Modernism, Self-Creation, and the Maternal by James Martell;

Author:James Martell;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

As the denied or disavowed “figure without figure,” “face without face,” or “name without name,” (PC, 333; CP, 354) she will always return at the end of every speculation (be it philosophical, psychoanalytical, or literary), or when all is said and done. “Speculation” is to be understood here not only as the reflective movement of observation or theorising but also in its more economical meaning, as counting and rationalising, tallying, or finding a ratio (in the same vein as Baudelaire’s economic and literary speculations we saw in Chapter 2). As tallying, it is to be understood also as the marking or cutting that keeps a record and—in relation to psychoanalytic and literary notions of the earth and the steps we make on it—especially as the traces of feet (talus: heel) we make while walking, crawling, or creating our putative “own” paths.

Didier Anzieu describes this logic of obsequence in Beckett as the logic of a mother who, as an un-dead but also not-really-living entity, will survive Samuel Beckett, encompassing his whole work, coming before and going beyond him and even beyond his commentators—including Anzieu himself:

A mother who, while living, does not stop living, and who, once dead, does not finish dying. The tomb of May is Sam’s work [oeuvre], in both senses of work. And this work that I, in turn, write on the work of Beckett, is it a tomb for him? Is it, through him, a last tomb for my mother? (31)

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