Bodies of Memory
Beckett, Technology and the Archive
Carla Cisno
POSTWAR CRITICAL THEORY
Fall 2014 Art History G4650 section 001 Prof. John Rajchman
Interested in the problem of the construction of knowledge as the result of a
deliberate engagement with memory and the archive (1), I will attempt a reading of
Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape through the lens of postwar critical theory. The piece,
«essentially a memory play» (2) offers a distinct, alternative model for a critique of
the archive, understood as the voluntary “site of memory” sheltered by modern
institutions (3), by presenting the dispersed, uncontrollable past recollections of the
protagonist as an opportunity for self-interrogation on the nature of human
consciousness, history, and identity.
A late evening in the future.
KRAPP’S den.
Front centre a small table, the two drawers of which open towards the audience.
Sitting at the table, facing front, a wearish old man : KRAPP.
–S.Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape.
Written in English in 1958, Krapp’s Last Tape is more a theatrical installation
than a performance (4): staging both the character’s live and pre-recorded voice, it
also constitutes one of Beckett’s first experiments with mixed media (5). The piece
features «the stage figure of Krapp», a 69-year-old man, and «the recorded voice of
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his memory» (6) played back through a wheel-to-wheel tape recorder, which he
nervously switches on and off during the performance, often fast-forwarding or
rewinding the tapes, thus con-fusing the sense and meaning of the narration (7).
Since his very first appearance at curtain up, Krapp looks fatigued –exhausted
in the most Deleuzian way– and his physical limitations (he is described by Beckett as
“very near sighted” and “hard of hearing”)(8) are immediately evident as the
audience becomes familiar with his obsessive, daily routines. Krapp’s suffers from
multiple addictions, but «his principal activity is that of listening. » (9) He has all his
past collected in meticulously catalogued boxes of tapes, that he has been recording
every birthday starting at the age of 24. In the play, taken by the sudden desire to
relive a particular moment of his past –“to be there again” (10) – he selects a box
(“box three, spool five”) (11) where at the age of 39 he recorded the most important
events of that year (12). After having found a specific tape, though, a further effort is
necessary to Krapp in order «to remember the episode he wants to hear» (13). He
consults the entries in his old ledger for help:
Mother at rest at last…Hm…The black ball…[He raises his head, stares
blankly front. Puzzled. ] Black ball?... [He peers again at ledger, reads. ] The dark
nurse… [He raises his head, broods, peers again at ledger, reads. ] Slight
improvement in bowel condition…Hm…Memorable…what? [He peers closer. ]
Equinox, memorable equinox. [He raises his head, stares blankly front. Puzzled. ]
Memorable equinox?... [Pause. He shrugs his shoulders, peers again at ledger,
reads.] Farewell to—[he turns page]—love. (14)
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At the sound of the word love, Krapp switches on the machine and “assumes
listening posture.”(15) The tape recorder, his time machine, «takes him back to his
past» (16), but, «paradoxically, Krapp’s taped memory is not better, more “objective”
or more reliable than» (17) the present, physical one: «his recorded memories are
distorted by continuous hesitations, pauses, and interruptions that undermine their
meaning and place doubts on the truth of the narrated events. » (18) The act of
listening, as an exercise of voluntary memory, reveals itself as an «inadequate
instrument of evocation» (19) (according to Beckett we can only truly remember
“what has been registered by our extreme inattention”) (20), and produces a
scandalous effect (21) on old Krapp, who refuses «to recognize himself in “that
stupid bastard” he was 30 years ago. (22)
Nevertheless, despite the disjunction between «the protagonist’s body and his
memory machine –the rememberer and the remembered– (23) », the audience, by
observing Krapp’s attitudes (“postures”), gestures and routines, starts seeing a
connection between the two Krapps –the present and the virtual, the stages figure and
the recorded voice. (24) In particular in the postures he assumes while listening or
reacting to the tapes —the contemplative “posture of memory”, and the agitated
“posture of listening” (25)—, it is possible to notice how Krapp’s physical body is refigured during the performance by the mechanical re-production of his memory (26).
«The incorporeal recorded voice of memory» and Krapp’s «corporeal presence» are
«dual protagonists» (27), «the two sides, past and present», «perceiver and
perceived», «of the same dramatic persona» (28). The disparities, confrontations –
dislocations (29)– between the two generate the entire dramatic tension in the play.
(30)
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What surprises Krapp is maybe the intuition derived from his selected audio
memories, which —“like history, according to Foucault— only determine what [he is]
in the process of differing from.” (31) The tapes don't fix his identity, they rather
revolve, “disperse it into [...] essential otherness.”(32) “And if there’s a dislocation
between [the] seeing [of Krapp] and [the] saying [of the tape], if there’s a gap
between them, an irreducible distance, it only means that you can’t solve the problem
of knowledge (or rather, of “knowledges”) by invoking a correspondence or
conformity of terms. You have to look elsewhere for what links and weaves them
together [...], in another dimension.” (33)
When the machine retrieves «unwanted memories» (34), Krapp, infuriated,
“curses, switches off, winds tape forward, switches on again” (35) until the moment,
towards the end of the performance, in which he decides to start a new recording
(“Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to
believe I was ever as bad as that”) (36) only to stop a few seconds later and resume
the listening session, this time until its end. Realizing the impossibility of voluntarily
recovering the past «even when previously recorded on tapes and carefully archived
in boxes» (37), both the play and the tape find their conclusion with the image of
«Krapp motionless staring before him, his “last tape” left running silently. » (38)
«Being?—or remaining?... »
—Krapp
The gestural vocabulary of the piece –the «hesitations, interruptions through
Krapp’s manipulation of his recordings» (39) mirrored by the frequent pauses of his
recorded voice– offers the prompt to a reading of the play as a Derridean critique of
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the archive. (40) Both Beckett and Derrida seem to understand the archive as a
gesture (41). Beckett characters, like modern institutions (42), «experience their
enunciation of the past as a duty or an obligation. » (43) Their «gestures of insatiable
collecting and sheltering [...] are transformed into the potential of a legible, purposeful
“History” when encompassed by the shape of the archive. » (44)
Both authors profoundly believe in the archive’s «lack of neutrality, or failure
of objectivity » (45), and it is this particular, apparently defective feature what
«makes the very structure of the archive meaningful. » (46) Forgetting and silence are
as central in Beckett’s theatre of memory (47) as is repression in Derrida’s critique.
Drawing from the evolution of Freudian psychoanalysis, Derrida considers repression
an inherent component of the archival gesture (48), not «something to be overcome,
but rather [...] a symptom [...] to be placed at the center of our thinking about not only
inscription but of collecting (contextualizing) those inscriptions in time. The
implementation of an archive, collecting for the archive, and drawing narratives from
that collection are acts which shelter and efface the history of the coming-into-being
of those gestures. » (49) «Repression shadows the narratives drawn from [both
Beckett’s and Derrida’s] archives »(50), which, consequently, seem “to shelter
[themselves] and, sheltered, to conceal [themselves].” (51)
In the choice of an audio archive for Krapp’s Last Tape is implicit the same
«peculiar structure of temporality» (52) that orients the archive described by Derrida.
Defined as a «space of beginnings and futurities» (53) — “Arkhe, we recall, names at
once the commencement and the commandment” (54)— the archive is also intended as
the “place from which order is given.” (55)
As «a place from which the order of things [...] is governed» (56), the «spatial reality
of the archive» assumes a parallel «temporal and spectral entity. » (57) For Derrida
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the archive is always associated with anxiety –«precisely an anxiety about the
possibility of loss» (58): “it is [...] the question of a response, of a promise, of a
responsibility for tomorrow.” (59) Similarly, Krapp «records his autobiography on
tapes, thus arming himself against forgetting (60)—hoping that in old age, when
memory fails, he can always turn to his tape recorder in order to remember crucial
moments of his past. » (61)
Beckett, however, offers his characters the opportunity to «disassemble the
acts of concealment implicit in the archive» (62) by placing them «beyond or in
opposition to the “shelter” of the archive’s structured embodiment of the past. » (63)
His dramatic work is filled with «moments of resurgence. » (64) «A site of refuge or
an external threat [...] depending [...] on the context (65), Beckett’s archive «cannot be
defined unequivocally as either end-point or site of inauguration and thus cannot be
rejected in toto. » (66) Beckett’s audio-visual archive, with its constant
discontinuances, «is always both a “post-” and a “pre-”; it is [...] equally the resting
place of history’s fragments as well as a site from which new histories can be made. »
(67)
«Be again, be again. All that old misery. Once wasn’t enough for you. »
—Krapp
Krapp’s expression is blank, his tone opaque as he delivers the last, enigmatic words
before the final tableau. They could refer to a «rejection of the archival limits or a
surrender to them. » (68) The archive has revealed itself as an «impediment to “be
again”»—the machine can only enable the “again”, not being itself. (69)
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The final image on stage can be interpreted as «an instance of dispossession as much
as [...] a gesture of resistance. » (70) With the “last tape” running in silence, Beckett
sets «the machinery of inscription and its gesture towards historical specificity against
themselves. » (71) Krapp, become memory (72), and Time are left alone with one
another, but the spectre of the archive is still perceivable in the recorder mechanism
audible in the background, “a trace” “neither present nor absent, [...] neither visible
nor invisible.” (73)
“Being—or remaining?” Krapp’s question hovers unanswered: “it is a question of the
future, the question of the future itself.” (74)
Michael Gambon as Krapp in the Gate Theatre production, April—May 2010.
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Photo: Pat Redmond.
Image source:
http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape-(1)
Notes
(1) R.Reginio, Samuel Beckett, the Archive and the Problem of History in S. Kennedy,
K.Weiss, Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive, 2009, p.115.
(2) U.Maude, The Body of Memory: Beckett and Merleau-Ponty in R.Lane, Beckett
and Philosophy, 2002, p. 115.
(3) R.Reginio, Ibid., p.111.
(4) A.Badiou, A Theatre of Operations in A Theater Without Theater, curated by
M.J.Borja-Villel (p. 27)
(5) R.Begam, Beckett and Postfoundationalism in R.Lane, Beckett and Philosophy,
2002, p. 26.
(6) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Re-figuring the Stage Body through the Mechanical Reproduction of Memory in L.Ben-Zyi and A.Moorjani, Beckett at 100. Revolving It All,
2008, p. 202.
(7) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p. 210.
(8) S.Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape, quoted in A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p. 207.
(9) U.Maude, Ibid.
(10) S.Beckett quoted in A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.206.
(11) S.Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape,1958. Samuel Beckett The Complete Dramatic
Work, 1986, p.216.
(12) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.206.
(13) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.209.
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(14) S. Beckett quoted in A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid.
(15) S.Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape, p.217.
(16) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.206.
(17) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.207.
(18) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid.
(19) U.Maude, Ibid., p.113.
(20) U.Maude, Ibid.
(21) R.Barthes, Camera Lucida, 1980, p.82.
(22) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid.
(23) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.209.
(24) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.202.
(25) S.Beckett, Production Notebook for Das Letzte Band, Schiller-Theater-Werkstatt,
Berlin, 1969 quoted in A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.203.
(26) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.202.
(27) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid.
(28) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.205.
(29) G.Deleuze, Life as a Work of Art, conversation with D.Eribon, 1986.
(30) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.203.
(31) G.Deleuze, Ibid., p.95.
(32) G.Deleuze, Ibid.
(33) G.Deleuze, Ibid., p.97.
(34) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.209.
(35) S.Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape, p.220.
(36) S.Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape, p.222.
(37) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p.212.
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(38) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid.
(39) R.Reginio, Samuel Beckett, the Archive and the Problem of History in S.
Kennedy, K.Weiss, Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive, 2009, p.112.
(40) Ibid.
(41) Ibid.
(42) R.Reginio, Ibid., p.111.
(43) Ibid.
(44) Ibid.
(45) R.Reginio, Ibid., p.112.
(46) Ibid.
(47) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p. 204.
(48) R.Reginio, Ibid., p.112.
(49) Ibid.
(50) Ibid.
(51) J.Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression quoted by R.Reginio, Ibid.
(52) J.Boulter, Archives of the End: Embodied History in Samuel Beckett’s Plays in S.
Kennedy, K.Weiss, Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive, 2009, p.131.
(53) Ibid.
(54) J.Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression in J.Boulter, Ibid.
(55) J.Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression in J.Boulter, Ibid.
(56) J.Boulter, Ibid.
(57) Ibid.
(58) Ibid.
(59) Ibid.,p.132
(60) A.Rodriguez-Gago, Ibid., p. 204.
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(61) Ibid.
(62) R.Reginio, Ibid., p.113.
(63) Ibid.
(64) Ibid.
(65) Ibid., p.114.
(66) J.Boulter, Ibid., p.124.
(67) Ibid.
(68) R.Reginio, Ibid., p.115.
(69) Ibid., p.117.
(70) Ibid., p.119.
(71) Ibid.
(72) S.A.Termelez, Mémoire-Oubli, ou le devenoir-le souvenir in Le théâtre
innomable de Samuel Beckett, 2012, p.112.
(73) J.Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression in J.Boulter, Ibid., p. 132.
(74) J.Derrida, Ibid.
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