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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

195570

Breakdown or breakthrough?

deleuzoguattarian schizophrenia and Beckett's gallery of moribunds

Benjamin Keatinge

pp. 81-96

Abstract

Now that we have had a look at this stroll of a schizo, let us compare what happens when Samuel Beckett’s characters decide to venture outdoors. Their various gaits and methods of self-locomotion constitute, in and of themselves, a finely tuned machine. And then there is the function of the bicycle in Beckett’s works: what relationship does the bicycle-horn machine have with the mother-anus machine? […] It is often thought that Oedipus is an easy subject to deal with, something perfectly obvious, a ‘given’ that is there from the very beginning. But that is not so at all: Oedipus presupposes a fantastic repression of desiring-machines. And why are they repressed? To what end? Is it really necessary or desirable to submit to such repression? And what means are to be used to accomplish this? […] At the end of Malone Dies, Lady Pedal takes the schizophrenics out for a ride in a van and a rowboat, and on a picnic in the midst of nature: an infernal machine is being assembled. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1984, pp. 2–3)

Publication details

Published in:

Wilmer S. E., Žukauskaite Audrone (2015) Deleuze and Beckett. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Pages: 81-96

DOI: 10.1057/9781137481146_5

Full citation:

Keatinge Benjamin (2015) „Breakdown or breakthrough?: deleuzoguattarian schizophrenia and Beckett's gallery of moribunds“, In: S. E. Wilmer & A. Žukauskaite (eds.), Deleuze and Beckett, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 81–96.