Resumen de Samuel Beckett, Quickening the ‘dead voices’: From Waiting for Godot to That Time
The Beckettian motif of the ‘dead voices’, in works of the 1940s and 1950s, testifies to the mortifying effect of language, which denies any experience or subjectivity. Later works however show how Beckett gives life to these impersonal acousmatic voices. The example of That Time shows voices — those of the visible Listener — coming from without, and which appear as a continuum marked by uncontrollable alternation and merging. The subject appears as one who cannot accept the events related as belonging to any experience that may be his. As an ‘acephalous’ being, he occupies the structural position of a ‘flaw’ or a ‘hole’ at the centre of the three voices that are ‘braided’ together. Beckett’s use of equivocation points to the dynamic factor of Lacan’s ‘lalangue’ which, as grounded in the real, causes meaning to be irremediably incomplete.
