From Ideology of Loss to Aesthetics of Absence: The Endgame in Beckett's The Lost Ones

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In this Subject: Literature
By this author: Yuan, Yuan

Author: Yuan, Yuan

Source: European Joyce Studies, Beckett, Joyce and the Art of the Negative. Edited by Colleen Jaurretche , pp. 235-246(12)

Publisher: Rodopi

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Abstract:

This paper explores negative ideology and negative aesthetics of modern writing within the context of Beckett's The Lost Ones from both modern and postmodern perspectives. Loss as the cultural unconscious of modernism functions as the dominant trope to configure the modern subject in alienation or decenterment. By tracing ideas of Hegel, Freud, and Kristeva, I construe that Beckett's The Lost Ones is composed within the context of this loss mythology, which indicates not only a negative affirmation but also signifies a sublime mode of being, associated with identification, pleasure, and desire. From a postmodern perspective, Beckett engages the art of the negative through a game with the end that functions as a structural principle and an enabling conceptual framework to approach negative poetics: aesthetics of absence. In Beckett's text, the lost space signifies but a universe of linguistic play. The end as the central metaphor both defines the narrative and simultaneously eludes it, constituting the limit and horizon of representation. Like Lacan's "the real" and Derrida's "the infinite Other," Beckett's "end" points to a primal space prior to language, the alterity and impasse of discourse. Hence, the aesthetics of absence is defined by aesthetics of play and ethics of unrepresentability. The end in Beckett's fiction signifies both absence and infinity.

Document Type: Research article

Publication date: 2005-11-01