Abstract
This dissertation examines the status of "theater" in the works
of three playwrights and a
philosopher, in late twentieth and early twenty first century. In
the wake of Antonin
Artaud, a particular form of "theatrical writing" challenges the
fundamental structure of
Western thought, still grounded in the notion of mimesis
since Artistotle's Poetics. This
writing seeks to establish a "primal theater" prior to
representation, recognition, or
identification. Relying on incantatory enunciations, it rejects
mimetic language,
discursive articulation, and conceptual interpretation. As a
result, this writing exceeds the
category of any single form or genre, be it drama, literature,
philosophy, or
autobiography. Its structure relies, I argue, on a distinctive
notion of " souffle." The
"breath" or "whisper" carries the speaker's voice, while it
simultaneously interrupts its
transparency and robs it of its discursive ability. I read this
resistance to communication
as a process of transmission of affect through speech enactment,
rather than a transaction
of meaning through structured discourse. The inarticulate quality
of this writing follows
the injunction to infiltrate into language what these authors
commonly call their private
"incomprehensible mother tongue." Indeed, their writing is
constantly in dialogue with
the evading and mute "mother." I analyze "her" inscription in the
text as both a "real"
figure and a movement of discursive erasure, which establishes the
act of writing prior to
the separation of "text" from "life." My first chapter demonstrates
how Samuel Beckett's
later texts suffer from self-erasure under the rule of maternal
repudiation, triggering an
insatiable need for shifting between languages, genres, and
media, to a point of utter
disarticulation. The second chapter examines Bernard-Marie
Koltès' inaugural and
elliptical monologues as failed efforts to reclaim the omniscient
yet unintelligible
maternal body, which structures the entirety of his theatrical
work. The third chapter
shows that Valère Novarina's self-generating and notoriously
inarticulate texts for the
theater emerge from an insatiable desire to be reborn through
writing. My final chapter
focuses on Jacques Derrida's call for "theoretical" writing to
become elliptically
"theatrical," a call that I read as an attempt to mourn the dying
figure of the mother.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………….1
I. SAMUEL BECKETT: THE UNSPEAKABLE LAW OF THEATRICAL
WRITING……………….20
II. KOLTÈS-NARCISSUS: THE GENESIS OF THEATRICAL
WRITING………………………...67
III. LE THÉÂTRE DES PAROLES: THE STAGE OF THE
INFANT
TONGUE……………………..120
IV. THE END OF THEORY IS JUST THE BEGINNING: OF BLOOD IN JACQUES
DERRIDA'S
CIRCONFESSION……………………………………………………………………….172
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………208
About this Dissertation
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