Being-in-the-World

A Gestaltist View of Beckett’s Dramatic Theory

Abstract

In this paper, I draw a nexus between Gestalt and existentialist approaches to study mind-body relations in Samuel Beckett’s plays that have a tremendous capacity for re-evaluating the already exhausted possibilities of the self to cope with the world, dominated by the impossibility of divine rescue on the one hand and the angry rejection of God on the other. Beckett’s perceptual world is not dominated by purely visual experiences. Therefore, all the outward actions in his plays are manifestations of inner mental processes. Broadly speaking, given his obsession with sciences of the brain and psychology, critics have often emphasised the superiority of mind over body in Beckett’s oeuvre. For them, the rational perception of the external world is informed by the symmetrical articulation of internal holism. Nevertheless, taking a Gestaltist position, my aim in this paper is to rethink and reconfigure the notion of mechanistic holistic rationality, which tends to reveal a sense of order in both inner and outer worlds. Gestalt psychologists, in their focus on how new material that the subject ingests undergoes figure-ground cognitive and existential remodelling, seem to cater to Beckett’s innermost desire to problematise the body-self relationship. By discussing Beckett’s dramatic strategies in the light of Gestalt psychology, my purpose in this paper is to suggest and emphasise the inextricable tension between body and mind, physical and sensory experiences, exteriority and interiority, rather than simply seek a sense of order in external and internal worlds.