249 pages

English

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Think, Pig! , livre ebook

Fordham University Press - Jean-Michel Rabaté

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249 pages

English

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This book examines Samuel Beckett's unique lesson in courage in the wake of humanism's postwar crisis-the courage to go on living even after experiencing life as a series of catastrophes.Rabat a former president of the Samuel Beckett Society and a leading scholar of modernism, explores the whole range of Beckett's plays, novels, and essays. He places Beckett in a vital philosophical conversation that runs from Bataille to Adorno, from Kant and Sade to Badiou. At the same time, he stresses Beckett's inimitable sense of metaphysical comedy.Foregrounding Beckett's decision to write in French, Rabat inscribes him in a continental context marked by a "writing degree zero" while showing the prescience and ethical import of Beckett's tendency to subvert the "human" through the theme of the animal. Beckett's "declaration of inhuman rights," he argues, offers the funniest mode of expression available to us today.

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French

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Publié par	Fordham University Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780823270880
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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T h i n k , P i g !

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Think, Pig! Beckett at the Limit of the Human

Jean-Michel Rabaté

f o r d h a m u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s New York 2016

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rabaté, Jean-Michel, 1949– author. Title: Think, pig! : Beckett at the limit of the human / Jean-Michel Rabaté. Description: First edition. | New York : Fordham University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiﬁers: LCCN 2015042060 (print) | LCCN 2016000364 (ebook) | ISBN 9780823270859 (hardback) | ISBN 9780823270866 (paper) | ISBN 9780823270873 (ePub) Subjects: LCSH: Beckett, Samuel, 1906 –1989—Criticism and interpretation. | Literature—Philosophy. | Theater—Philosophy. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / General. | PHILOSOPHY / Aesthetics. | PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism. Classiﬁcation: LCC PR6003.E282 Z7886 2016 (print) | LCC PR6003.E282 (ebook) | DDC 848/.91409—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042060

Printed in the United States of America

18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1

First edition

1. How to Think Like a Pig

Introduction

3. The Posthuman, or the Humility of the Earth

5. “Porca Madonna!”: Moving Descartes toward Geulincx and Proust

6. From an Aesthetics of Nonrelation to an Ethics oNfegation

12. An Irish Paris Peasant

134

171

200

8. Dialectics of Enlittlement

Acknowledgments Notes Index

4. Burned Toasts and Boiled Lobsters

13. The Morality of Form —A French Story

c o n t e n t s

11. Lessons in Pigsty Latin: The Duty to Speak

Coda: Minima Beckettiana

9. Bathetic Jokes, Animal Slapstick, and Ethical Laughter

108

10. Strength to Deny: Beckett between Adorno and Badiou

182

158

124

2. The Worth and Girth of an Italian Hoagie

205 207 235

7. Beckett’s Kantian Critiques

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T h i n k , P i g !

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Introduction

Although Samuel Beckett was the only writer I was eager to meet when I was a student in Paris, I never dared approach him, so great was the awe he inspired. In the late sixties, the École Normale Supérieure had not yet memorialized his passage in the institution. No hall had been named after him yet. The students were not even sure in which room he had spent two crucial years on the premises. When I edited a collection of essays about his early work with the École Normale Supérieure press, the board felt that it was its duty to pay Beckett an homage that had been long overdue. I mailed a copy of the book to Beckett, who immediately wrote back to thank me. He inserted in his kind note, as a little joke, an “a” to the title that, out of modesty, he had abbreviated:Beckett avant Becketthad become 1 “BABa.” This book could only be a “B. A., BA,” as the French say, mean-ing a basic primer. Ironically self- deﬂating and deﬂating us, Beckett showed to our group of contributors that we should not take ourselves too seriously when discussing his work. He was also warning us about the dan-ger of “explaining,” that is, of reducing his work to formulas. Despite the promptings of an Irish friend who saw Beckett regularly for late-night chats accompanied by a lot of whiskey, I never found the courage