Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real PDF
Preview Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real
Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real Arka Chattopadhyay BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2019 Copyright © Arka Chattopadhyay, 2019 For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Daniel Benneworth-Gray Cover image © Caricature of Samuel Beckett, 1969, by Edmund S. Valtman, U.S. Library of Congress; Sketch of Jacques Lacan, 2007, by Edward Drantler All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third- party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Whilst every effort has been made to locate copyright holders the publishers would be grateful to hear from any person(s) not here acknowledged. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-4116-8 ePDF: 978-1-5013-4118-2 eBook: 978-1-5013-4117-5 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. To all members of my family present and absent … Writing is departure … CONTENTS List of Figures viii Foreword ix Acknowledgements xi 1 Real Writing in Literature and Psychoanalysis 1 2 One … All … Alone: Borromean Logic of Solitude and Company in How It Is 33 3 Company and the Motility of Real Unconscious 77 4 Jouissance of Worsening in Lituraterre: Worstward Ho 113 5 Mathematized Body and Sexual Rapport 157 Conclusion 191 Works Cited 196 Index of Proper Names 206 Index of Subjects 208 LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 The discourses in rotation from Seminar XVII 22 1.2 Positions in each discourse 23 1.3 Analyst’s discourse 23 1.4 Regular chain 29 1.5 Borromean chain 29 2.1 Borromean knot 54 2.2 Two as junction between one and three from Seminar XXI 56 2.3 The fourth ring of the sinthome from Seminar XXIII 66 2.4 Positions in discourses 69 2.5 Matheme of the analytic discourse 69 3.1 One way of drawing the quadruple knot from Seminar XXIII 92 3.2 Schema of alienation from Seminar XI 105 4.1 False hole from Seminar XXIII 118 4.2 True Borromean hole from Seminar XXIII 118 5.1 The central hole of a torus produces the possibility of holes inside it 166 FOREWORD Other critics who are cited in this work, such as Ackerley, Brits, Culik and Stevens, have examined aspects of how Beckett’s works might be drawn into relation with mathematics. Still others such as Baker, Barfield, Barker, Brown, Locatelli, Moorjani, Rabaté and Watson have underlined illuminating parallels between the work of Lacan and Beckett. Yet Arka Chattopadhyay is the first to offer a sustained reading of the relations and non-relations between Lacan and Beckett via the bridge of the idea of the mathematical. Indeed, this is putting it too simply, as the relation is not simply between Beckett and Lacan using mathematics; rather, these three terms are interchangeably in relation. That is, the book offers, at the same time, new readings of Beckett made possible through Chattopadhyay’s careful attention to the potentials and limits of Lacan’s categories and an acute understanding of the idea of aporia only possible through mathematical theory, new readings of Lacan’s categories illuminated by Beckett’s writing practice, and new understandings of how mathematical theory might be understood other than as a foundation of rationalism. If Beckett is read via Lacan, so too Lacan is read via Beckett, and both readings deepen our understanding of how mathematics, rather than being seen as providing a precision somehow opposed to the openness and incompleteness that attends literary logic, might also offer another face, one that helps us come to terms with the kind of elusiveness that characterizes concepts such as infinity, the impossible, and via these the Real. Chattopadhyay underlines that the opposite face to the rationality of mathematics, the rationality that Adorno and Horkheimer have argued has imbued Enlightenment thinking, is not the irrational but what Chattopadhyay calls aporetic logic. This logic of endlessness, of infinities, of sets, of paradox and of incompleteness is essential to the capacities of mathematical thinking, and yet we commonly leave it to one side when we loosely imagine what we mean by mathematics. Just as we leave to one side what it might mean to exist, to be alive and human, and finite and indeterminate, when we loosely imagine our own lives. Yet Beckett, Lacan and Chattopadhyay attempt to imagine our being with rigour, and the kinds of rigour they apply are not merely figurative; rather, they are precise. Indeed, they offer a mathematical precision. Chattopadhyay is the first to fully engage with the specificity of
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