Amy Pettifer on Beckett and Irigaray

8/20/2019 Amy Pettifer on Beckett and Irigaray

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/amy-pettifer-on-beckett-and-irigaray 1/12

The Mouth of the Cave:

Beckett’s Not I & the role of the voice in Irigaray's critique of patriarchy.

You are not even allowed to move your head a fraction of an inch one way or another…1

Billie Whitelaw describes performing Not I .

Out of the dark set, a beam of light behind, forward facing and forbidden to move; the prisoners

in Plato’s cave and the actress on the scaffold at the beginning of Beckett’s Not I are not of their

bodies. Reduced by bondage, to elementary senses and to the features of the face, the prisoners

only to watch the shadows and hear the echoes and Mouth to enunciate “out…out into this

world”2, all find themselves contained. In both cases the body has been written out – a narrative

experience of the world allowed only to take place in the eye and the mind or, in the case of Not

I , in the voice “reduced to its minima, […] compelled to express when there is nothing to express

but suddenly the means to do so.”3

Presenting nothing for the spectator but the spot-lit mouth of a woman, suspended in darkness

above the stage, we can assume that ‘the means’ of expression in Not I do not refer to a body or

to a subjectivity that can be easily placed through visual clues. So to what could it refer and

where or how can this voice be located? Perhaps to the reduced, fragmented physicality of the

antic lips? Or to the emergence, within the mania of the text, of a certainty of self; a self that is

fashioned through the refusals of the play’s title and which constitutes a distancing fromprojected subjectivities which are as spectral as the shadowy machinations of the puppeteers in

the cave that Plato’s prisoners are so willing to accept as real.

It is questions such as these that make Mouth one of Beckett’s most interesting female voices, a

voice which warrants deconstruction via feminist critiques such as the chapter ‘Dialogues’ from

Luce Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman (1974) which deals with the nature of female

identity in a patriarchal system. In taking these two texts together it is possible to notice a

pattern or form of speech that may be aligned with the écriture féminine or ‘body writing’ that

emerged in critical theory around the same time as the earliest performances of Not I . Irigaray

descends into the cave in search of the female voice in Plato’s allegory and is troubled by the

obedient silence and perfect reflection of like for like , “the immutable periodicity of sameness”4

1Billie Whitelaw, “Billie Whitelaw interviewed by Linda Ben-Zvi”, in Women in Beckett, Linda Ben-Zvi ed.

(Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press,1990) 9.2 Samuel Beckett , “Not I”, in The Complete Dramatic Works, (London, Faber and Faber, 1990) 376.3 ‘Mouth’, in The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett , C.J. Ackerley and S.E. Gontarski eds. (London, Faber

and Faber, 2006) 386.4 Luce Irigaray, “Dialogues” in Speculum of the Other Woman, Gillian C. Gill trans. (USA, Cornell University

Press, 1985) 267.

http://goodgreyday.blogspot.com/2012/01/not-i-mouth-of-cave.html





that delineates the space in which a paradigm of enlightenment can emerge. The surety of this

logocentric system functions thanks to an absence of voices that might muddy "the silent

virginity of the back of the cave5" or of identities whose radical difference may not perfectly

reflect. Irigaray counters this with a rhetoric that is familiar in the meandering movements and

diversions of Beckett’s text.

In this essay I will look at the parallel concerns of both Irigaray’s writing and the movement of

Not I in discussion of the connection of the female voice to notions of the body and

disembodiment and to the creation or location of a radically other female subjectivity.

….out…into this world…this world…tiny little thing…before its time…6

Not I begins with a voice in darkness, concealed behind the curtain and engaged in unintelligible

chatter. In its clumsy flow of language this voice is immediately distanced from the notions of

power that might usually be attributed to an acousmatic ‘voice off’ – a voice over is of no use if it

cannot be comprehended, and this particular voice cannot and will not anchor us in the space of

the story to come. Even with the raising of the curtain and focussing of the light, an exact sense

of what is being said remains elusive. Beckett plays with our expectation that the character at

the helm of a dramatic narrative will work to elucidate and guide us, as it is, we must follow

Mouth at speed, as she stops and starts, flips and repeats. To get to the truth and ‘hit on it in the

end’7.

Irigaray picks up on this close association of the voice with truth and sense in Dialogues stating,

“If it speaks, the semblance will represent truth”8; the prisoners are happy to accept the

shadows before them as real by virtue of the echo that seems to give them speech. Speech

attributes an active presence and therefore a relationship with the systems of language that

organise the world and guide the story. These systems, as described in Plato’s allegory, are

always already in place, “enslaved to the idea of verisimilitude”9 as Irigaray puts it, meaning that

there is seemingly no beginning, no point of origin from which a new grasp of language can

emerge.

5 Irigaray, “Dialogues” 263.6 Beckett, “Not I” 376. 7 Ibid 382.8

Irigaray, “Dialogues” 264. 9 Ibid, 265.



The narrative pattern of Not I is often characterised by its circularity, the voice exceeding the

bounds of the play suggesting a continuation of the utterance that is uninterrupted by the

warming and waning of the stage lights. While this may be true it is worth noting that the Not I

does in fact begin at the beginning; it begins with a birth.

Despite the traumatic connotations of “before its time”10 and “parents unknown”11 the fact

remains that this scenario acknowledges the maternal originary moment which is noticeably

absent from Plato’s cave, and noted by Irigaray as follows; “Fire comes in only as light, lit in the

image of the sun. There is one fire, one sun and moreover the one somehow comes out of the

other. The sun sires the fire, as a bastard son in an artful retroversion of genealogy. ”12. The birth

of meaning in the cave takes place in an environment whose womb like qualities are

manipulated and smoothed to allow for the clean reproduction of copies of the ‘real’ and‘authentic’; for these men meaning is sired by the light (I will return to this) whereas Mouth

makes her entrance into the world and into discourse abruptly and from the darkness. Indeed,

rather than a circularity, the presence of the unintelligible babble before the curtain opens could

stand instead for an unruly, eagerly premature entry into language.

Once there it is immediately evident that a recognisable ‘authenticity’ as defined in Plato’s

phallocentric system will be difficult to find as Mouth navigates her way through the narrative.

The entire monologue is divided by ellipses which lend a faltering rhythm, a kind of “body-

time”13 to use Della Pollock’s phrase that echoes the action Mouth describes in the early

insouciance of the meadow scene; “….a few steps then stop…stare into space…then on…a few

more…stop and stare again…so on…”14

This pattern is one of uncertainty, as if the subject is taking on language step by step and finding

at each turn that it does not fit, a thought which might illustrate Irigaray’s unease at the always

universally male referent existing in a system of meaning that might be troubled by a radical

female ‘other’. This unease continues throughout the entire text and rather than possessing a

fluidity of new expression, a simple fort-da, call and response associated with the early

acquisition of language, we find instead a constant retracing; words stated and then reinscribed

until the meaning becomes more lucidly able to express the rattling train of thought, the “dull

10 Beckett, “Not I” 376.11 Ibid12 Irigaray, “Dialogues” 259.

13 Della Pollock, “Performing Writing” in The Ends of Performance, Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane eds. (NewYork University Press, 1998), 82.14 Beckett, “Not I” 376.



roar the in the skull”15 that propels the narrative. The phrase “…oh long after…”16 for example,

occurs as a kind of beginning to Mouth’s story loop and is then uttered again and again, each

time in a different context pertaining to her quest to explain her sudden verbosity. This phrase

is one which might usually offer some temporal anchor for the narrative but instead of lying

fixed, it is in constant motion and the words therefore, in flux around it. Again the beginning

point, the origin of her tale, cannot be cleanly duplicated; the facsimile is blurred and marked

with varying intensities; she is a ‘bad copy’ as Irigaray might put it - a blurred shadow or a

muddied echo.

Mirrored in Dialogues is the repetition, in varied context, of the diegetic opener from Plato’s

allegory, “Some of the carriers are talking, it is likely, others silent, ”17 which Irigaray reworks

and re-emphasises as her deconstruction of the cave’s system unfolds. It is this necessity for acertain kind of silence, a hierarchy in which the voices of others must remain mute, that can be

seen not only as the exclusive realm of a patriarchal society but also as a force that damages and

represses the flow of a female voice, a ‘hysteric’ voice as Irigaray suggests. Neither Irigaray nor

Beckett’s Mouth are willing to be subject to this mut(e)ilation; contrary to the title, Dialogues

leaves no space for a conversation to emerge in the rapid fire of Irigaray’s critique and the

regular repetition and re-pronouncement of motif s from Plato’s text perhaps work to reclaim

the voice of Echo which the cave ‘takes away’ with its transference of speech from the mouths of

men, to the shadows and back again.

Not I too is a prime example of an unmetered and unrestrained female voice in flow, a fixed

monologue with its own rhythm, a hysteric discourse in its most empirical and biological sense;

hysteric from ustera, the uterine channel offering a way up and out of the darkness in a manner

denied to the prisoners in the cave. It would be possible to attribute the silence that has

dominated Mouth’s existence to the lack of a mother, and therefore an absence of stages that

would allow entry into the symbolic order as Lacan would explain. Perhaps however, Beckett

writes this lack as a means of testing the bounds of a voice, in a sense, liberated from the

manacles of this system, leaving some other rhythm to guide it.

Without the instructive, ordered copy offered up by the mirror stage, a discourse is created

which is erratic, silent for long periods, faltering, repetitive and prone to this logorrhoea which

is prompted by inconstant stimuli and offers a menstrual pull - “a ray of light came and

15 Beckett, “Not I” 378.

16 Ibid, 377, 378, 379, 380, 38117 Plato, “The Cave” in The Republic, R.E. Allen trans. (New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 2006)

227.



went…came and went…such as the moon might cast 18”. Unlike the cave which operates under

the singular influence of the sun, Mouth identifies with the lunar, the changeable and the

cyclical.

We might say then, that here, Irigaray’s speculum is employed less as a mirror and more in line

with its other meaning and function - as a means of opening up. In this case, opening up the

space and possibility of discourse. Similarly we may re-read the Aletheia, the truth of being

which anchors Plato’s allegory, as less an absolute truth and rather an un-concealedness as

Heidegger describes in Being and Time (1927) a revealing of that which must always be

concealed; " Aletheia, disclosure thought of as the opening of presence, is not yet truth” 19. There

is the possibility then of another kind of presence as yet undefined in this realm of opening - the

possibility of another kind of speech, previously muffled and muted, partially concealed andemanating from a specific body whose lips, as Irigaray describes speak together .

…her lips moving…imagine!...her lips moving!...20

Above and before the power of Mouth’s monologue is the sheer, raw, voracity of the visual

image that the piece presents. As far as we can witness the body has been written out and

stripped back to just the lips, teeth, tongue and throat. Her presence is largely but not purely

vocal and it is interesting to consider why this physical remnant remains as opposed to being

excluded as it is in many of Beckett’s subsequent works. If the voice will not suffice in this

scenario then why not show any other part of the body to signify presence? Perhaps, as in

Heidegger’s definition above, it is necessary to offer a possibility of opening, a way in (and out)

such as the mouth may provide.

Essential to Luce Irigaray’s writing is the characterisation of the female body as possessing two

sets of lips - facial and labial. This dualism allows for a specifically female eloquence or means of

expression, even in moments which are mute or celibate. In her text The Gesture in

Psychoanalysis (1987) Irigaray writes, “The mystery of a woman’s lips: their opening to create

the universe, and their closing to touch each other again, so that the self-identity of the feminine

individual may be perceived – this mystery may be the forgotten secret of the perception and

creation of the world.”21

18 Beckett, “Not I” 377. 19 Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being (New York: Harper and Row, 1972) 69.20 Beckett, “Not I” 379. 21 Luce Irigaray, “The Gesture in Psychoanalysis” in Between Feminism & Psychoanalysis, Teresa Brennan

ed. Elizabeth Guild trans. (New York & London, Routledge, 1989) 135.



Certainly, as we have seen, this element of a maternal creation is one that has been omitted from

Plato’s allegory of enlightenment, therefore the focus on such symbolism in Not I would offer

further evidence of its presentation of a radically other female identity as suggested by Irigaray.

In the seminal 1973 performance filmed for television, the mouth of the actress Billie Whitelaw

fills the screen, the rest of her face blackened to give sharp emphasis to the cavern encircled by

her lips. The image of the mouth in full flow possesses a ferocity which is difficult to watch at

times, so abstracted is the physicality and so suggestive the form. To view the mouth at static

moments reveals a vast range of symbolic/expressive possibility that cannot be caught amid the

motion.

This heterogeneous organ is capable of a vast range of expression; the static and pursed –

sealed, virginal, pre revelatory; through stages where the ancillary features of teeth and tongue

are absent giving void and depth; to the extreme wildness of the widest opening – a way down

into the nadir from the mouth of the cave.

Billie Whitelaw performing

Not I , 1973.



Further, the foregrounding of the erotic/manic action of Mouth has caused a comparison of

extreme reflexive sexuality to be drawn, likening the image to a vagina attempting to give birth

to itself. This description, which Beckett did not dismiss, reduces the subject in question to a

highly feminised cipher at the most extreme reach of Irigaray's definition.

More than this however it is evident in the text of Not I that Mouth, whose relationship to

speech is disrupted, finds the link to her voice and the possibility of reclaiming it through a

relationship to a certain corporeality, however fragmented it may be. Having noticed the

movement of her lips and the faltering beginnings of a moment of speech Mouth continues;

“her lips moving…and of course till then she had not…and not alone the lips…the cheeks…the

jaws…the whole face…all those-…what?...the tongue?...yes…the tongue in the mouth…all thosecontortions without which…no speech possible…”22

Mouth begins to identify herself here as a machine capable of sound and speech; she senses the

unexpected movement of little used joints and flesh, propelling the words from her constantly

active brain, always ‘buzzing’. Perhaps this connection between facial movement and an

awareness of self is similar to that which Roland Barthes posits in The Grain of the Voice (1977),

the possibility of hearing “the tongue, the glottis, the teeth, the mucous membranes, the nose,”23

which all together signal the production of jouissance a state of pleasure and expression beyond

the rigidity of language and meaning.

In isolating this highly symbolic physicality it may be possible to class Mouth’s fragmented

presence as a positive disembodiment – intense and essential. Billie Whitelaw describes;

“every night, before I went on and while I was being taken up the scaffold, I used to go through a

ritual and say, ‘All right now Whitelaw, let the skin fall off, let the flesh fall off; let the bones fall

off; let it all go”24

While Irigaray may argue for a complete embodiment which encompasses all attributes of the

female sex, within this process of shedding skin it is possible to see the thread of her ideas

carried through into the later criticism of Kaja Silverman who, though greatly indebted to the

notions raised in Speculum of the Other Woman, takes issue with the insistence on locating a

22 Beckett, “Not I” 379.

23 Roland Barthes, “The Grain of the Voice” in Image-Music-Text , (New York, Hill and Wang, 1978) 185.24 Billie Whitelaw, “Billie Whitelaw interviewed by Linda Ben-Zvi”, in Women in Beckett, Linda Ben-Zvi ed.

(Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press,1990) 4.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaja_Silverman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaja_Silverman



specific female body. Silverman argues that any body, however re-appropriated or reclaimed

for feminism, will be codified by the “unmistakable stamp of culture”25 that is always already in

place. Instead she posits the radical and subversive possibilities of the disembodied female

voice such as may be found in Not I. Mouth makes some reference to her age (seventy) and

possible geographical location; some hints to the spaces and experiences that have coloured her

past and her present character (her experience in court and at the shopping centre) but without

a body her speech exists independent of any code or easily identifiable subject. By showing the

source of the voice but not the body it pertains to, Beckett stages a partial disacousmatization; a

situation where seeing the mouth should offer some insight into the subject that supports it.

Instead however the voice retains an uncanny independence, perhaps wedded to the

machinations of the lips and teeth but not further than this – it remains allied with an absence

or lack. Mladen Dolar discusses this process in A Voice and Nothing More (2006) and notes theuncanny moment when “…one actually sees the orifice, the bodily aperture, from which the

voice is coming, the mouth. That is: when one sees the gap, the crack, the hole, the cavity, the

void, the very absence of phallus26.”

In the case of Not I Beckett does not present the opportunity for these layers to be peeled back,

as again, the absence, the cavity is given prominence as a matter of origin. It is the beginning and

ending of this voice - the radical otherness of the subject being constituted within the space of

lack and therefore within the material of the voice itself.

Dolar discusses at length the impossibility of placing a voice so firmly in a body , calling it “ plus

de corps: both the surplus of the body, […] and the no -more body, the end of the corporeal.”27 In

Mouth’s case it is the beginning of the end of the codified body – there is the sense of an

inversion at work, not that a pre-existing body is being concealed, but rather that a suitable

body does not yet exist to contain the voice we encounter.

25 Kaja Silverman, “Disembodying the Female Voice: Irigaray, Experimental Feminist Cinema, and

Femininity” in The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema, (Bloomington and

Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1988) 146.26 Mladen Dolar, “The Physics of the Voice” in A Voice and Nothing More, (Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2006)

68.27 Ibid, 71.

http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Nothing-More-Short-Circuits/dp/0262541874






What?...Who?...No…She!

Discussion of prescribed systems of meaning, brings us back, via this path of discourse, to

Plato’s cave. Central to it is the presence of the sun as the source of all knowledge and being;

“this which produces the seasons and the years and governs everything in the visible place, and

is in some manner cause of all things they used to see.”28 For Irigaray this singularity is further

evidence of a phallocentrism and exclusion of feminine identity at the heart of the allegory; “The

other, and the move from the female one to the other, are forgotten upon this stage of

representation where light, which lets us see, holds centre stage.”29

This beam of light, which pierces the cave, is the root cause of its systems of deception andduplication. Here the sun/son stands in for God, The Father, Man as the origin of logos and the

guiding principal giving life, direction and knowledge to all. This logos too puts words into the

mouths of shadows and men, a whisper in the ear which connects with the I/eye of both the

duped and the enlightened. This is a voice that never abates and despite the many removes and

reductions which characterise Not I , it is a voice which also plagues Mouth as her tale unravels,

prompting the moments of refusal that give the play its title.

It is at the summons of a 'sudden flash30' - a powerful, unexpected burst of light which we may

align with the sun as it appears in Plato - that Mouth is forced into her monologue and routinely

compelled to accept the first person pronoun I . The voice that compels her, we may surmise, is

not her own, but the voice of this ruling other, the all-powerful light / logos at the centre of the

world which serves to align positions within the symbolic order. It is almost a quasi-analytic

scenario whereby the authoritative voice of the other attempts to re position the subject self of a

detached analysand.

Mouth’s monologue rattles along with its own faltering rhythm but is interrupted at several

points by a this silent voice-off which seems to have a much greater authority than Mouth

herself in the moments of concealment that begin and end the play. Throughout the piece, this

voice interjects to correct elements of the narrative; it reminds Mouth of the buzzing which

28 Plato, “The Cave” 229. 29 Irigaray, “Dialogues” 260.30 Beckett, “Not I” 377.



punctures her peace“...what?...the buzzing…yes…all silent but for the buzzing…”31; of the

position of her body “what?...lying?...yes”32; and of her age “…what?...Seventy?...good god!”33.

While Mouth is accepting of these interjections it is interesting to note their relationship to the

superficial specifics of a persona and to the manipulated movements of a body, all elements

which we may expect to have been imposed from outside like echoes attributed to the chimera

of projected forms. As Irigaray writes; “The feminine, the maternal are instantly frozen by the

‘like,’ the ‘as if’ of the masculine representation dominated by truth, light, resemblance,

identity.”34

It seems that Beckett has not completely banished this voice of logos and that is has crept in

through the cracks and ellipses in Mouth’s narrative, but in spite of this, the final word doesappear to belong to the voice which emanates from the essential body-remnant - of the lips and

of the darkness.

When the silent acousmatic, (the voice which intends to make its presence felt without being

seen or heard) makes its most vehement instruction, willing Mouth to contextualise her

narrative within this subjectivity – then Beckett counters with a rhythmic rejoinder;

"What?.....Who?......No?.....She!"35

What could allow Not I to be read as a feminist text in line with Irigaray is precisely this refusal

to take up a prescribed place in the symbolic order. Mouth is keen to remain at a remove, never

fully embodying the self that delivers her tale and yet remaining somehow partial to a form of

identification, she, which is in itself more radically 'other' and more feminine in its nature that

the phallic I .

To return to the description at the beginning of this essay it may now seem evident that it is not

in fact possible to reduce voice to its, minima, for even with the a stripping back of the body and

the lack of constitution in language, it is the voice which remains active and able to stage a

refusal; a purely vocal refusal which encompasses possible connotation of a radically other

female identity.

31 Ibid, 378.32 Ibid, 377.

33 Ibid, 381.34 Irigaray, “Dialogues” 265. 35 Beckett, “Not I” 377, 379, 381, 382.



These elements it seems, may be contained and kept within the realm and cavern of the voice;

the expressive sexuality of the double lip; the originary birth and “the mother [..] held beyond

the teeth”36; and the emergence of new patterns and modes of being outside of regulated

language. Mouth’s parentless beginning chimes with Irigaray’s observation of the behaviour of

girls in the wake of the absent mother; “If they are too overcome with mourning, they do not

enter language at all. Otherwise, they make their entry by producing a space, a tract, a river, a

dance, a rhythm, a song….”37

This is a fitting description of Mouth's narrative in Not I which is riddled with re-tracings, is

accompanied by a staccato rhythm and filled with pauses and gaps which halt the steady

stream. The timings of Mouth’s outburst remain fairly unpredictable, even to herself, as if thevoice retains a volcanic energy of its own which cannot be stemmed.

What Irigaray argues, and what Not I performs, is the possibility of another kind of subject-body

passing over the dominant sun and creating a different mode of shadowing – it is an absent

body perhaps, existing in and of the elusive space of voice; changeable and difficult to reflect,

“always winter some strange reason”38, “like moonbeam but not…”39 attendant on a moment of

ec(lips)e.

36 Irigaray, “The Gesture in Psychoanalysis” 131.37 Ibid, 133.38

Beckett, “Not I” 379.39 Ibid, 381.



Bibliography

Ackerley, C.J. & Gontarski, S.E. editors. The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett . London: Faber

and Faber, 2006.

Barthes, Roland. “The Grain of the Voice” in Image-Music-Text . New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.

Beckett, Samuel. “Not I” in The Complete Dramatic Works. London: Faber and Faber, 1990.

Beckett, Samuel. “Not I” performed by Billie Whitelaw. 1973.

http://www.ubu.com/film/beckett_not.html

Ben-Zvi, Linda. Women in Beckett . Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Dolar, Mladen. A Voice and Nothing More. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006.

Heidegger, Martin. On Time and Being. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.

Irigaray, Luce. “Dialogues” in Speculum of the Other Woman. USA: Cornell University Press,

1985.

Irigaray, Luce. “The Gesture in Psychoanalysis” in Between Feminism & Psychoanalysis. New

York & London: Routledge, 1989.

Plato. The Republic, R.E. Allen trans. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. 2006.

Pollock, Della. “Performing Writing.” In The Ends of Performance, edited by Peggy Phelan and

Jill Lane. New York University Press, 1998.

Silverman, Kaja. “Disembodying the Female Voice: Irigaray, Experimental Feminist Cinema, and Femininity” in The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema.

Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988.




Amy Pettifer on Beckett and Irigaray

Documents

Transcript of Amy Pettifer on Beckett and Irigaray