بررسی تنیّت انعکاسی و سیاسی در آخرین نوار کراپ و فاجعه ساموئل بکت

تئاتر متاخر بکت با رویکردی سیاسی‌تر از آثار اولیه‌اش از گفتمان قدرت انتقاد می‌کند. این مقاله با تمرکز بر تجربه بدن به‌عنوان رکن انکارناپذیرِ هویت معاصر، نگرش بکت را به سیاستِ بدن یا تنیّت تحلیل می‌نماید. آخرین نوار کراپ، نماینده اولین آثار بکت و فاجعه، سیاسی‌ترین مصداق از آخرین نمایش‌هایش مورد بررسی تطبیقی قرار می‌گیرد. بخش اول، به بررسی آخرین نوار کراپ از منظر جامعه‌شناسی پراگماتیست و تنیّت انعکاسی می‌پردازد. تنیّت انعکاسی، هویت را بازتابشِ انگاره‌های اجتماعی می‌داند و عرصه‌ای درخور توجه برای سیاست تن قائل نیست. کراپ نه‌فقط با انعکاس بلکه خودبازانعکاسیِ مکررْ بدنش را می‌آزماید. اما تغییر نگرش بکت، کاستی‌های تنیّت جامعه‌شناختی را نمایان می‌سازد. ازاین‌رو، بخش دوم، تنیّت را در فاجعه از منظر مفهوم سیاسی «وضعیت استثنا» موشکافی می‌کند. قدرت با وضعیت استثنا، بدن را دچار دوگانگی می‌کند: با حذف، در سیاست شاملش می‌کند و با مراقبت، مجازاتش می‌کند. بکت در فاجعه، وضعیت استثنا، تعلیق بین اخراج و شمول و آثارش را‌ بر بدن «قهرمان نمایش» نشان می‌دهد. در بکتِ متاخرْ بدن با نیازها و تعاملات اجتماعی هماهنگ نیست و به قربانی و آزمایش تبدیل می‌شود. در سیاستِ بدن و بدنِ سیاسیِ بکتْ، هر گونه تعامل با جامعه، لاجرم و ناخواسته، نفوذ قدرت را بر بدن نقش می‌زند.

Reflexive and Political Embodiment in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape and Catastrophe

Beckett’s last plays criticize the discourse of power with a more political approach than his early works. This essay scrutinizes his change of approach and meanderings in politicizations of the body or political body with a focus upon the act of embodiment as an undeniable cornerstone of contemporary identity and subjectivity. Krapp’s Last Tape as the representative of Beckett’s early plays is compared to Catastrophe as his most political work in the corpus his late plays. The first section of this essay studies Krapp’s Last Tape from the perspective of Pragmatist Sociology and its wellreceived and prevalent subcategory, which is “reflexive embodiment”. Reflexive embodiment views identity as the reflection of social images, interactions, concepts, and influences. The problem with reflexive embodiment is that it neglects and undermines politics of the body or the processes through which the body and embodiment are politicized and shaped by the discourse of power. Reflexive embodiment sees the body as a mirror held up against others, people surrounding us, social events, and processes. Krapp examines his body not just through reflection, but constant selfreflection and selfscrutiny, that is to say, the act of recording the tapes produces multiple selves of/for Krapp. Each tape becomes an other for Krapp resulting in his sense of loss, desperation, and psychological pain. The mirror within the mirror embodiment of Krapp reveals the fact that the reflection in Beckett’s play becomes performative as it results in a labyrinthine selfhood. It can be claimed that Beckett’s revision of his approach to the body reveals the shortcomings of sociological embodiment and reflection theory. Reflexive embodiment lacks a vivid political discourse. Thus, the second part of the essay analyzes embodiment in Catastrophe from the political lens of “state of exception”. State of exception, introduced and promulgated by Carl Schmitt, is the essence of power; it is how power comes into being, grows, instills, and installs itself in the society. Power with the use of state of exception exposes the body to a radical, yet fundamental dualism: It includes the body by excluding it and punishes the body by taking care of it. It can be stated that state of exception is the way through which power rules without overt and severe force; it controls the subjects without violent enforcement. Such a zone of indistinction between inclusion and exclusion, violence and care, nature and culture, law and lawlessness surfaces in Catastrophe as Protagonist’s body is meticulously and pointedly formed and ruled over by Director’s constant orders. Protagonist’s body is excluded from the sphere of the social and the political as it is included within Director’s instruction. In Catastrophe, Beckett reveals the state of exception, the oscillation between exclusion and inclusion and its impacts on Protagonist’s body. In Beckett’s late plays, body does not concord with social requirements and interactions and it is victimized and experimentalized. In his politicization of the body, embodiment induces disembodiment as any interaction with the society inevitability and forcibly carves the discourse of power on the body.