History in Tatters: Bodies and Things in Samuel Beckett’s Theatre
History in Tatters: Bodies and Things in Samuel Beckett’s Theatre (A. McMullan)Drawing on concepts such as the chiasm in Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible, this article argues that Beckett’s theatre creates a dynamic stage space that includes a spectrum of being from human to things. On...
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| Publicat a: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Études britanniques contemporaines
2019
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| Accés en línia: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumari: | History in Tatters: Bodies and Things in Samuel Beckett’s Theatre (A. McMullan)Drawing on concepts such as the chiasm in Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible, this article argues that Beckett’s theatre creates a dynamic stage space that includes a spectrum of being from human to things. On the one hand, this might be termed a posthuman perspective, in that it presents a critique of anthropocentric humanism; on the other, a kind of transference takes place between bodies and objects (from the tree in Godot to the rocking chair in Rockaby) so that subjectivity or indeed affectivity is invested in the entire visual field, including both bodies and objects or parts thereof, both the seen and the unseen. Moreover, things, including props but also costume, materialize historical references and counter the sense of Beckett’s a-historical spaces to suggest multiple, layered histories. Beckett’s theatre therefore stages a vision that, while rooted in the phenomenological present, encourages an expanded perception which places the human in the frame of a dysfunctional creation which includes the human, animal, vegetable and for want of a better word, things, but also in a temporal frame that layers or ‘sediments’ the present with fragments of memory and history, both recent and ancient. |
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