Cixous, Beckett and Language Play

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1/17

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"Inside and Outside at the Same Time": Language Play in Beckett and CixousAuthor(s): Jacquelyn ScottSource: The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Fall 2012), pp.59-74Published by: Midwest Modern Language Association

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2/17

"Inside and Outside at the Same Time":

Language Play

in

Beckett and Cixous

Jacquelyn

Scott

As

thought

terrogating

Alice

between

Jardine

and

reconstructing

notes

1930

and

in

1960

Gynesis,

dialectical

focused

French

thinking

attention

intellectual

and

on in-

its

thought

between 1930

and 1960 focused

attention on in-

terrogating

nd

reconstructing

dialectical

thinking

nd its

modes of

mimetic

representation,

concept

based

upon

the

theoreti-

cal

dichotomy

of

presence

and absence.

This

project

quickly engen-

dered

a movement that

gained prominence

in

1968 and

continues

today:

the

"quest

for a

nondialectical,

nonrepresentational,

and non-

mimetic mode of

conceptuality"

(119).

Jardine

points

to Lacan

as

the "first o

displace, slightly,

the

mediator in

patriarchal

culture

the Father

from

reality'

into

the

'symbolic,'

as well as

the first o

reconceptualize

and

reemphasize

spaces

'exceeding'

the

dialectic"

(138).

Samuel

Beckett's

Molloy,

Malone

Dies,

and

The

Unnamable

trilogy,

written in

France

in

the late

1940s,

explores

these

philo-

sophical

issues via

an intense

language

play

that

corresponds

with

those

Jardine calls

"the

philosophers-after-Lacan,"

such as

Derrida,

Deleuze,

and

Lyotard,

each of whom

set

abouta total

reconceptualization

f

difference

beyond

ontradic-

tion),

elf-consciously

hrowing

oth

exes

nto

mtonymie

onfusion

of

gender.

nd,

s with

he

demise

f the

Cartesian

go,

that

which

s

"beyond

Lacan's

governing

aradigm

f

the

Law

of]

the

Father,"

overflowing

he

dialectics f

representation,

nrepresentable

will

be

gendered

s

feminine.

"Gynesis"

0)

This

last

sentence

argues

that

those

concepts

which

dialectical

language

is

incapable

of

representing

and

incapable

of

naming

The

ournalf he

Midwestodern

anguage

ssociation

Spring

012

ol.

5,

No.1

59

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/17

60

I

"Inside nd

Outside

t the ame Time"

are identical to

the subversive

spaces

within

language

that have

become associated

with the textual feminine. This

gendering

leads

me to the somewhat

strange coupling

indicated

in

my

title that

of Samuel

Beckett,

who uses narrative to

explore

the failure of

narrative mimesis

in

The

Unnamable,

and Hlne

Cixous,

the

poetic

"philosopher-after-Lacan"

whose criture

fminine

deals most

specifically

with

ways

of

making

the

impossible

possible by writing

the

theoretically unrepresentable linguistic

feminine into a

presence

based on

shifting

dentification

nd

poetic language play.1

As

a

critic,

Cixous has remained

silent on Samuel Beckett's

corpus,

whose

fiction and drama have

so much in common

with

her own

novels and

plays

that feminist

scholars,

most

notably

Elin

Diamond,

find an

"astonishing" compatibility

between Cixous's

French feminism

and Beckett's

drama

(208).

This

essay

differs

from

previous

studies

of Beckett and French

feminist

thought

by focusing

on the novels

of these two

Parisian

expatriates

Beckett from

Ireland,

Cixous from

Algeria

-

to

explore

the

ways

their narratives

embody

self-consciously

theoretical

language

that

exemplifies

writing

the

feminine. Cixous's

efforts

n

The Book

of

Promethea

do differfrom

Beckett's

in

the

thirdnovel of his

trilogy,

The

Unnamable,

in that she

attempts

to manifest feminine

desire

by

"writing

the

body,"

while

he,

by

focusing

on

physical

disintegration

almost

to the

point

of material

nonexistence,

tries to write narrative

voice out

of it.

Nonetheless,

these

seemingly

antithetical directions

connect

on a

more

profound

level:

they

share the

goal

of

existing

"inside and outside

at the

same

time,"

of

achieving "presence

and

presence."

By

this,

I mean to

suggest

a

coupling

of

two terms of

equal

value instead

of the hierarchical

binary

pairing

of

"presence/

[with

its

other]

absence."

These

authors

attempt

this

"presence

and

presence"

pairing

even

when

representing

memory,

which

always

recalls

something

absent

the

past.

In Cixous's

The

Book

of

Promethea,

the narrator

works

toward

expressing

presence

when

writing

about love between a

human

couple.

Her task

is

complicated

by

the

hegemonic

oppression

of

one member

of the heterosexual

couple,

the

woman,

a

patriarchal

tradition he

suspects

may

lie at the

foundation of

the hierarchization



4/17

Jacquelyn

cott 61

(her word)

of

linguistic

binaries. Western

thought,

she

explains,

works

through

dual,

hierarchical

opposition.

Whenever

ordering

ntervenes.. a law

organizes

hat s thinkable

y

oppositions

(dual,

rreconcilable;

r

ublatable,

ialectical).

nd ll these

airs

f

op-

positions

re

couples.

Does thatmean

omething?

s the

fact hat

ogo-

centrism

ubjects hought

all

concepts,

odes and values to a

binary

system,

elated o "the"

ouple,

man/woman?

Newly

orn Woman

4)

Also

struggling

for

presence,

Beckett's unnamable

concentrates

on

testing

narrative

positions

from which he

may

be able to relate

the "truth."

Again,

this "authentic"

representation requires

the

presence

of his

history,

ut,

to

borrow a

phrase

from

another French

feminist,

Marie

Cardinal,

he can

never find "the words to

say

it."

These

dissimilar intentions

bring

both narrators o the same

impasse

with respect to conventional narrative forms and their limitations

for

relating

or

trying

o

relate stories of

presence.

In

eschewing

traditional narrative as

a referential

tool,

both authors

rely

on

linguistic

play:

fluid shifts and

subversions that

often dissolve

traditional borders

between noun and

verb,

subject

and

object,

inside

and outside. In

both

novels,

plot

is

displaced by

repetition

that

continually

shifts the

space

of the

referent,

and character

is

undermined

by

a

fragmented

narrative voice that

shifts with

dizzying swiftness fromnarrator o narrated,from ingular to plural,

from male to

female. These

techniques

characterize both

Cixous's

theory

or

"anti-theory,"

s she would

have

it)

of

criture

fminine

and the

linguistically

and

ideologically playful

fictionBeckett

wrote

in

France a

generation

before she

published

"The

Laugh

of the

Medusa" in

1976.

Like

Freud's

Dora,

whom

Cixous later

reimagined

in

her

play

of the

same

name,

Beckett's

inscrutable

unnamable

seems to

be

seeking

a

"talking cure,"

a

Freudian psychoanalytic method that

uses

narrative as a means

of

imposing

meaning upon

fragmented

memories.

But

according

to

Derridean

theory,

the

binary

structure

of

the

sign

is

determined

by

the

trace of the

absent

other,

and this

trace of the

other,

what

the

sign

is

not,

always

destabilizes

present



5/17

62

I

"Inside

nd

Outside

t theSame Time"

meaning.

Take,

for

instance,

the

word

"nothing."

This word is a

textually present signifier

of the absence or

negation

of

the

thing

itself

(no-thing).

Both sides of the

presence/absence binary

exist

simultaneously, exemplifying

how both

A

and not-A can exist

in

the

same

space.

Both Beckett and Cixous

explore

this dual

linguistic

representation

of one and

other,

inside and

outside,

and

they

both

bear witness to the

feminine,

representing

the life-force

itself,

as

it

escapes

their narrators' control.

This shared interest s

especially

apparent

in

their

iterary nvestigations

of what it means

-

and what

it does not mean

-

when

a narrator

ttempts

to voice

subjectivity

but

ends

up

as the

unnamable,

"still the teller

and the told"

(310).

In The Book

of

Promethea Cixous

's

first-person

narrator

does

not

attempt

to resolve her

contradictory

words

regarding

autobiography

and the

subject/object

binary: "Autobiography

does

not

exist ... It is

nothing living.

It is a

jealous,

deceitful

sort of

thing

I

detest

it"

(19). By placing "autobiography"

in

the

subject

position

of

that first declarative

statement and

juxtaposing

this

subject

with its

negation

("does

not

exist"),

Cixous

's Beckettian

syntax

destabilizes its

own declaration. The

subsequent

sentences

contribute to

the

instability

also.

If

autobiography

"

does

not

exist,"

how can

it have a

name,

and how can

it

act as both

subject

and

object

in the sentence

"

It is a

jealous,

deceitful sort of

thing

I

detest

it"

[my

italics]?

The

opposition

between

subject

and

object

affirms the existence

of

autobiography,

at least

linguistically,

but

passive

existence for Cixous

is not

enough.

Subjectivity,

the

thing

autobiography

seeks to

expose,

must circulate

through

alternative

positions

in

language

to

indicate a

never-ending

self-identification

with the other

in other

words,

"presence

and

presence."

Emile

Benveniste's

"Subjectivity

in

Language"

(1958)

elucidates

this breakdown

of

"the old antinomies

of

'I' and 'the

other'"

(225).

In this seminal

article,

Benveniste

points

to

the

polar

construction

of the

"I" and the

"you"

in discourse

as the fundamental

condition that makes

language possible.

When a

speaker

refers to

herself as

"I,"

she

posits

an exterior

"you"

who

will then reverse

the

terms

and name

"me" as the

"you."

But it s crucial

to remember

that

the



6/17

Jacquelyn

cott 63

very

erms

e are

using

here,

and

you,

renot o be taken s

figures

ut

as

linguistic

orms

ndicatingperson" as

in

the

yntactical

irst

erson,

second

person,

hird

erson],

. . Now these

ronouns

re

distinguished

from

ll other

esignationslanguage

rticulatesnthat

hey

o not

efer

to

concept

r to n individual. here s no

concept

I" that

ncorporates

all the 's that reutteredt

every

moment

n

themouths f

all

speakers.

(Benveniste

25-6,

his

talics)

Benveniste is

arguing

that the

reality

the

"I"

refers to is the act of

discourse;

"I"

can never refer to the

individual,

who must

posit

himself as

subject

in order to use

language.

Rather,

the

opposition

of

"I"

and

"you"

is

merely

a

linguistic

convention

that references

nothing

outside of the

system

of discourse.

Both Cixous and Beckett allow their narrators to

recognize

this

nonreferentiality. ompare

the

following

two

passages,

which

employ

several of the same words and

syntactical

strategies

when

exploring

the

challenge

of

self-narration.

First,

Cixous:

When

say

"I,"

this is never he

ubject

f

autobiography,y

is free.

Is the

ubject

f

my

madness,

my

larms,

myvertigo.

.. I

surrenders,

gets

ost,

oes not

omprehend

tself.

ays nothing

boutme. does not

lie. do not ie to

anyone.

Promethea

9)

Now

Beckett:

I,

say

.

Unbelieving.

.. I seem o

speak,

t

s not

,

about

me,

t s

not

aboutme. Unnamable

91)

In

both

examples

of "I

say

I,"

Cixous and Beckett

or

rather,

the

narrators

they conjure

-

suggest

that

meaning

unravels in the

distance between "I" as speaking subject and "I" as

spoken

or

written

object,

so

that

"I"

(spoken)

cannot

directly

or

fully,

n

terms

of

representing "pure"

presence,

comment

upon

I

(being).

Yet

both

explore,

repeatedly,

possible

ways

of

bringing

the absent

object



7/17

64

I

"Inside ndOutside t the ame Time"

back into the narrative text

through syntactical games

that subvert

the fixed

binary system.

As a

result,

syntax

no

longer

functions

according

to conventional narrative

principles.

For

instance,

in

the last two lines of

the Promethea

example,

Cixous

follows the

subject

"I" with the

third-person ingular

"does" to indicate that the

subjective

"I"

(as

in "I

surrenders")

has shifted from the

expected

first-person ingular

to an unconventional

"I"

that stands

in

for

"it";

in "I

does,"

"I" refersnot to the

speaker

but to the

spoken "I,"

a

thing

outside of the

speaker.

But as soon as the "I" is established in this

new

position,

the

subjective

flows back in

again:

in the

following

"I

do not lie to

anyone,"

the

expected

verb

ending

("do")

for the

first-person singular signals

that

syntax

has

temporarily

shifted

back to conventional

usage.

There are differences between these

authors,

of

course,

and we can locate a

significant

one here: while

Cixous 's narrator

claims that her

anti-autobiographical

"I" does

not

lie,

because it does not

seek to immobilize

presence

in

a

single

narrative,

the unnamable

freely

admits that ts stories are

essentially

"all lies"

(314),

because

none of them can

narrate the nonmediated

presence

of

personal

history,

which is

always

already

absent.

In

the

example

from

Cixous,

the reader can understand

which

"I" acts as

subject

and

which as

object,

but as

Richard

Begam

demonstrates

in a deconstructive

reading

of

Beckett's

"I,

say

I,"

this

phrase

resists

referring

o

ust

one "I" as

subject,

the other

s

object,

in

a fluid

dynamic

that calls

the entire

subject/object,

narrator/narrated

binary

into

question.

Begam points

out that on one

level,

both I's

refer

to the same

unified

subject,

but because one acts

as

subject-

narrator

nd the other

as

object-narrated,

hey

function

ntithetically.

However,

according

to

Begam,

the reader cannot discern

which

"I"

serves which

syntactical

purpose,

because

Beckett inserts

a comma

after the

first

"I,"

and

the "effect

of the comma

is to

reconfigure

entirely

the

dynamic

patterning

of

diffrance

n the sentence.

Rather

than

moving

back and

forth

n

simple

bipolar

fashion

between the

two

I's,

diffrance

now circulates around,

through,

even within

each of

these terms"

(877).2

For

instance,

English

speakers

most

often

position

the

subject

at

the

beginning

of

the

sentence,

so that

in

their

first

eading

of

"I,

say

I,"

they

would

comprehend

the initial



8/17

Jacquelyn

cott 65

"I" as the

subject. Although

the comma then forces the reader to

reevaluate the sentence

dynamics

and see that the first

I"

actually

functions

as the

object,

that first

eading

of it as the

subject

remains

as a

destabilizing

trace

(Begam

877).

Beckett further subverts narrative

authority by opening

the novel with

questions

("Where

now? Who now? When

now?")

that,

if

answered,

would orient the narrative voice

(291).

But as

Angela Moorjani points out,

these

questions

lead "not to answers

but to

playful manipulations

of

names,

pronouns,

verb

tenses,

and

of the other deictic forms or shifters

'now,'

'then,' 'here,' 'there,'

and so

on)

that

usually

serve to anchor the

speaker/narrator

n

time

and

space"

(59).

Like

Cixous,

Beckett is

comfortable

with

contradictions,

so it comes as no

surprise

thatthe

unnamable invokes

alternative versions of self in

the formof Mahood and Worm to

relate

contradictory

elf-narrations

hat

slip temporally

and

spatially,

as

in

this

example: "Quick.

Give me a

mother and let me suck her

white,

pinching my

tits'''

337,

my

italics).

Present

blends into future

ense,

while narrative

identification

with

the male

Oedipal

child

slips

into

identificationwith the

mother.

Yet even this

playful

narrative

voice,

which

explodes

traditional

narrative

form,

cannot

completely

escape

its

own

narrativity,

s it still

relies on "narrative" to

make sense of

sensory

perception.

Expressing

the

inexpressible,

the

unnamable,

the

feminine

these desires involve

struggling

with an

inherent and

irreconcilable contradiction:

how can we

bring

the subtextual to

the

surface

without

changing

its

identity

n

a

way

that

merely

inverts

the

binary?

This

impossible

challenge

leads the unnamable

to madness

within

circularity,

the madness of

having

to

speak

and not

being

able

to"

(324).

Cixous's narrator

hares this

madness,

saying

"the

question

driving

me

mad is: how can

one

manage

to

be

simultaneously

inside

and outside?"

(

Promethea

16).

These

questions

closely parallel

Derrida's

discussion of

"The Ends of

Man,"

which

explores

how

we

might

transcend the limits of

patriarchal

Western

philosophical

discourse from

within its

system.

Cixous,

Beckett,

Derrida:

whether

we

categorize

them as

artists or

philosophers,

each

explores

the

same

struggle with(in)

language.



9/17

66

I

"Inside nd

Outside

t theSame Time"

Beckett's unnamable embodies a

self-consciously

doomed

desire to achieve

identity hrough

tories constructed from

anguage,

even

though

it

realizes that

anguage

is

too ineffable for his task. The

narrator's consciousness has moments

approaching self-recognition,

yet

these same moments demonstrate

slippage away

from

meaning,

and the

attempts

end

in the failure of

mimesis,

forthe consciousness

can never find a

pronoun,

or even a

name,

that

fully captures

both

its

subjectivity

and

objectivity. Indeed,

Beckett once wrote that

while

Joyce

was

"tending

towards omniscience

and

omnipotence

as an

artist,"

he was

"working

with

impotence,

ignorance" (qtd.

in

Mays

24).

Beckett's

fiction and drama

support

his

self-evaluation;

much of his work

reveals a simultaneous

yearning

for

and failure to

achieve stable

self-identity,

nd his

decrepit

male

characters,

rather

than

upholding

the

phallocentric

tradition of the Law of the

Father,

fail to maintain use of

the

subjective

"I."

This lack of "masculine"

presence

leads

to the

inguisticspace

that has been

gendered

feminine.

Writing

fromthis

position requires

an

acceptance

of

repetition,

which Luce

Irigaray

contextualizes

in

The Sex

Which s Not One:

[W]oman

s

constantlyouching

erself. he

steps

ver o

lightly

side

from erself

ith

murmur,

n

exclamation,

whisper,

sentenceeft

unfinished

. . When he

returns,

t s to set

off

gain

from lsewhere.

From

nother

oint

f

pleasure,

r of

pain.

One would have

to listen

with notherar, s ifhearingn "othermeaning" lways ntheprocess

of

weaving

tself,

f

embracing

tselfwith

words,

ut also of

getting

ridof words

n order ot o become

fixed,

ongealed

n them. f "she"

says

omething,

t s

not,

t s

already

o

longer,

dentical

ithwhat he

means.What he

ays

s never dentical

ith

nything,

oreover;

ather,

it

s

contiguous.

t touches

upon).

And when t

strays

oo far rom hat

proximity,

he breaks

ff nd starts

verat "zero":

her

body-sex.

29,

her

llipses)

This

repetition

provides

space

for ideas that

may appear

contradictory

from the

standpoint

of

post-Enlightenment

reason,

but

Irigaray

implies

that a

fixed,

prefabricated

critical

position

is

incapable

of

comprehending

the

ever-changing

qualities

of

being



10/17

Jacquelyn

cott 67

and

representation

as

they appear

in criture

fminine.

Irigaray

s

insight

into

writing

based

upon

the need to return to the

body

as

"ground

zero"

serves as an

apt guide

for

tracing

the narrative

movement of Beckett's

unnamable,

who claims that Mahood "lived

in

my

head,

issued forthfrom

me,

came back to

me,

entered back

into

me,

heaped

stories on

my

head. ... It is his

voice which has

[note

the contradiction n the next

two

words]

often,

lways

mingled

with

mine,

and sometimes

drowned

it

completely.

. . . But

now,

is

it I

now,

I on

me?"

(309-10).

This last

line

layers subject

on

object,

"I on

me,"

but this dual reference to

the unnamable s narrative still

occurs

in

the form

of a

question.

Robert Welch

maintains that this

passage

indicates a narrative

"drift[ing]

from

identity

to

identity"

due to the absence of a

subject,

but that

reading implies

that there

are several

separate

narrative

positions (181).

I take

the view that

these

identities are not

separate

but come from one

consciousness

that

is unable to

constitute a unified self in

language

but

which,

in

its

repeated

attempts,

creates these

multiple

voices as

fragmented

reflections of self. Paul A.

Bov's

reading

of

Beckett's

trilogy

as

"a

series of

attempts

on the

part

of the

author-heroes to

objectify

and,

hence,

to

distance a

painful

life-possibility: despair"

aligns

with

my argument (196).

Beckett's

narrators want to

separate

from self

"in

order

to witness"

their

histories,

but

the moment

they separate

from

self

through language,

the

histories

they try

to narrate

lose

authenticity Unnamable 304).

In a

sense,

this

spatial

distance from

self

parallels

Lacan's account

of the

mirror

stage,

a

now-standard

psychoanalytic theory

that

posits

an

utterable

"I"

fraught by

its

double

nature as

subject

and

object.

Mahood's

self-objectification

in

narrative

coincides with its

attempt

o find a

shape

that will

fitboth

subject

and

object

-

in

other

words,

a

body

that can be self

and other

and still

maintain a faithful

mimetic

representation

of

itself. At

one

point,

Mahood's

body

is

all but

hidden in

a

trashcan,

and then

eventually forgottenby

the

woman who

occasionally

tended it.

Left without

bonds to

mother or

father,

t

enters an

existence within

nonexistence,

the

shadowy space

between the

signifier

nd

the

signified

where it

is able to

be without

being

seen

-

an

invisible

presence

that,

like

Irigaray

s

specular



11/17


12/17

Jacquelyn

cott

69

margins,

in "the heath where witches are

kept

alive"

("Laugh"

310).

The unnamable enters

this

space

when Mahood transforms

to Worm a

figure

that lacks social

currency,

as it is not

human,

but it

suggests

a

powerful

subterranean,

primal image

that

invokes

that

presocialized

feminine. But whereas Cixous

wants to

bring

this

hidden force to

power

in

society by breaking

the codes that

negate

Woman

through

he creation of "a radical mutation of

things brought

on

by

a material

upheaval

when

every

structure s for a moment

thrown

off balance and

an

ephemeral

wildness

sweeps

order

away"

("Laugh"

310),

Beckett's

unnamable wants to hide in this chaos.

Like the feminine in

language,

Worm has retreated from

society

arguably voluntarily,

ince it resists "their"

attempts

to make "him"

grow appendages

with

which to

pull

him

back into

civilization,

to

resign

it as a "him" with the Law of the Father.

Beckett

hardly

seems to be

writing

the

body;

instead,

he

may

be

unwriting

the

body

as he

explores

the theme of material

disintegration.

However,

the unnamable does seem to be

writing,

although, apparently lacking

arms,

it

has

only

voice with which

to write. This

logical

impossibility suggests

that the unnamable is

writing

loud,

a

process

Roland Barthes

calls

"

criture haute voix

in

The Pleasure

of

the Text.

This kind of text

(i.e.,

criture haute

voix)

resists

privileging

the

meaning

of a word over its

capacity

for

aesthetic

beauty by

emphasizing

the

pleasure

one receives from

experiencing

the

physical

sensation of

speaking

and

hearing

that

word. This

writing

subordinates the aim of

conveying "messages"

to the

experience

and

appreciation

of

"the

pulsional

incidents,

the

language

lined with

flesh,

. . where we hear

the

grain

of the

throat,

the

patina

of

consonants,

the

voluptuousness

of

vowels,

a

whole

carnal

stereophany;

the articulation

of the

body,

of the

tongue,

not

that of

meaning,

of

language" (66-67).

For

Barthes,

such

writing

constitutes a

perspective

of bliss

by heightening

our

attunement to

the

musicality

inherent

in

the

words

with

which we

construct our

narratives.Herbert Blau sees Beckett's focus on

joining

the

physical

with

the textual

as a

"compulsive"

articulation

of the

body:

It's next o

impossible

o think

f Beckett nd

not

getcaught

p

in

the



13/17

70

I

"Inside nd

Outside t the ame Time"

compulsive

extualizationf

displaced ody arts,

he

ongue

nthe ter-

us,

the

peechless

nfant

n

the

mouth,

he

writing

efore he etter n

thematriarchal

all,

going hrough

imilar ontortionso

achieve elf-

presence

n the

iving resent,

hat

ure

uto-affection

hich,

ike the

writing

f theunconsciousn the ibidinal

conomy

f the

womb,

oes

not nhabit r borrow rom

nything

utside tself.

15)

An

example

of Beckett's attention to the

auditory imagery

of

criture haute voix occurs as the unnamable once again tries to

situate its

subjectivity:

"For

if I

am

Mahood,

I

am Worm

too,

plop.

Or

if I am not

yet

Worm,

I

shall be when

I

cease to be

Mahood,

plop"

(338).

From a

standpoint

of linear

narrative,

the additions of

"plop"

add no

literal

meaning,

but

they

reveal that the narrator s

playing

with

language

to enhance its

auditory

pleasure,

as

"plop"

is

best

understood as

onomatopoeia.

In

addition,

the insertion of the

irrelevant

"plop"

focuses the reader's attention

on narrative

style

rather than content and indicates the unnamable s own diffidence

toward

its own

discourse,

even when

it is

speaking

about the nature

of that

very

discourse.

If,

as

I

am

proposing,

Beckett's

unnamable

indeed

practices

criture haute

voix,

we

have

another

example

of

binary

erasure

and

reinscription,

s

the

binary

of

speech

and

writing

melds

into a

juxtaposition

that

acknowledges

and embraces both

poles,

dissolving

their

polarity

in the

process.

This last

example

illustrates the

strongest stylistic

commonality shared by Beckett and Cixous - their affirmation,

revealed

in

language

games,

of

"the

play

of the world and

the

innocence of

becoming,

the affirmation

f a world of

signs

without

fault,

without truth

and without

origin

which is offered

to active

interpretation"

Nealon

526).

Just as

Cixous's feminine

refuses to

be

controlled,

as "it is a

drive to life

always

related to otherness"

("Laugh"

310),

so Beckett's

unnamable

goes

on

resisting

the

ending

it craves. And

despite

its

constant

struggle,

it cannot

help

having

fun with language. It likes its own "colourful language, these bold

metaphors

and

apostrophes"

(333).

Jeffrey

ealon sees this

gaming

as an

attempt

to stretch

the limits of

previous

thought,

to

"think

at,

against,

and

beyond" language

in order

to move

beyond

the

grand

Narratives

of the

past

to a new

space

(522-23),

and he

explicitly



14/17

Jacquelyn

cott 71

calls

the kind of

gaming

that Beckett

engages

in,

one that seeks

to

transgress

rather

than

replicate

the limits of Western

discourse,

postmodern.

If the

grand

Narratives are

gendered

masculine,

we

might

be

tempted

to call this

postmodern

space

"feminine,"

but that

would

only

serve to reinscribe ourselves within a

binary system

of

oppositions.

We

should, however,

recognize

this

space

as one where

gendered

binaries,

having

been deconstructed

through

the

play

and

flux of

oppositions,

hold no

sway.

In

"The

Laugh

of the

Medusa,"

Cixous is careful to

point

out

that t

is

up

to man to

say

where his

masculinity

and

femininity

re

suggesting

that

men are also confined

by

dominant social

positions

as inauthentic

as those

limiting

women. In

fact she

explicitly

admits

that "at the same

time,

man has been handed

that

grotesque

and

scarcely

enviable

destiny just imagine)

of

being

reduced to a

single

idol with

clay

balls. And

consumed,

as Freud and his

followers

note,

by

a fear of

being

a woman "

(314).

An

important

theme

in

The

Unnamable

involves the narrator's

resistance to such

inscription

into

fixed,

predetermined

subject positions,

as it

"others" itself

again

and

again

and

creates new alternatives

for self narrative

along

the

way.

Like Cixous's criture

fminine,

Beckett's

language play

participates

in

representing

the

limitless

metaphysics

of

presence

and

gender

through poetic

liberation

from

traditionally perceived

formal

constraints.

Arizona

State

University

Notes

1.

In

her

still-influential

The

Laugh

of

the Medusa"

(1976),

Cixous

insists that

"woman must

write woman"

(310)

through

a

process

she terms

"

criture

fminine

"

criture

fminine,

or

"writing

the

feminine,"

incorporates

two

equally

crucial

activities:

(1)

women

must no

longer

passively accept patriarchal

representations

of their

sexuality,

such as the

limiting

madonna/whore

dichotomy;

instead,

they

must

take

charge

of

self-representation

in

written

discourse

and base

this

representation

upon

the

sexuality

and

creativity

that

according

to

Cixous

is their

biological,

but not

yet

their

social,



15/17

72

I

"Inside nd Outside t theSame

Time"

birthright;

and

(2)

in so

doing, they

must reinvent narrative

in

order to subvert the

oppressive syntax

of

patriarchal language,

so

that these new

representations

of

female

sexuality

can exist in a

fluid textual

space

that Cixous

calls "the libidinal feminine." The

most

striking

characteristic

of the libidinal feminine

economy

is its

inclusive

acceptance

of the other. For

example,

contradictory

deas

may

exist

simultaneously

without one

holding

a dominant and the

other

a subordinate

position.

Cixous

expands upon

these ideas

in La

Jeune

Ne

(

The

Newly

Born

Woman),

co-authored

with

Catherine

Clment

(Paris:

Union Gnrale

d'ditions,

1975).

In this and

other

works

published

in the mid-1970s and

early

1980s,

Cixous

appropriates Jacques

Derrida's deconstruction

of

binary

hierarchies

to demonstrate

how

language

reflects

embedded

assumptions

about

gender: linguistic

concepts

relating

to the

active-textual-present

are

regularly

designated

as

masculine,

while words

signifying

the

passive-subtextual-absent

are considered

feminine.

n

these

works,

she

advances the idea

of the feminine

in

language

as

the

elusive,

silent

spaces

that

escape

referential

borders and

therefore cannot

be limited

by

definition,

because

the feminine

"does not

contain,

it

carries"

("Laugh"

3

1

7).

While Cixous

endeavors to

free women

from shame for

their

sexuality by

explicitly bringing

their sexual

organs,

such

as

the

vagina,

uterus,

and so forth

nto her

texts,

she then subverts

purely biologistic

reductionism

by pointing

with

characteristic

acceptance

of contradiction

to male

writerswho

practice

criture

fminine by

reinventing

language

to make

room for the

other.

Faced

with the

paucity

of women-authored

writing

that she

can

use

to

exemplify

feminine

writing,

especially

as she

believes

that

most women

writing

in the

past

wrote

"as

men,"

Cixous's

argument

in "The

Laugh

of the

Medusa"

takes the

poetics

of

Heinrich

Kleist as

an

example

of

writing

the feminine.

Another

male writer

whom Cixous

believes

tends

toward criture

fminine

is Beckett's mentor James

Joyce,

whose modernist

masterpiece

Ulysses

ends

in

affirmation

hat

signifies

the

feminine;

.

. And

yes,' says

Molly,

carrying Ulysses

off

beyond any

book

and toward

the

new

writing;

'I said

yes,

I will Yes'"

(qtd.

in

"Laugh"

314).



16/17

Jacquelyn

cott 73

2.

This

slippage

leads

Begam

to

propose replacing

"narrator" with

two new

terms,

"locutor"

and

"dislocution,"

which he believes

are

better suited to

postmodern

narratives. With the first

erm,

he

hopes

to

dispel

reader

assumptions

that

narrative

voice

is

unitary, riginary,

and

authoritative;

with the

second,

he

suggests

that the locutor

has no

stable

position

from which it

projects identity;

therefore,

these

terms reflect the inherent

instability

of

identity

itself

(879).

However,

these terms seem

awkward and

ultimately unnecessary

when we consider that

Beckett succeeded in

creating

a narrative

voice

that carries out a discursive function while

shifting

across a

field of

possibilities

without the need to rename narrative tools. Iain

Wright

voices a similar

view when he

says,

"It

is almost too

easy

(and

that

suggest

is

precisely

what should

put

us on our

guard)

to

apply

this

vocabulary

of

decentring

and

displacement

to the

trilogy,

for ts narrators its

Molloys,

Morans,

Malones and Unnamables

-

have

already

done all the work for us"

(67).

3.

I

do not intend to

suggest any

clear delineation from

Molloy

to the unnamable in

terms

of

character,

as

we're unable to determine whether

Molloy

is an incarnation of the unnamable 's

multiple

voice or

something

more

literal,

but

in

terms of the

publication sequence

of the

trilogy,

Molloy precedes

The Unnamable.

Works Cited

Barthes,

oland.

ThePleasure

of

theText. rans.Richard

Miller. ondon:Jona-

than

ape,

1976.Print.

Beckett,

amuel.

"Draff."More Pricks Than Kicks.

1934. New York:

Grove,

1994.Print.

. ThreeNovels:

Molloy,

Malone

Dies,

TheUnnamable. ew York:

Grove,

1955.Print.

Begam,Richard. SplittingheDiffrance: eckett, errida nd The Unnam-

able." Modern

iction tudies 8.4

Winter

992):

873-92.Print.

Benveniste,

mile.

Subjectivity

n

Language."

1958.

Rpt.

n

Problems n

Gen-

eral

Linguistics.

rans.

Mary

ElizabethMeek.

Coral Gables:

U

of

Miami

P,

1971.223-30.

Print.



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Blau,

Herbert.The

Bloody

Showand the

Eye

of

Prey:

Beckettnd Deconstruc-

tion."Theatre ournal

9

(March1987):

5-19.

Print.

Bov,

Paul A.

"Beckett's readful ostmodern:

he Deconstructionf Form

n

Molloy." e-structing

heNovel

Essays

n

Applied

ostmodern

ermeneu-

tics.Ed. Leonard

Orr.

roy,

Y:

Whitston,

982. 185-221.

rint.

Cardinal,

Marie. The

Words o

Say

It. Trans.

Pat

Goodheart.

ambridge,

MA:

VanVactor

nd

Goodheart,

983.Print.

Cixous,Hlne.TheBookofPromethea.rans.BetsyWing.Lincoln:U of Ne-

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,

1991.

Print.

. "The

Laugh

of heMedusa."

Trans.KeithCohen nd

Paula Cohen.

igns

1

1976):

308-20.

Print.

Cixous,

Hlne,

nd Catherine

lment.

he

Newly

orn Woman.

rans.

Betsy

Wing.

Minneapolis:

of

Minnesota

,

1986.

Print. rans,

fLa Jeune

Ne.

Paris:Union

Gnrale

'ditions,

975.

Diamond,

lin.

"Speaking

arisian:

Beckett

nd

French eminism."

Womenn

BeckettPerformancend Critical erspectives.d.LindaBen-Zvi.Urbana:

U

of

llinois

,

1990.

208-16.

Print.

Irigaray,

uce.

This ex Which

s Not One.

Trans.Catherine

orter

ith

arolyn

Burke.

thaca:

Cornell

UP,

1985.

Print.

Jardine,

lice

A.

"Gynesis."

iacritics

2.2

Summer

982):

54-65.

Print.

.

Gynesis:

Configurations

f

Woman

nd

Modernity.

thaca:

Cornell

UP,

1985.

Print.

Mays,J. C. C. "YoungBeckett's rishRoots." rishUniversityeview 14.1

(Spring

984):

18-33.

Print.

Moi,

Toril. exual/Textual

olitics.

ondon:

Methuen,

985.

Print.

Moorjani,

ngela.

Abysmal

ames

n the

Novels

f

Samuel

Beckett.

hapel

Hill:

U

ofNorth

arolina

,

1982.

Print.

Nealon,

Jeffrey.

Samuel

Beckett

nd

he ostmodern:

anguage

Games,

lay

nd

Waiting

or

Godot

Modern

rama

31 4

(December

988):

520-28.

Print.

Welch,

obert.

hanging

tates:

Transformations

n

Modern

rish

Writing.

on-

don:Routledge,993.Print.

Wright,

ain.

"'What

matter

ho's

speaking?':

Beckett,

he

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Contemporary

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omparative

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Cixous, Beckett and Language Play

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