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Sexuality after Life

Ill Seen Ill Said as Hermeneutics of the Gaze

In: Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui
Author:
Cecily Niumeitolu University of Sydney English Department Australia Sydney

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9040-621X
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Abstract

This article teases out intertextual threads from the visual arts and image-lore that join Beckett’s Dream of Fair to Middling Women to Ill Seen Ill Said. It explores how Beckett’s treatment of gender and sexual desire are deeply informed by Western art history’s specific gender dyad. It argues that Beckett harnesses and agitates this dyad to provoke new understandings of sexuality, sight and sense. By engaging key events in Dream and Ill Seen it unfolds an erotics of nonrelation: the sexual dimension of Beckett’s work that admits the dead and inorganic encrypted and insisting within the all too human.

Résumé

Cet article démêle les fils intertextuels des arts visuels et de l’ imagerie folklorique qui joignent deux romans de Beckett, Dream of Fair to Middling Women et Ill Seen Ill Said. Il examine comment la manière dont Beckett traite le genre et le désir sexuel est profondément marquée par la dyade de genre qui se trouve dans l’ histoire de l’ art occidental. Il soutient que Beckett exploite et agite cette dyade afin de nous conduire vers des nouvelles compréhensions de la sexualité, de la vision, et du sens. En s’ intéressant aux moments-clés dans Dream et Ill Seen, il dévoile un érotisme de la non-relation : la dimension sexuelle de l’ œuvre beckettienne qui laisse entrer les morts et l’ inorganique encryptés et insistants dans le trop humain.

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