Lyotard, Beckett, Duras, and the Postmodern Sublime

Abstract

Samuel Beckett\u27s texts are populated with characters who have been so deprived of their humanity that humanity appears as essentially absent from his texts. The characters\u27 presence in the diegesis is marked by unmistakable absences-absence of vision, of mobility, of sense, of name. Beckett\u27s characters are often without: without hair, without teeth, without foreseeable future. The human character is at the limit of humanity and runs the risk of passing over into the grey zone of the inhuman. They lose track of their place, of their time, of their names. They frequently belong to no time and no place. When they are specifically situated, they are in and among ruins

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