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Edited by S. E. Wilmer and Audron\u0117 \u017dukauskait\u0117<\/strong> Reviewed by Will Daddario<\/strong>*<\/a> (USA)<\/p>\n Deleuze and Beckett <\/em>is the second anthology curated by S. E. Wilmer and Audron\u0117 \u017dukauskait\u0117 in recent years. Thinner and narrower in scope than Interrogating Antigone<\/em>, this book still shares structural similarities with the former in its attempt to give a thorough overview of the textual, theoretical and theatrical meshwork of, in this case, the philosophy of the Frenchman Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and his interest in identity and difference, and the oeuvre of Beckett.<\/p>\n In a nutshell, the book\u2019s chapters concentrate \u201con specific aspects of the Deleuze and Beckett interface\u201d (4). Part I samples some philosophical concepts germane to the study and comprehension of both Deleuze and Beckett, including that of difference, becoming and multiplicity. Part II appraises each figure\u2019s fealties to psychoanalysis and the ways in which psychoanalytic theory influenced their thoughts on subjectivity. Part III gauges Deleuze\u2019s and Beckett\u2019s thinking on space and time, particularly how those concepts shape our relation to memory and media. Part IV hones in on the theatrical and performative dimensions of Deleuzian philosophy and Beckettian artistic production.<\/p>\n The volume\u2019s appearance in the present moment makes sense given Wilmer\u2019s connection to Trinity, which houses both a substantial Beckett archive and the ghostly traces of the Nobel Laureate\u2019s pedagogical repertoire (he studied there as a student and taught there as a lecturer), and \u017dukauskait\u0117\u2019s long history of engagement with Deleuze, not to mention the editors\u2019 history of close collaboration.<\/p>\n In the last decade, many scholars have drawn readers\u2019 attention to the linkages between Deleuze and, well, a lot of things. There are currently twenty-six titles in the \u201cDeleuze Connections\u201d series published by Edinburgh University Press. The first seven pages of a search on Amazon for \u201cDeleuze and\u201d yields fourteen more titles. Seizing upon the \u201cand\u201d is a common strategy, since Deleuze found the conjunction particularly pleasing due to its ability to define multiplicity and to construct fabulous machines capable of expanding thought beyond the static images created by dominant social and artistic narratives. And yet, because of the abundance of such scholarship, a fair question arises: do we need another one? Do we need this<\/em> book about Deleuze and<\/em> Beckett? What does this connection accomplish? What new ideas does it produce?<\/p>\n Scrutinizing the \u201cand\u201d in the title to discover both what it does and what it does not (seem to) mean is a good way to begin answering those questions. For example, the \u201cand\u201d here does not mean the same thing as the ampersand in the Palgrave \u201cTheatre &\u201d series. There, the \u201c&\u201d demonstrates how theatre as an artistic practice is inherently interdisciplinary. Thus, the \u201cand\u201d signifies extant linkages within the discipline of theatre studies that outfits that discipline for direct communication with neighboring fields.<\/p>\n Neither does the \u201cand\u201d conjoining Deleuze and Beckett mean the same thing as the \u201cand\u201d in the title Adorno and Performance<\/em> (Palgrave 2014). For the latter, \u201cand\u201d marks an intermittence between the philosopher and the practice of performance, and hints at the labor that the book will attempt to accomplish by forcing a connection of the one with the other. With Deleuze and Beckett<\/em>, instead, \u201cand\u201d seems not to indicate a disciplinary exercise (in Deleuze and\/or Beckett Studies), nor does it tarry with the disjunctions between Deleuze and Beckett. Rather, the \u201cand\u201d here presents a modest historically and textually legitimate pairing.<\/p>\n Deleuze, though only dedicating two essays to Beckett exclusively, conjured the great writer in numerous works throughout the years, especially in his publications with Felix Guattari, in order to illustrate the principles of schizoanalysis. While there exists no concrete proof that Beckett ever read Deleuze, on the other hand, he was nonetheless concerned with many of the same epistemological and ontological problems as the French philosopher. As such, the pairing manufactured for this book does indeed lead, as the editors claim, to explicit collisions between the two figures\u2019 works.<\/p>\n That said, however, a more appropriate title for this book may have been Deleuze\u2019s Beckett<\/em> or Beckett through Deleuze<\/em>. This is so because each of the chapters delivers Deleuzian readings of Beckett. None of them attempts to fold Beckett\u2019s artistic discoveries back on Deleuze\u2019s concepts or review Deleuze through Beckett. Given the germ of this project within the journal Deleuze Studies<\/em>, it is not surprising to find this primacy given over to Deleuze, but the unidirectional readings of the chapters end up privileging Deleuze\u2019s concepts over Beckett\u2019s affects and, in this regard, continue the historical hierarchization that places philosophy on top of art, as though Beckett will become more legible once read as \u201cminor literature\u201d (a key Deleuzo-Guattarian term).<\/p>\n If \u201cand\u201d requires scrutiny in the attempt to determine the texture of this volume\u2019s scholarly products, so too do the other title keywords. \u201cDeleuze\u201d here refers to the P<\/u>hilosopher (capital \u201cP\u201d), nothing more or less. I sense here a missed opportunity since, in recent years, as the scholarship in the field of Performance Philosophy has demonstrated, \u201cDeleuze\u201d has come to signify much more than a creator of philosophical concepts. He also steps into the roles of performance artist, theatre critic and savant of everyday life. The \u201cBeckett\u201d of the title signifies a more dynamic topos<\/em>, insofar as it refers to the historical figure as well as the short stories, plays, television programs and films created by him. For the most part, though, \u201cBeckett\u201d is the name of a literary machine displaying philosophical tendencies. Taken altogether, the book Deleuze and Beckett<\/em> forwards Deleuzian sketches of Beckettian artistic events.<\/p>\n Intriguingly, most of the contributors use tentative language when framing their essays or pursuing their lines of thought in these sketches. [All emphasis in what follows is my own:] \u201cOne might<\/em> thus read not only Beckett through Bergson . . .\u201d (Gontarski 37). \u201cI will explore<\/em> [. . . the] notion of becoming-imperceptible . . .\u201d (\u017dukauskait\u0117 60). \u201cIt may, perhaps<\/em>, be helpful to illustrate how an explicitly Deleuzian reading of a Beckett text . . .\u201d (Keatinge 89). \u201cIt thus seems<\/em> that eroticism and, beyond that, desire is to be sought . . . in the writing process itself . . .\u201d (Ost 97). \u201cI would<\/em> argue that . . . Beckett in his plays reconfigures the theatrical event . . .\u201d (Chattopadhyay 230).<\/p>\n Sometimes, these tentative phrasings evolve from strictly Deleuzian ground, such as in Chattopadhyay\u2019s chapter, \u201c\u2018I switch off\u2019 Towards a Beckettian Minority of Theatrical Event,\u201d where the conditional verb tense mimics Deleuze\u2019s thinking about the event: \u201cDeleuze thinks that the event has always happened in the past, or it would<\/em> be happening in the future, and its present can only be seen as an endless continuation\u201d (241). Mostly, however, the language driving the chapters gives the impression of casual intellectual forays through Deleuzian landscapes toward Beckettian territory in search of landmarks capable of announcing the legitimacy of using Deleuze\u2019s philosophy to interpret Beckett.<\/p>\n Will readers ultimately benefit or lose out from this narrow focus on the couplet of (mostly) Deleuze and (then) Beckett? Because the weight of the inquiries is, overall, lopsided in favor of Deleuze, the contributors make frequent mention of Deleuzian favorites Bergson and Nietzsche. Indeed, as the editors highlight in the introduction, \u201cThe Deleuzian philosophy of difference results not only in the destruction of representation, but also in the conceptualization of change and time. Therefore, one of the most important common points between Deleuze and Beckett is their interest in Henri Bergson\u2019s philosophy\u201d (6).<\/p>\n Readers do not, however, hear much about the thinkers that influenced Beckett such as Vico (via Croce), Schopenhauer, Berkeley, Geulincx, Leibniz, Windelband, Samuel Johnson, Mauthner and the early Greeks. Nor is Heidegger brought into the picture, though the German thinker clearly plays a major role in the work of both Deleuze and Beckett. As such, the editorial\/curatorial process may have narrowed the purview of the book a bit too much. It is worth noting here that Deleuze and Beckett <\/em>is about half the length of Interrogating Antigone<\/em> and that additional chapters on, for example, Heidegger, may have helped round out the Deleuze-Beckett connection.<\/p>\n More importantly, if we challenge the claim about the importance of Bergson to both Deleuze and Beckett, we run into some problems. In this volume, David Addyman makes the argument that Deleuze\u2019s expansion of Bergson\u2019s spatial theories, most notably those found in Difference and Repetition<\/em>, were anticipated much earlier by Beckett himself. While substantiating his claim, Addyman demonstrates the usefulness of mining Bergson\u2019s works for spatial theories (instead of the oft-cited durational theories), for understandings of both Deleuze\u2019s philosophy and Beckett\u2019s literature, thus supporting the editors\u2019 claim about Bergson\u2019s necessary participation in the Deleuze-Beckett dyad. In his essay for Matthew Feldman and Karim Mamdani\u2019s 2015 volume Beckett\/Philosophy<\/em>, however, the same author problematizes this claim.<\/p>\n True, \u201cBergson was rare among Beckett\u2019s philosophers in that he was one of the few that the author appears to have read first hand, rather than read about in synopses\u201d (Addyman, \u201cBeckett, Bergson, and the Philosophy of Space\u201d 103). But, \u201cBeckett\u2019s postwar work is fundamentally opposed to Bergson\u2019s\u201d and \u201cBeckett\u2019s brief but intense flirtation with Bergsonism seems to be waning by the time of the composition of Beckett\u2019s first novel [in 1931]\u201d (104, 121). Thus, in Deleuze and Beckett<\/em>, Bergson is a necessary point of comparison, while, in Beckett\/Philosophy<\/em>, Bergson is a problematic philosophical foundation for those studying Beckett\u2019s work. Which one is it? Why does the chapter in Deleuze and Beckett<\/em> not linger on this contradiction?<\/p>\n Contradictions such as this do not undermine Deleuze and Beckett<\/em> completely; rather, by ignoring or overlooking these types of contradictions, each chapter begins to feel partially unfinished, a feeling that leads me to recommend that the book as a whole be read in tandem with other works. The archival research and historical sensitivity demonstrated in Beckett\/Philosophy<\/em>, for example, complements the more theoretical ideas here. Likewise, Laura Cull\u2019s Theatre and Immanence<\/em> helps to discuss the material dimension of theatre and performance that the essays in Part IV of Deleuze and Beckett<\/em> lacks.<\/p>\n On a more positive note, one undoubtedly helpful aspect of Wilmer and \u017dukauskait\u0117\u2019s book is that the specialty research foci and academic chops of the contributors offer helpful glosses on key Deleuzian concepts, such as the Time-Image and the Crystal-Image articulated in Cinema<\/em> books. Such glosses are always helpful for obtaining a new perspective on Deleuze\u2019s challenging work. The language of the editor\u2019s introduction, by distinction, requires (perhaps assumes) fluency in Deleuze\u2019s philosophical language and, as such, readers might benefit from keeping a copy of Brian Massumi\u2019s A User\u2019s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia<\/em> close at hand.<\/p>\n Students both new to and familiar with Deleuze and Beckett will no doubt enjoy the flights of thought captured in these pages, though the monographs of the individual contributors will likely provide more depth for the more advanced researcher.<\/a><\/p>\n
\n253 pp. UK: Palgrave Macmillan<\/strong><\/p>\n
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