According to Levinas, the self’s will is “the embodied unity of independence and dependence” (Peperzak 188). The independence is the possibility for the self to announce “I can” and to enjoy things freely. On the contrary, the dependence points to the exposure of the self to the other and in this way the self is vulnerable to be usurped or misunderstood by the other. When encountering the other’s will that goes out of the self’s comprehension, the self’s will, which is exposed to the alien force and still tries to preserve its sovereignty, is conscious of the residual time and seeks to parry the attack from the alien will. Because the other is indeterminate, the self’s will is aware that he cannot conjoin with the non-self (the other). As Levinas says: “To say that the being is partially free immediately raises the problem of the
would go through literary history condemning authors” (62).
relation existing in it between the free part…and the non-free part” (TI 223).
Violence is produced when two wills encounter each other. Thus it presupposes that there is resistance against being totalized. Since the self’s will is graspable by the other’s will and at the same time escapable from it, violence only exists in the non-equation33 between the two wills. As Levinas remarks: “Violence bears upon only a being both graspable and escaping every hold. Without this living contradiction in the being that undergoes violence the deployment of violent force would reduce itself to a labor” (TI 223). To put it in another way, violence disappears while the subject is completely self-possessive and manipulates things at his will. In this sense the self-assured region enacts like a totality. Hence the antagonism of forces between wills cannot amount to a calculable mode because in that way the totality absorbs each individual will and makes violence impossible. Therefore, violence is “an existence that maintains itself outside of the totality” (TI 222). That is, because the alien will is inconceivable, violence cannot be subdued by measurable rules or systems. In consequence violence exists when the self cannot estimate the outcome, and it is incalculable as well as unpredictable for the alien force is like an inexorable and invisible adversary who threatens the self’s sovereign will. As a result, violence appears in the time left by the alien will for the self to avoid the direct attack. So in violence the self has the finite freedom as the
“adjournment by time” (TI 224) and to fight with the unknowable. Hence death or something
“unforeseeable” (TI 225), namely the Other, is the mode of the ultimate violence to which the self is exposed. For violence exists beyond the judgment of the well-made rules, it is considered an excess beyond the institutional limitations and thus it arises from the tensions between the intersubjective relation of the self to the other as someone whom the self cannot make a reduction. In this way the self’s freedom is finite and functions as a self-consciousness that resists being silenced by the force of totality.
Therefore what Beckett tries to give the spectator is not a freedom of self-enjoyment but
33 Levinas states that violence “consists in welcoming a being to which it is inadequate […]” (TI 25).
is a freedom in the face of and in relation to the other (the actor) who is suffering as well as on the verge of dying. This kind of freedom does not guarantee the spectator from the offence that challenges his subjectivity in the viewing process. On the contrary, the violence arising from the tension between the spectator’s will and the actor’s will ( which is a relation of the spectator’s independence from and dependence on the actor and thus is a relation of the self and the other) is incalculable so that the spectator feels a sense of threat as he gets involved in the performance. Consequently, this kind of tension at the same time delivers a sense of freedom and a sense of horror to the spectator, and it contributes to the resistance against the constitution of totality.
The actor as the other calls into question the spectator’s sovereign will that pertains to the subjectivity. Thus in the performance the time of the spectator is that in relation to the other, in this case, the actor. The spectator’s will is dedicated to the actor’s will but it does not yet abdicate its will for self-assurance. In this sense the spectator’s subjectivity lies in the emergence of violence from the confrontation of the actor’s will and the spectator’s will. The spectator’s interrogation or disapproval of what is happening on the stage is his self-awareness of the indeterminacy of the performance. In order to preserve his subjectivity, the spectator must take the risk of embarking on the adventure towards the otherness without return (i.e. without the possibility of grasping meaning in the horizon of his knowledge). The indeterminacy of the performance offends the spectator’s subjectivity but also gives the spectator the finite freedom to make a self-defense. The defense is not of the mode that claims the self-centered enjoyment but is that which converses with the other on the stage. In other words, the spectator, as he does choose to recognize the sense of uncertainty, is deposed of his self-arrogance.
In this way what the performance shows to the spectator is not a possibility for him to prove his subjectivity because he cannot understand its meaning through its visualization.
Rather, it makes obvious the spectator’s obligation to the actor to whom the spectator is
obliged to make a response. Thus the actor’s action of playing in suffering cannot be considered a feigned illness or pain; rather it calls for the spectator’s response after the spectator forgoes his subjective sovereignty. That is, the actor’s action of playing is authentic not because the actor imitates the state of suffering perfectly with which the spectator has empathy, but because the actor’s performance is a mode of existence to which the spectator owes his subjectivity. Beckett’s performance militates against the spectator’s success of self-possession, and thus imposes on the spectator with an indirect threat that seeks not to
“cow” the spectator but forces him to be a free agent whose will is not a heroic one that lays claim on a complete freedom. Hence the spectator’s free will is a kind of consciousness of the other’s suffering with which the spectator’s subjectivity is positioned. Since the violence that occurs in the tension of wills leaves time for the spectator to desire for the infinity, Beckett also provides the opportunity for the spectator to find out his unknown part of himself.
Beckett’s performance is like a threatening adventure for the spectator who is not a coward but is a brave captive to the unknowable.
Conclusion
The basic tenet of what we’ve discussed in this chapter is the asymmetrical relationship Levinas proposes that “I” maintains with the Other, which is an ethical relation indeed. Since an actor is required by Beckett not to actually play on the stage, he is untied from the knot with the character, and it becomes inevitably incumbent on him to face the challenge of the unpredictable. As a result, he is situated in a non-site in which he has an infinite responsibility for the Other. And for the spectator, the playing of the actor imposes a vocative force on the spectator, and it is an imminent and uncompromising calling to which the spectator is obliged to respond. Nevertheless, the events occurring on the stage are either already gone or yet to come ; it is almost impossible to freeze the happening, cut off a slice of it, and regard it as a presence. The spectator cannot synchronize the present moment with the temporality that is
either anterior or posterior to the present. In Beckett’s performance, the time, having its way to concern the self in the moment of the actual staging, is hollowed out of the ordered temporality, because it is founded on the incommensurable temporality between the actor’s time and the spectator’s time, which forms an ethical bond that undoes the order of presence.
Although the actor and the spectator are at the same time tied together with the performance, which causes the sham simultaneity, it is the dispersed temporality that proliferates the possibilities connecting with the Other, rather than an ordered temporalization of the presence.
By so doing, the finite space in the theatre is given the infinite possibilities in virtue of the asymmetrical structure of temporality. Therefore, after we have a general understanding of Beckett’s “asymmetrical relationship” with the Other shown in his performance, in the following chapter, I’d like to further elaborate the time hollowed out of the present from the perspective of Levinasian ethics that regards time as dying, as senescence that goes beyond resuscitation of memory, but is a non-return that concerns the self.