Beckett's Vessels and the Animation of Containers
Samuel Beckett's novels and plays are filled with lively vessels: emergent sites of subjectivity that blur the borderline between the human and nonhuman. When Malone Dies is read next to anthropological theories of the homunculus, a protocol of container animation emerges. Vital to this process...
| Veröffentlicht in: | Transition. - Indiana University Press, 1957. - 40(2017), 4, Seite 75-89 |
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| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2017
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| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | Transition |
| Schlagworte: | Samuel Beckett communicating vessels animation containment nonhuman Arts Mathematics Behavioral sciences Business Physical sciences mehr... |
| Zusammenfassung: | Samuel Beckett's novels and plays are filled with lively vessels: emergent sites of subjectivity that blur the borderline between the human and nonhuman. When Malone Dies is read next to anthropological theories of the homunculus, a protocol of container animation emerges. Vital to this process is André Breton's image of the communicating vessels, a visual metaphor Beckett revises in The Unnamable. By adopting material containers as surrogate bodies, or by imagining life in hollow vessels, Beckett's characters encounter a self that exceeds the limits of the body—a form of projective identification that anticipates psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion's theorizing of the "container-contained." |
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| ISSN: | 15278042 |
| DOI: | 10.2979/jmodelite.40.4.06 |