“Escaping the Neurotic-Couch”: A Schizoanalytic Reading of Beckettian Characters in Waiting for Godot

Abstract

[eng] Beckett’s dramatic oeuvre has been popularly connected to the existential anguish and metaphysical despair traversing Continental philosophy in the second post-war era. The present paper intends to approach the Beckettian cosmology presented in Waiting for Godot from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s schizoanalysis and political ontology of the Body without Organs, so as to examine the desire’s potentiality contained in the (absent) figure of Godot. By focusing on the deterritorializations that Godot’s desiringmachine produces, Beckettian characters will be explored as inscriptions of the poststructuralist field of nomadic subjectivity. This will enable a productive reading of Beckettian realm of ‘nothingness’, not anymore as epitome of crisis, but as suggestion of a new plane of immanence from which to re-organise subjectivity.

[cat] L’obra dramàtica beckettiana ha estat popularment associada a l’angoixa existencial i metafísica que travessà la filosofía continental de la segona post-guerra. El present estudi s’apropa a la cosmologia presentada a Waiting for Godot des de l’esquizoanàlisi i l’ontologia política del cos sense òrgans de Gilles Deleuze i Félix Guattari, a fi d’examinar la potencialitat del desig contingut en la figura (absent) de Godot. A partir de l’anàlisi de les desterritorialitzations desencadenades per la màquina desitjant que Godot representa, s’exploraran els personatges beckettians com a inscripcions de la teoria postestructuralista de la subjectivitat nomàdica. Aquest enfocament permetrà una lectura productiva del “no-res beckettià”, entès ja no com a epítom de crisi sinó com a proposta d’un nou pla d’immanència de (re-)organització de subjectivitat.