Abstract
This chapter approaches the body in Beckett’s theatre by way of Artaud’s conception of an affective athlete and Deleuze and Guattari’s accounts of affect. By examining Beckett’s interest in Dante’s Belacqua, his Company and Act Without Words 1, it argues that the body in performances of Beckett’s work undergoes becomings, and a becoming-animal, through the precise limitation of affect and through the fabrication of carefully restricted assemblages. Inventing the concept of belacquobatics, this chapter also provides a new means for thinking affect in theatre and performance theory.
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- 1.
For a more comprehensive account of the genesis and reception of Artaud’s affective athlete, see Tony Gardner’s article Breathing’s Hieroglyphics (Gardner 2003).
- 2.
This quotation is taken from Deleuze’s study of Francis Bacon’s painting and is made with brief reference to Beckett’s own figures. In accordance with our research method, we will not here explore the comments Deleuze makes on Beckett in this text. In brief, Deleuze’s argument is that the Beckettian figure, like Bacon’s, is frequently condemned to trundle endlessly within a carefully circumscribed environment (FB: 29).
- 3.
For the remainder of this study, the play will be referred to as Act Without Words.
- 4.
Quotations from Dante are taken from Allen Mandelbaum’s translation which is available as part of the Electronic Literature Foundation’s research edition of The Divine Comedy.
- 5.
Both Beckett and Cixous in the previous quotation are making reference to the fact that the Pilgrim’s meeting with Belacqua is the first instance in which Dante permits him to smile.
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Koczy, D. (2018). Belacquobatics: Deleuze, Affect and Beckett’s Affective Athleticism. In: Beckett, Deleuze and Performance. Performance Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95618-3_4
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