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Trauma, Company and Witnessing in Samuel Beckett's Post-War Drama

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Trauma, Company and Witnessing in Samuel Beckett's Post-War Drama TRAUMA, COMPANY AND WITNESSING IN SAMUEL BECKETT’S POST-WAR DRAMA, 1952-61 A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2014 ELECTRA GEORGIADES SCHOOL OF ARTS, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES 2 LIST OF CONTENTS Abstract 3 Declaration 4 Copyright Statement 5 Acknowledgements 6 1. Introduction 7 1.1. Beckett and Trauma: The Theoretical Framework 12 1.2. Performing Testimony 25 1.3. Human Company: The Other as a Witness 36 1.4. Thesis Structure 41 2. In Need of a Witness: Beckett’s Testimonial Drama (1952-61) 45 2.1. Trauma, Testimony and the Theatre 48 2.2. Beside History: Beckett’s Testimonial Drama 66 2.2.1 Performing Trauma 69 2.2.2 Performing and Responding to Testimony 86 3. Acting out the Trauma: Memory, Language and the Body 99 3.1. Memory 109 3.2. Language 133 3.3. The Body 142 4. Reclaiming Witnessing in the Post-war Period: Human Company in Beckett’s Drama Trilogy 158 4.1. Human Company and Trauma 161 4.2. Resisting the Trauma: Company and Witnessing 189 5. Conclusion: Trauma, Company and Witnessing in Samuel Beckett’s Post-war Drama 205 5.1. Beckett and Trauma 208 5.2. The Human Other 212 Bibliography 217 Primary Sources 217 Secondary Sources 218 Words: 80,551 3 ABSTRACT The present thesis examines the interrelation between the dynamics of human company and the psychoanalytic concept of witnessing in Samuel Beckett’s major post-war drama. The analysis provided concentrates primarily on Waiting for Godot (1952), Endgame (1957), and Happy Days (1962) and situates these plays within a post-war framework, while examining their stylistic qualities and thematic concerns within the context of trauma studies. To trace and expose the overwhelming presence of trauma in the plays, I focus on the treatment of form and content and expand on existing critical readings by proposing that both form and content simultaneously internalise the symptoms, the rhythms and the processes of traumatic memory and experience. Demonstrating that the theatrical performance is adequately suited to represent and give embodied form to trauma, I then discuss the viability and significance of approaching Beckett’s post-war trilogy as testimonial drama. Testimonial drama, I argue, embodies the symptoms of trauma both thematically and structurally, and effectively manages to testify to its historical context through the act of being performed in front of an audience, in front of a human witness. By acknowledging the physical presence of the audience, the theatrical performance manages to create the witness to its struggle to testify, as the Beckett stage mutates into a key site of interaction between trauma, theatre and history. Focusing then on the condition of memory, language and the body, I suggest that they constitute three primary sites for the manifestation of unprocessed traumatic experience and question agency, subjectivity and the availability of choice in the aftermath of massive historical trauma. This discussion is followed by the assessment of the nature, purpose and value of human company in the traumatic aftermath. Human company, I argue, is fundamentally related to past trauma. It is decisively shaped by the collapse of social structures, the loss of communality and the absence of witnessing, emerging as a compelling human need that is compulsively longed for, sought out and maintained while reducing individual identity to role-play. A product of a deeply traumatic history, human company also surfaces as a means of resistance to historical horrors as the human other serves as a vital source of solace, support and communality, while providing with his or her physical presence the much-needed human witness to one’s existence. A key trope of Beckett’s post-war drama, human company foregrounds the status of the trilogy as a profound artistic and ethical response to the horrors of the Second World War, as the need for the human other as a witness – exposed both thematically and structurally – opens up the possibility for witnessing and testimony to take place in the aftermath of a historical period which precluded its own witnessing. 4 DECLARATION No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or institute of learning. 5 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=487), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Liam Harte, for his continuous support, help and guidance, as well as to Mr. John McAuliffe and Dr. Robert Spencer for their particularly insightful comments. I would also like to thank my parents, sisters and fiancé for their encouragement. Without their love and support this thesis would not have been possible. 7 1. Introduction As the title suggests, the present thesis is principally concerned with the interrelation between the dynamics of human company and the psychoanalytic concept of witnessing in the major post-war drama of Samuel Beckett (1906- 1989). A thematic preoccupation that I perceive as crucial, not only in the way it defines the plays of the period 1952-61 but also in terms of how it emerges time and again in numerous later works, company still constitutes a relatively unexplored territory in the field of Beckett studies. Concentrating primarily on the onstage depiction of couples in Waiting for Godot (1952), Endgame (1957), and Happy Days (1961), this study aims to address this gap in the existing criticism by assessing the nature, purpose, and role of company, thereby determining and, indeed, establishing its central position in Beckett’s oeuvre. Indeed, the centrality of human company in Beckett is suggested by the title of the 1980 novella, Company. A work which centres on a solitary protagonist who ‘devis[es] it all for company’,1 it echoes the need for the physical presence of the human other, communicates the radical impact of the absence of the human other, and constitutes, I believe, the culmination of the writer’s textual exploration of the issue of human company. Focusing on the depiction of concrete images of human interaction in Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Happy Days, this thesis aspires, therefore, to examine Beckett’s early treatment of company with not only the purpose to determine its nature and value in these three stage plays, but also with the intention to expose the potential for tracing the re-emergence and development of this issue throughout his works. Key questions that drive my thesis are the following: (a) what is the reason for which so many characters in Beckett’s works appear obsessed with the presence or absence of another human being?; (b) to what extent is this obsession with the human other related to the historical and socio-political background of the works? In other words, is it possible to speak of the representation of human company in post-war Beckett as a product of a distinct historical period, a period marked by the occurrence of unprecedented 1 Samuel Beckett, Company (1980; London: John Calder, 2003), p.8. 8 historical and collective trauma? To provide answers to these questions, answers which I believe will contribute to our further understanding of the major drama, my analysis will closely examine the depiction of human company alongside the psychoanalytic theorisation of human relationships as these emerge in the aftermath of a traumatic experience, and particularly that of the Second World War. What I propose to explore, then, is how Beckett’s drama trilogy destabilises our conception of human company by rethinking its purpose and value in a period of profound atrocity, violence and death. A closer look at the interactions between each couple in the respective settings of the major post-war plays exposes the need for company as being fundamentally related to the state of belonging or, rather, non-belonging, which in itself points towards an impaired sense of communality whose roots lie in catastrophic traumatic experience. The term “communality” I borrow from trauma theorist Kai Erikson, who uses it to describe ‘the networks of relationships that make up [one’s] general human surround.’2 Accordingly, communality can be profoundly affected by the occurrence of what Erikson theorises as “collective trauma”: [C]ollective trauma [is] a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality.
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