ABSTRACTS

Beryl Schlossman (Carnegie Mellon University)
Crossing Francophone Boundaries: Beckett’s Identities of the Other

Beckett raises the question of the identity of the speakers within his texts. His characters return from unknown places and from nowhere: memory, writing, and the crossing of boundaries posit the double or "semblable" as uncanny, "étranger," and ghost or revenant. Like Kafka, who is an important reference to Beckett’s aesthetic, Beckett rejects psychology. The "overflow of memory" leads his characters and disembodied voices to the edges of consciousness. I will explore the "white voice" and the double; passages in time and space byond the boundaries of the living to the supernatural realm of the dead, in memory; and some fantastic voyages that unfold within the writing of the Other.