Social Authority Within: Samuel Beckett’s Not I

Abstract

Samuel Beckett's literary sympathies with underdogs enslaved to authoritative figures, found in his earliest plays, continued in a more or less subdued form in his later plays: Not I is a good case in point thematizing a social authority psychologically embedded within a subject. The incessant bouts of self-defense, or confessional, which Mouth carries out on a dark stage is directed to an inner authority. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1931), Freud’s diagnosis for individuals torn between the opposite calls of a social order-- which he called, by turns, civil society, civilization, and culture--and of individual freedom was a "neurosis." What Not I dramatizes seems to be this state of neurosis suffered by a subject bound to the contradictory calls of an internal social authority, which forces Mouth to carry on a confessional till she obtains a symbolically/linguistically viable social title of "I," and of her individualistic denial of the position("what?..who?..no!.. she!.."). Mouth’s ordeal on stage does not signify the psychological pressure of the social system, with its disciplinary measures of guilt, justice, and punishment, triumphs over individualistic irregularities and abnormalities, for her "maddened" confession will never see its closure. The opposite psychological forces at work inside Mouth, who is both "in" and "out[side]" "this world," will keep engaging in an eternal battle. In a way, she is a perfect parable about us humans living within a system, “discontent" and hung between the contradictory calls of individualism and social collectiveness.