Beckett's Not I is a radical play in terms of its
stage-image, a spot-light on just a mouth blabbering its way with the rest of the stage
in dark. It is a monologue of this female mouth--an act of compulsive confession, a
trial of sorts where language is used in terms of excrement. It marks Beckett's absolute
precision and a move towards the later works, which are now known as the 'dramaticules'
after Come and Go.
The
Themes:--
1. Self-alienation, physical reduction is
something that informs the minimalist form of the play as well as its protagonist. As
the title implies, there is an impossible gulf between the speaking subject and the real
self. This fracture can be seen as an evocation of the Freudian unconscious as
characterized by Lacan as something like a language. according to Lacan, the Unconscious
is also a discourse of the other. Not I points towards that kind of alterity. The schism
may also be seen as a post-structuralist problematic of the decentring of the speaking
subject through speech.
2. Feminism, especially the French
variety has been used a lot in interpreting this play. Beckett continuously highlights
the gender of the subject with the repetition of the word 'she' with exclamation. From
this theoretical perspective, the play can be seen as a critique of the phallogocentric
order of language where the female subject is always alienated as an other and thus the
desire to reclaim that gendered feminine self.
3. Not I is
a play about torture--the lethal problematic of darkness and a speck of light in it. As
Beckett always opined, it is the remainder of light in the dark which makes reality so
chaotic.
4. At a visual level, the play is a painting of
fear. The movement of the lips dominates the thematic content of the words. There is a
desire to stop this torrent of speech but it remains uncontrollable. The moving lips can
be seen as a symbol of female genitalia.
5. The play has
memory of definite scenes in the random speech of the mouth. Whether it is the lavatory
scene or the courtroom scene of trial or the surrealistic scene of the drying teardrops
on the surface of the palms on the vast corn-field--there is the working of the uncanny
mutability of the self.
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