Journal Article

Human Agency and the Epistemological Vortex in Beckett's the Unnamable

Mabrouk, Alia Abbas M. Hassan

2024

Overview

Derrida's deconstructive critique places Western ethnocentrism under erasure, and subjects its institutionalized structures and truth claims to an incessant freeplay of signs. Dismantling the teleological Hegelian methods of reasoning, deconstruction has managed to step outside the web of archaeological structures, a-priori reasoning, and the self-referentiality of Western rationalist thought. Meaning and interpretative strategies, within the framework of deconstruction, are part of a discursive formation that never suffocates cultural ruptures and discontinuities. The aim of the present research is to offer a deconstructive reading of Beckett's The Unnamable, pinpointing the intellectual impasse that confronts western metaphysics, and the metaphysical silence that afflicts postmodern and post-metaphysical writings. The text dispenses with the logos and with all fixed points of reference, and involves the reader in a quasi-philosophical monologue that acts as an epistemological inquiry into the philosophy of language and how linguistic metaphoricity disseminates meaning and shatters the arbitrary relation between sets of binary opposition. A piece of a self-reflexive critique, The Unnamable deconstructs its own ontological being and questions the soundness of its methods of epistemological inquiry. Functioning as an intertext and deconstructing the phenomenological moments experienced by the narrator, The Unnamable questions the accuracy with which we embrace many interpretative methods, and highlights the dangers of doubting the doubt and the challenges one confronts when coming across an epistemic and a reflexive deadlock.

• Publisher: جامعة أسيوط - كلية الآداب
• Subject: الإرادة الإنسانية / الدوامة المعرفية / بيكيت، صامويل باركلى، ت. 1989 م / رواية ما لا يمكن تسميته