UNNAMING THE SUBJECT: Samuel Beckett and Colonial Alterity

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Quigley
Keyword(s):  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Literary Revival ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Irish Literary Revival

Since David Lloyd's pioneering studies some fifteen years ago, the postcolonial dimension of Beckett's work has received little sustained attention in critical scholarship. This essay contributes to a further evaluation of Beckett's engagement with postcoloniality by examining the ways in which Beckett's critique of the object emerges from a broader critique of postcolonial nationalism. Its discussion focuses particularly on "Recent Irish Poetry" and the "German Letter" as a means of illustrating the ways in which Beckett's impatience with the Irish Literary Revival and its insistence on nationalist representation coincides with the more far-reaching assault on language sketched for Kaun. Proceeding then to , the essay considers how the novel's relentless critique of subject and anti-subject draws much of its energy from Beckett's searching analysis of postcolonial representation.

Samuel Beckett's Disruptive Translations of ‘je voudrais que mon amour meure’

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Trask Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
The Self ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Poetic Translation

Self-translators are often granted freedoms in their translations unimaginable for standard translators. Whereas a standard translation usually prizes sameness (or invisibility as Lawrence Venuti argues), the self-translator may instead highlight difference or disruption. A burgeoning subfield of criticism has outlined the ways in which one of the most famous of these self-translators, Samuel Beckett, makes use of his role as translator to further the reach of his work beyond the constraints of a monolingual text. Whereas most of this criticism has taken aim at Beckett's prose and theater, this essay asks what can be gleaned about Beckett's translation style from his early poetry. Here I focus on Beckett's four-line, untitled poem which begins ‘je voudrais que mon amour meure’ (‘I would like my love to die’). Originally published in 1948 in the bilingual journal Transition Forty-eight, this poem would go on to be edited, translated, reedited, and retranslated over the course of nearly thirty years. The various iterations and translations of the poem are not always harmonious and instead force the reader to consider more deeply the themes of the poem and to question the role of translation. I read the poem in light of Beckett's 1934 essay ‘Recent Irish Poetry’ as well as consider it in response to W.B. Yeats' 1899 poem ‘He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead’. By situating the poem in this context, I argue that this poem is a manifestation of Beckett's argument in the essay that poetry must take into account the division between poet and object. His short poem demonstrates this division as well as that between original and translation and thus allows us a window onto his translation project at large. Considering Beckett's poetic translation permits us to consider how a complementarity of intention towards language does not necessarily entail complementary translations.

The wisdom of the road

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Payal Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rates ◽  
Energy Security ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Hydro Power ◽  
The Road ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
War Games ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Subject ◽  
India And China

The Silk Roads Ethos (SRE; Ling, 2014) animates the idea that India and China must draw from the legacy of historical exchanges for future cooperation. Mainstream scholarship on the subject employs and relies predominantly on a state-centric rivalry-oriented framework to study the issue, in which a standard focus on demographic comparisons, growth rates, GDP, FDI, energy-security complex, and cognate connotations of “hypermasculine war games” demarcate India-China relations in mutually distinct and discrete “boxed” categories (Banerjee and Ling, 2010). It also does not engage with the growing body of historically attuned, critical scholarship that focuses on the nuances of exchange, collaboration, and conflict between India and China. If scholars working on China-India are serious about offering a counter-hegemonic alternative to the current work-manuals, then our research approaches in understanding one another must also employ a counter-hegemonic epistemology. Drawing on insights from two recent collaborative projects, one on hydro-power projects in India and China, and a second, larger project on India-China relations, this article outlines the specific ways in which the wisdom of the SRE carries with it unequivocal empirical and pedagogical possibilities.

Strangers in the house: reconfiguring the borders of national and cultural identities in contemporary Irish theatre

2001 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIAN SINGLETON
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Future Health ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Future ◽  
Literary Revival ◽  
Dramatic Writing ◽  
Irish Literary Revival

The Irish literary revival at the beginning of the last century established the concept of ‘house’ as a symbol of ‘nation’ in dramatic writing. Strangers to the house thus took on the mantle of imperialist forces whose colonial project, practices and values had to be resisted and expelled. The allegorical situations of houses and strangers in theatre foreshadowed revolution and eventual independence for the country decades later. Contemporary Irish playwrights continue to use the house/stranger, familiar/foreign dichotomies as templates for their exploration of the current state of the ‘nation’, but they are also beginning to explore the idea that ‘strangeness’ might be a condition that should be embraced to ensure the future health of that nation.

The classical model of contract: the product of a revolution in legal thought?

Legal Studies ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 513-532
Author(s):  
Warren Swain
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Classical Model ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Literature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Proper Weight

Writing in the introduction to his new treatise on contract in 1826, Joseph Chitty observed that ‘Perhaps no branch of the jurisprudence of this country has of late years been more subject of judicial inquiry and decision than the Law of Contracts’. It is generally accepted that the so-called classical model of contract law, which remains influential into the present day, was created at this time. Ever since the subject first attracted sustained attention from legal historians in the 1970s, the driving forces of these developments have been contested. Some saw legal change as a product of economic and social factors. For others the reception of new ways of thinking and legal literature provided a more convincing explanation. What is not usually disputed is that there was a fundamental revolution in contract doctrine and literature in the nineteenth century. This assumption is open to challenge. It fails to give proper weight to the past. In fact these changes were deeply rooted in the eighteenth century and even earlier.

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