Levinasian Ethics in Beckett's Endgame

• Main Authors: Mei-jun Zhong, 鍾玫君
• Other Authors: Sun-chieh Liang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/22275533397881761132

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 93 === Abstract This thesis aims to give a more comprehensive picture of Beckett through the theoretical framework of Levinas’s ethical subjectivity rooted in the relation of the Same and the Other. The thesis concerns two aspects that are involved in the playwright’s theatrical performance and in the textual performance of Endgame. Akin to Levinas’s notion of ethical subjectivity, Beckett’s formation of subjectivity shows the respect for the unknowable otherness as well. They both think that the subjectivity is founded on the relation between the self and the Other that is mutually reliant and absolutely alienated. Chapter One seeks to prove that Beckett, through Levinas’s view of ethical subjectivity, redefines the notion of subjectivity by venturing on an experiment on the performance that gravely challenges the director, the actor and the spectator who get enmeshed in and struggle with the unknowable otherness happening on stage. Chapter Two further elaborates Levinas’s notion of the bodily sensibility as a moral exigency. In the form of incarnation, the mortal being implies an immemorial traumatization before the function of consciousness and is imparted with an infinite ethical responsibility for the Other, which is tantamount to the manifestation of Saying, the ethical language. Chapter Three examines Endgame as a self-contradictory text in which the otherness is betrayed. This chapter focuses on the intersubjective relation between the characters that solicits something new to unfurl the text as an ethical expression in Levinasian way. In the final chapter, we may reach a conclusion that the living force of Beckett’s theatre relies on the asymmetrical structure between the self and the Other that intensifies the poignant self-awareness stirred by watching the performance and reading the text. And this is how Beckett responds to the calling of the artistic expression of theatre.