Turning Language Inside Out in Beckett’s Not I

Abstract

Beckett's dramatic works push the limits of language and subjectivity so far as to reach a point of total rupture from within. The stretching of these limits is indeed a bold attempt at overthrowing epistemological categories structured within and through them. Not I (1972) is one of such works in which the possibilities of language and subjectivity are taken to the furthest extent in which both turn upside down and inside out and finally reach their limits. The radical experiment with the inside and the outside of language and subjectivity in Not I becomes almost a metonymic embodiment of Lacan's ideas with regard to the formulation and dissolution of the self. In exposing how language and subjectivity go exhausted and are torn apart, however, Beckett, compared to Lacan, assumes a relatively affirmative position. While language and the subjects in fragments mark a psychotic breakdown and constitute a source of pain and lament in Lacanian psychoanalysis, they function as a creative and transformative resistance in Beckettian world. In this regard, this paper aims to examine Not I in the light of Lacanian theory and illustrate how the play both literalises and criticizes the problematic position of the female subject in language, exposing the points of intersection and divergence between Beckett and Lacan.

Keywords

• Beckett
• Not I
• Lacan
• The Symbolic
• Language
• Subjectivity