The figure of the couple: enabling supplementarity in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape (1958). Issue 12 (2nd December 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Charalambous, Michelle
• Is Part Of: Textual practice. Volume 35:Issue 12(2021)
• Page Start: 1883
• Page End: 1893
• Publication Date: 2021-12-02
• Subjects: Prosthetic body -- memory -- supplementarity -- mind -- couple; Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism, Textual -- Periodicals; Semiotics -- Periodicals; 801.95
• DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2020.1789206
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-236X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The figure of the couple is a crucial feature of Samuel Beckett's works that has been widely discussed in the secondary literature and very often viewed as a metaphor of the mind/body distinction. This article provides a re-assessment of the figure of the couple specifically in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and approaches the latter as a necessary imbrication of the material and the mental. To do that, the article focuses on the way the couple manifests itself in the play and discusses the latter in light of Jacques Derrida's philosophy of the supplement and Bernard Stiegler's work on memory and technics. In the light of these two philosophies, it is shown that the way Beckett represents the couple in his play strongly suggests that the relationship between the material and the mental is inextricable which, in turn, sheds light on the bodily nature of memory and the catalytic role the body plays in the re-experience of the past.