On Fragments: A Piece of Art and the “I” – or Not

 

enigma is the tension between the speaking voice and the “I” of identity or con-sciousness, of a unified character that Mouth continues to resist despite the prod-dings of some force, on occasion represented by an Auditor on stage. To this refus-al of Mouth to acknowledge that she is one with the voice and so might use the first person pronoun, the Auditor responds with his four gestures. He alone has any apprehension of the text, according to Beckett, the audience sharing Mouth’s con-fusion (Harmon 1998: 283).

 

We have what appears to be a monologue presented by a body part, a fragment, a Mouth. Is this body part, this fragment of being attached to anything? What, in short, is it a fragment of? The lips we see need to be attached to other systems if they are to function, to neural and circulatory machinery, but can we, or should we imagine such a larger apparatus, since even that would be a fragment, a part of something else, which, in turn, would be a part of something else. That is, the lips we see illuminated high on a platform, a stage, so called, are part of a system of com-munication in at least two senses, or part of at least two systems, the neuro­elec-trical bio system that allows muscle movement and the system of communication, a semiotic system that allows art to speak. That is a literary practice, which, accord-ing to Julia Kristeva, channeling Roland Barthes, is a “located literary practice at the intersection of subject and history.” Barthes could study “this practice as symptom of the ideological tearings in the social fabric” (Kristeva 1980: 93). Barthes’ connect-ing “the pleasure of the text” or “a jouissance of meaning” (Kristeva 2000: 188) with a definition of writing (écriture) “as a negativity, a movement that questions all ‘identity’ (whether linguistic, corporeal, or historical)” (Kristeva 2000: 193) reso-nated with Kristeva’s interest in meaning production as a combined effort between affects and drives on one side (the semiotic) and the symbolic law on the other (society, history). All these theoretical affinities between Kristeva’s and Barthes’ work are held together by his challenge of meaning itself which he relates to a con-ception of the subject as non­unified, shifting and dispersed. Questioning “a unity – an ‘I’, a ‘we’ – that can have meaning or seek meaning,” Barthes encounters the limits of “the possibility of meaning itself” and offers instead “the abyss of a polyva-lence of meaning, as well as a polyphony internal to subjects investigating meaning” (Kristeva 2000: 189).

 

But theater has traditionally offered another sort of presence, an embodiment of text which entails something of a co­presence in theater, performers and observers, listeners, auditors who function like readers. Beckett has mimicked this theatrical co­presence within the play itself as monologue becomes something of a dialogue, or duologue, a mouth, functioning as text, and an auditor or Listener functioning as reader – at least as written. Whether or not contemporary directors choose to stage such an echo of the theatrical experience, is open to directorial choice, even according to Beckett.