The Spul(aris)ation of "I"

Yıl 2012, Cilt: 9 Sayı: 1, 165 - 175, 01.02.2012

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Anahtar Kelimeler

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The Specul(aris)ation of “I”

Öz

In this article, the main aim is to analyze Samuel Beckett’s short absurd play “Not I” (written as a dramatic monologue in 1972) through speculation/specul(aris)ation concepts of Luce Irigaray including also a Lacanian perspective. Under the light of the Irigarayian concept of specul(ariz)ation, the invisible and unknown nature of the dark hollow (vagina)/ Mouth as a reflection of the female self and sexuality will be explained. Irigaray herself defines the concept as a process of alienation because she thinks the “absence of the subject from its own image” gives specularization a “de-realizing power”. In other words, because women are defamiliarised to their own self as a result of not seeing their own image, they are invisible. Likewise, the Mouth (as a fragment) in Beckett’s play becomes alienated to her unrepresented body. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

Specul(aris)ation, Samuel, Beckett’s

Kaynakça

• Brater, Enoch. (1974). “The ‘I’ in Beckett’s Not I”, Twentieth Century Literature, 20/3 pp.189-200.
• Beckett, Samuel. (1973). “Not I”, (London: Faber&Faber).
• Bryson, Norman. (1988). “The Gaze in the Expanded Field,” in Hal Foster (ed.), Vision and Visuality (New York: The New Press).
• Catanzaro, Mary. (2011). “Recontextualising the Self: the Voice as Subject in Beckett’s ‘Not I’’, South Central Review, 7/1 pp.36-49.
• Gross, Elizabeth. (1986). “Irigaray and Sexual Difference,” Australian Feminist Studies, 1/2 pp.63-78.
• Irigaray, Luce (1985). The Sex Which is not One [translated by Catherine Porter] (New York: Cornell University Press.)
• Tubridy, Derval. (2000). “Words Pronouncing Me Alive: Beckett and Incarnation”, in Marius Buning (ed.), Samuel Beckett Today (Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V.).
• O’Gorman, Kathleen. “So that People Would Stare’: the Gaze and the Glance in Beckett’s “Not I”’. Modern Language Studies, 2/3 pp.32-44.
• Postlewait, Thomas. (1978). “Self-performing Voices: Mind, Memory, and Time in Beckett’s Drama”, Twentieth Century Literature, 24/4 pp.473-491.