Erschopfte Literatur. Uber das Neue bei Samuel Beckett

摘要

Summary: Exhausted Literature. The Emergence of the New in SamuelBeckett's Novels and Plays. The article investigates literary subjectivity in sometexts by Samuel Beckett. The article proceeds by relating the ways of how narrationand speech acts constitute literary subjectivity to the problems of subjectivity thatscientific investigations deal with. While successful self-regulation of the organismnourishes the roots of subjectivity, i. e. the habits, subjectivity decomposes in statesof exhaustion, when self-regulation breaks down. As soon as a certain threshold istransgressed, fatigue sets in, alters the personality and eventually leads to exhaustion– a state, which psychiatrists compare to mental illness. Notwithstanding the diffe-rent explanations given, scientists agreed about the effects of exhaustion. Accordingto their investigations, the decomposition of personality by exhaustion generallydoes not involve apathy, withdrawal from activity or termination of movements,but rather mere action. Similarly, in Beckett's novels and plays exhaustion is muchmore than tiredness, as French philosopher Gilles Deleuze observed. For Beckett,exhaustion is rather the model for both literary innovation and a new concept ofsubjectivity, which he explores on the basis of a detailed knowledge of physiology,psychology, and psychiatry, but using his own literary means. The exhausted subjectis beyond any calculus of activity. It will perform an activity even if he or she makesmistakes or loses control, and will thus act in an unpredictable way. This unpre-dictable action is not an exception in the continuation of the habits, but ratherpoints to the moment when a new subjectivity emerges. Such new subjectivity sur-faces in Beckett's novels and plays in forms of literary innovation.