Beckett, Lacan and the Gaze / Llewellyn Brown, Paul Stewart

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, Llewellyn, Author.

Contributor:

Stewart, Paul, Editor.

Series:

Samuel Beckett in company ; 5.

Samuel Beckett in Company 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Beckett.

Lacan.

Literature.

Literatur.

Local Subjects:

Beckett.

Lacan.

Literature.

Literatur.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (625 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Hannover ibidem 2019

Biography/History:

Llewellyn Brown teaches French literature at the Lycée international de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. His latest books are Savoir de l'amour (2012), Beckett, Lacan and the Voice (2016), Marguerite Duras, écrire et détruire (2018). He directs the 'Samuel Beckett' series for publisher Lettres modernes-Minard (Paris).

Summary:

Forming a pair with the voice, the gaze is a central structuring element of Samuel Beckett’s creation. And yet it takes the form of a strangely impersonal visual dimension testifying to the absence of an original exchange of gazes capable of founding personal identity and opening up the world to desire. The collapse of conventional reality and the highlighting of seeing devices—eyes, mirrors, windows—point to the absence of a unified representation. While masks and closed spaces show the visible to be opaque and devoid of any beyond, light and darkness, spectres—manifestations without origin—reveal a realm beyond the confines of identity, where nothing provides a mediation with the seen, or sets it within perspective. Finally, Beckett’s use of the audio-visual media deepens his exploration of the irreducibly real part of existence that escapes seeing. This study systematically examines these essential aspects of the visual in Beckett’s creation. The theoretical elaborations of Jacques Lacan—in relation with corresponding developments in the history and philosophy of the visual arts—offer an indispensible framework to understand the imaginary not as representation, but as rooted in the fundamental opacity of existence.

Contents:

Intro

Table of contents

List of Illustrations

Abbreviations and editions used for works by Beckett

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 - The collapse of Collective Reality

2 - Mirrors and Frames

3 - Light and Darkness

4 - Doubles and Spectres

5 - Variants of an Ideal

6 - The Monad

7 - Seeing and Unseeing

8 - Technology and the Gaze

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9783838272399

3838272390

OCLC:

1090240365

Publisher Number:

9783838272399