Beckett and Badiou: The Pathos of Intermittency PDF
Preview Beckett and Badiou: The Pathos of Intermittency
BECKETT AND BADIOU This page intentionally left blank Beckett and Badiou The Pathos of Intermittency ANDREW GIBSON 1 1 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork AndrewGibson2006 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2006 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbyLaserwordsPrivateLimited,Chennai,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby BiddlesLtd,King’sLynn,Norfolk ISBN0–19–920775–5 978–0–19–920775–6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 ToAlainandJudith Acknowledgements I am most grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the award of a Leverhulme ResearchFellowship 2002–4. This book would have been muchthe poorer andslighterwithoutit.Itallowedmetodoinfiveyearswhattookfifteenwith mylastmajormonograph. AmongBadioucommentatorsandscholars,mymostimportantdebtisto PeterHallward,whosharedhisexpertisewithmerepeatedlyandselflesslyand forwhosepatience,grace,andextraordinaryclarityofmindIamverygrate- ful.JudithBalsoinvited meto speakatthe Colle`ge Internationalede Philo- sophie,explainedphilosophicaldistinctionsofwhichIwaswoefullyignorant, discussed her own work on Dante and Pessoa, and asked me to help with the ongoing labourof translatingStevens, illuminatingsome obscurepoints in Badiou’s thought about art in the process. I am also grateful to the fol- lowing for their differing responses to one aspect or another of my work on Badiou:Jason Barker,Ray Brassier,Simon Critchley, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, NinaPower,andAlbertoToscano. There are many Beckett scholars who have more or less directly contrib- utedtothisbookovertheyears.SteveConnorhaslongbeenaveryimportant source of support and encouragement. John Pilling has been generous and interested almost from the start of my Beckettian career. So has Katharine Worth, with whom I planned a Beckett seminar in which we argued about the relative merits of Beckett’s prose and drama as early as 1982. (It never came off.) James Hansford was an important influence on my early years as a Beckettian: like many of his friends, I remember his gentle gravity and sense of scruplewith affection and respect. In the early stages of the book, I owedagreatdealtothekindness,intellectualgenerosity,andruthlesslyinter- rogative spirit of Derval Tubridy, who never let me off lightly. Dan Katz invited me to speak at the E´cole Normale Supe´rieure, Ronan McDonald at theBarbican,andLauraSalisburyattheLondonBeckettseminaratBirkbeck College.YoshikiTajiriinvitedmetoTokyoandgavemethechancetospeak there.Ihavelearntfromhismodesty,fastidiousness,andscholarlyobliquity. SomeofthesequalitieshepartlyinheritedfromthelategreatJapanesescholar YasunariTakahashi.WhenIusedtomeetupwithYasunariinthe1980sand Acknowledgements vii 1990s, he was not only endlessly genial to what Badiou would call a ‘jeune cre´tin’.Healsotunedmyantennaesufficientlyformetoappreciateatleasta littleofwhatmaybeatstakeincomparingBeckett’splayswithNohdrama. Other Beckettians to whom I owe a debt include Phil Baker, Mary Bryden, EvelyneGrossman,BrigitteRiera,andJamesKnowlson. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournes for read- ingthebookintypescriptascarefullyasshedid,andcorrectingmanyerrors. My thanks yet again to Thomas Docherty who, farsighted as ever, got me reading Badiou as early as 1995. Norman Gowar helped me start off on set theory.JeanMattheetalkedtomealotaboutBadiouandLacan,andhelped meclarifymy thinkingabouttheintellectualrelationshipsbetween thetwo. Threeheadsofdepartmentarrangedforsomeofmybestvirtuesto flourish: Kiernan Ryan, RobertHampson,and (for a shortwhile) Martin Dzelzainis. Iamverygratefultothemall.Thisbookowesasubstantialdebttothecom- mitmentandcareofAndrewMcNeillieatOxfordUniversityPress,averyfine andtrulyliteraryeditor.IamalsoverygratefulforalltheirhardworktoVal Shelley and Tom Perridge, and to Jackie Pritchard for her meticulous copy- editing.Asusual,Ioweabigdebttolibrarians;thistime,tothoseintheRare BooksroomoftheBritishLibrary,andtheRezdeJardinoftheBibliothe`que Nationale. By far my biggest debt is to Alain Badiou himself: not just for his philo- sophy,inallitsarchitectonicgrandeurandcomplexity;norforhisinspiration, continuous though that has been; nor for his obstinate sense of what might reallymatter,atahistoricalmomentwhenitisdifficulttosustain,andmight alltooeasily seem futile; butalso for his great, fierce, warm,energizing, and encouragingpresence,fromwhichIhaverepeatedlytakenheart.Hisunstint- ing support has been the more inspiring in that I made clear to him, quite early, that I would never be a ‘Badiouiste’. I only hope that what is in some ways a reading of his work that pushes the mood of his thought far closer to,say,AdornoandBenjaminthanhewouldeverfindpermissibleisnotal- togetheralientohim,inspiteofitstendencytomelancholy. This page intentionally left blank Contents Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 Beginnings 1 ActualInfinity 6 Intermittency 16 OldExtinguisher 25 1. Badiou(i):Being,Event,Subject,Truth 41 Being 41 Event 53 Subject 58 Truth 67 2. Badiou(ii):Politics,Ethics,Aesthetics 76 StateandDoxa 76 Politics 81 Ethics 90 Aestheticsandthe‘WaitingSubject’ 101 3. Badiou,Beckett,andContemporaryCriticism 117 SomeCriticalPositions 117 Ethics(ii):Beckett 129 DifferencesandRepetitions 133 E´ve´nementialite´ 138 4. TheBreakwithDoxa:Murphy,Watt 143 MurphyandtheBigWorld 143 IncidentsofNote 155 TheLogicofMelancholy 162 5. TheEventoftheEvent:TheUnnamable 172 LogicsofAppearance 172 ObjectsandInexistents 179 TheSirenandtheRock 182 TheIrrepressibleEphemeral 186
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