No Trace Anywhere of Life, Perhaps: Autology and Hauntology in Imagination Dead Imagine. Issue 2 (September 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vozel, François-Nicolas
• Is Part Of: Journal of Beckett studies. Volume 31:Issue 2(2022)
• Page Start: 151
• Page End: 168
• Publication Date: 2022-09
• Subjects: Geulincx -- autology -- hauntology -- Derrida -- Malevich; English literature -- Periodicals; French literature -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 848.91409
• DOI: 10.3366/jobs.2022.0372
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0309-5207

Abstract

Abstract : This essay interprets Imagination Dead Imagine as the product of Beckett's own autology, in Arnold Geulincx's sense of the term. The Cartesian occasionalist advanced that self-inspection culminates with the revelation of human beings' fundamental ignorance and impotence. I suggest that the short text borrows Geulingian themes and imagery to offer a dazzling vision – from the point of view of eternity – of the radical atomization and opacity of the human condition. Furthermore, I explore how Beckett generates a specifically Geulingian commentary on a debate that obsessed him throughout his life: the problem of the subject-object relation and the self-to-self relation in artistic representation. Finally, I propose to read the paradoxical imperative 'imagination dead imagine' as a Geulingian axiom in its own right, that is, as an inescapable obligation whose fulfilment is quasi-impossible.