“From Inner to Outer Shadow”: Reading the Obscure Object of Anxiety in the “Dramaticules” of Samuel Beckett

Abstract

The article aims to examine the obscure object of anxiety in the “Dramaticules” of Samuel Beckett in the context of the psychoanalytic formulations of anxiety from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan, considering especially the debate regarding the presence or absence of the object of anxiety. Focusing on Beckett’s dialectical interplay of stage and offstage, the article seeks to identify the trace of the object right at the edge of theatrical representation. Beckett’s courageous subtraction grounds the interstitial object in a bid to arrive at an affordable economy in this treatment of anxiety, involving a problematic encounter with the Real.

Keywords

• anxiety
• fear
• obscure object
• object-a
• Das Ding
• real