{"id":6659,"date":"2011-02-14T18:41:55","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T23:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=6659"},"modified":"2011-02-14T18:45:30","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T23:45:30","slug":"antigone-beckett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/02\/14\/antigone-beckett\/","title":{"rendered":"antigone beckett"},"content":{"rendered":"

Belsey, Catherine. Culture and the Real : Theorizing Cultural Criticism<\/em>. 2005<\/p>\n

Malone Dies<\/em>, opens with the words, \u2018I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all\u2019 (Beckett 1994: 179). Malone is resigned to the inevitability of death, although he would prefer it to take place without struggle. \u2018Throes\u2019, he observes laconically, \u2018are the only trouble, I must be on my guard against throes\u2019 (179\u2013 80). First published in French in 1951, and translated into English by the author in 1956, Malone Dies anticipates some of the concerns of Lacan\u2019s Seminar 7, though in a manner entirely characteristic of its own author. The novel is also characteristic of its moment.<\/p>\n

Lacan\u2019s exemplary text, Antigone<\/strong><\/em>, shows its protagonist refusing to give ground relative to her desire. Organically linked to her dead brother, as to no other human being (a husband or a child would be replaceable, she says, but her mother and father are dead: she can have no new brothers), Antigone insists on carrying out his burial rites, contrary to Creon\u2019s law.<\/p>\n

Because she accepts the penalty of living burial, Antigone\u2019s \u2018incarnation\u2019 of the death drive is heroic (Lacan 1992: 282). <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oedipus, meanwhile, enters the zone between life and death because he too has insisted on following his own desire, in this instance, \u2018to know the last word on desire\u2019. Everyone else tries in vain to discourage him from pressing his questions about who he is, but he persists. Oedipus dies cursing, unreconciled to the goods.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, King Lear, the irascible old man who does not give up on his desire either, represents a \u2018derisory\u2019 version of the same commitment (1992: 310). The \u2018old fool\u2019 thinks he can go into the same zone with everyone\u2019s agreement \u2013 and \u2018makes the earth and ocean echo\u2019 with his imprecations, because he fails to grasp that this is a place of dispossession (1992: 309\u2013 10)\u00a0 153<\/p>\n

Malone, however, is a protagonist for our own ironic time. There is nothing remotely heroic about Malone except his refusal of the goods. Neither stoical nor serene, Malone makes no concessions whatever to the moral law<\/strong>: \u2018Let me say before I go any further that I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell and in the execrable generations to come an honoured name\u2019 (Beckett 1994: 180). Malone inhabits the zone between life and death alone in an isolated room that he cannot quite locate. Could it be \u2018one of heaven\u2019s mansions\u2019 perhaps? He thinks not (184). It seems to be in an ordinary house. There remains a doubt, however. … Finally, The ceiling rises and falls, rises and falls, rhythmically, as when I was a foetus . . . . I am being given, if I may venture the expression, birth to into death, such is my impression. The feet are clear already, of the great cunt of existence. Favourable presentation I trust. My head will be the last to die. Haul in your hands. I can\u2019t . . . . That is the end of me. I shall say no more. (285)<\/p>\n

To die is to be reunited with the real we came from<\/strong>, but the living Malone is at home neither as an organism, in the flesh, nor at the level of the signifier. \u2018All my senses are trained full on me, me. Dark and silent and stale, I am no prey for them. I am far from the sounds of blood and breath\u2019 (186).<\/p>\n

Malone is not his body. On the other hand, he is not a consciousness either: thought seeks him out, \u2018as it always has, where I am not to be found\u2019 (187). The space he inhabits, however unstable, ill-defined, seems easier to specify than his identity. It is to the signifier, however, that Malone turns to keep his distance from the real, physical process of dying<\/strong>. He tells \u2013 and then writes in an exercise book \u2013 stories. … 154<\/p>\n

Is there anything uplifting here? Not really. But there is comedy, and it pacifies. In the absence of heroism, there is at least dedication, if only in Malone\u2019s resolute contempt for the good death. Above all, there is pleasure in the grim wit of Beckett\u2019s prose. What are verbal dexterity, stories, jokes, satire, parody, and satirical excoriation itself, after all, but an affirmation of the signifier in the face of the real?<\/strong> And isn\u2019t that exactly what, as organisms-in-culture, we speaking beings are good at? 155<\/p>\n

A THEORY OF CULTURE? <\/span><\/p>\n

Lacan\u2019s account of sublimation<\/strong> offers a way of understanding the pleasures the signifier offers the speaking being, without reducing culture to something else: ethical instruction, ideological control, or scripted determinism. Aspects of culture may at a specific moment represent any or all of these. In itself, however, culture does not make us better or worse. If it subjects people, it does not exclude the possibility of resistance. It does not do away with our discontents, but it offers to engage with them while finding a focus for desire. And to the attentive interpreter, culture can in addition tell more than it thinks it knows about who and what we are. 156<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Belsey, Catherine. Culture and the Real : Theorizing Cultural Criticism. 2005 Malone Dies, opens with the words, \u2018I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all\u2019 (Beckett 1994: 179). Malone is resigned to the inevitability of death, although he would prefer it to take place without struggle. \u2018Throes\u2019, he observes laconically, \u2018are … Continue reading “antigone beckett”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125,21,24,40,72,118,41,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drive","category-jouissance","category-lacan","category-lack","category-objet-a","category-symbolic","category-the-real","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6661,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6659\/revisions\/6661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}