3.3. The Signifier of the Phallus ........................................................................... 172 4. Samuel Beckett. Not I: Delimiting the Void ...................................................