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Automation and Crystalline Description in Beckett 615

cinematographic consciousness is not us, the spectator, nor the hero; it is

the camera . . . (Deleuze 2009: 21)

Discussing the role of art in Deleuzes philosophy, Simon OSullivanhas written of an aesthetic function of transformation that extendsthe boundaries of what can be experienced (OSullivan 2006: 52). For

Deleuze, the artist promotes encounters that disrupt the given structuresof consciousness. Artworks oppose habitual patterns of thought byconfronting us with a world that obeys only its own peculiar logic.When Deleuze and Guattari claim that the sole law of creation is thatthe composition must stand up on its own, they are working to definethe artwork as a self-positing creation that does not depend upon thespectator (Deleuze and Guattari 2009: 164). Their ideal artwork would

not appeal to existing concepts, ideas and habits of perception but wouldimpose its own modes of thought upon us.

Cinema, for Deleuze, is exemplary in this regard. Deleuze arguesthat Dziga Vertovs Man with a Movie-Camera, for example, offersus the perception of a non-human eye that has passed into matteritself, creating a vision of the world in the absence of subjectivity

(Deleuze 2009: 838).1 Further, the cinematic form is uniquely well

equipped to force such encounters upon us. Cinema, for Deleuze,automates our perception and achieves a direct correspondence betweenimage and thought. We perceive and think through a cinematographicconsciousness that belongs to the images alone. It is the materialautomatism of images which produces from the outside a thought whichit imposes, as the unthinkable in our intellectual automatism (Deleuze

2010: 173). For Deleuze, the cinema appears as an immensely powerfultool for provoking unthinkable encounters. In Vertov, our intellectualautomatism is rerouted through a sequence of images that follows itsown logic and forces an audience to follow this logic in turn.

Theatre, for Deleuze, appears to be far less likely to provide suchencounters (Cull 2009: 12).2 In One Less Manifesto, Deleuzes onlyextended study of theatrical practice, Deleuze praises Carmelo Benefor presenting us with passages of variation that move between theestablished forms of majority perception. Benes theatre performs,for Deleuze, an important political function in cultivating a minorityconsciousness within his audience (Deleuze 2000a). Deleuzes cinema

books, however, may leave us doubting the efficacy of Benes practice.Here, Deleuze maintains that there is no theatrical equivalent of the

screens direct correspondence between image and thought.3 We retain ahigh degree of autonomy in relation to the stage. Benes audience appear,

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from the perspective of cinematic automatism, to remain spectators toand not participants with the movement of his work. This is problematic,in Deleuzes view, because pre-existing structures of thought are liable

to obscure Benes revolutionary potential.4 While consciousness remainsdivided from the images onstage, dramatic works will be less capableof imposing an alterior logic upon us. The theatrical form appearsill equipped to disrupt our intellectual automatism and provoke anencounter with the unthinkable.

In Deleuzes account, film has itself confronted and overcome similar

problems. Deleuzes modern cinema develops in response to a growingawareness of our intellectual automatism, expressed as a crisis ofclich.5 A clich is a sensory-motor image of the thing . . . but, if oursensory-motor schemata jam or break, then a different type of imagecan appear: a pure optical-sound image (Deleuze 2010: 1920). Deleuzedraws on Henri Bergsons accounts of habitual and attentive recognition

in order to theorise both the cinematic clich and the emergence ofencounters that disrupt its reign.6 In habitual recognition, we associatean object with a single recollection-image. When this is not possible,attentive recognition allows us to draw upon a range of memories inorder to construct a coherent description of the object. Recognition

succeeds when we feel ourselves able to understand the object beforeus. It is a matter of reducing the singular object or encounter to

its resemblance to what we have previously perceived; an intellectualautomatism that extracts a clich from the image and allows us to remainwithin habitual modes of thought.

For Deleuze, cinematic automation can force this process ofrecognition to fail. It is not the recollection-image or attentiverecognition which gives us the proper equivalent of the optical-sound

image, it is rather the disturbances of memory and the failures ofrecognition (Deleuze 2010: 52). Through montage, film can carry usthrough sequences of dislocated or illogically connected images thatcannot be integrated into our habitual modes of thought. Cinematicspectators experience the failure of their intellectual automatism astheir sensory-motor schema breaks down. Yet the cinematographic

consciousness continues to run; perception and thought continue beyondthis failure to recognise the images on-screen. In this way, the cinemacan impose another mode of thought upon its audience, countering the

automatism that orders experience as a series of clichs. What Deleuzecalls an intolerable and unbearable pure optical-sound image mightstand forth in its singularity, refusing to conform to our expectationsand drawing thought beyond its habitual bounds.7 As in Vertov, we

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may come to perceive and think in accordance with another strange anddifferent logic that forces us to discover and confront what would be

unthinkable within our habitual structures of consciousness.

We may ask whether Deleuzes cinematic concepts can be of useto theatre and performance. Deleuze, in an interview with Cahiers duCinema that followed the publication of Cinema 2, commented: Theencounter between two disciplines doesnt take place when one beginsto reflect on the other, but when one discipline realizes that it hasto resolve, for itself and by its own means, a problem similar to one

confronted by the other (Deleuze 2000b: 367).8 Here, Deleuze expressessomething that animates this essay. In drawing on Deleuzes cinematicstudies in reference to Becketts theatre, I am not attempting to denythe differences between film and performance. Although Beckett doesachieve an automation of his stage that rendersPlayandNot Ipeculiarlywell suited to this form of analysis, it is not a question of claiming

that these pieces are cinematic in any strong sense. Deleuzes thoughtwill, however, help us theorise the emergence of pure optical-soundimages and unthinkable encounters within Becketts drama. Perhaps thisimplies that Deleuzes dismissal of the theatre within his cinema studiesis somewhat hasty. Ultimately, however, this essay is merely intended

to perform its own encounter between Deleuze and Beckett, in the hopethat something as yet unthought the presentation ofPlayandNot Iasexamples of an immersive and immanent crystal-theatre shall emergein the process.

I. Automation: A Pure and Theatrical Optical Sound Situation

Beckett studies has frequently emphasised Becketts desire for complete

control of his stage. For instance, Deirdre Bair draws our attention to adiscussion between Beckett and the playwright Jean Reavey:

His maxim that every playwright should . . . (be) in control of everything

that happens on stage, envisioning it as if he were the audience became

difficult to follow, so that his plays became increasingly unconventional . . . It

was the only way in which he could gain the stark, controlled effect he sought.

(Bair 1990: 584)

This meeting took place while Beckett was writing Play. Completed, Play

would achieve Becketts ambition for control in both automating hisaudiences perception and including his audience within the theatricalconstruction.

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together within a single work. As such, Beckett can allow for elements ofvariation as no variation could bring audio and visual elements together.

Anthony Minghella directed a screen version ofPlay (2001). Through-

out, Minghella emphasises the automation of the audiences perceptionwith a mechanical whirr that accompanies movements of the camera.The inquisitorial light becomes a panoptical surveillance system,presenting Becketts figures from a variety of angles and depths andfrequently moving while they speak. Rather than adding to the work, asDeleuze might lead us to expect, however, we shall see that Minghellas

camera consciousness disrupts the direct relationship between spectatorand image that Becketts theatre achieves.

Bair suggests that Play includes its audience as a character: Theexperience is almost as if the audience becomes the fifth character(if the light is the fourth), wandering accidentally on stage during aperformance . . . (Bair 1990: 582). Alternatively, we might ask whether

the spotlight does not so much function as a separate character fromthe audience but automates the manner in which they are broughtonto the stage. Rather than permitting us to retain the position of adetached spectator, Beckett includes his audience within the theatricalsituation. Unaware of one another, the figures onstage address the

audience directly and under the spotlights commands. Whenever theheads cease to recount their tale, it is to address the audience-light itself.

M: Looking for something. In my face. Some truth. In my eyes. Not even.

{Spot fromM to w2. Laugh as before fromw2 cut short as spot from her toM.} M: Mere eye. No mind. Opening and shutting on me. Am I as much

{Spot off M.Blackout. Three seconds. Spot onM. Am I as much as . . . being

seen? (Beckett 2006: 317)

Writing to George Devine as he prepared to direct Play, Beckettsuggested that: The inquirer (light) begins to emerge as no less a victimof his enquiry than they and (as needing) to be free, within narrow

limits, literally to act the part, i.e. to vary if only slightly his speeds andintensities (Beckett 2001: 112). Here, we have the wavering perceptionof the theatrical spectator, as understood by Deleuze, retaining his orher distance and autonomy in relation to the image. But Beckett refusesus this freedom, automating our actual perception and including us,

through the light, within the theatrical situation as its victim. Beckettsspotlight automates the audiences perception in the same gesture as

it automates the figures onstage. Our perception is automated by theimage as our perception automates the image itself. In this way, the

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audiences perception of the image is rendered inseparable from theimage perceived.

In Deleuzes terms, Becketts audience are victims of the failure

of recognition. The spotlight, the audiences perception of the imageand ultimately the audience themselves are inseparable from an imagewhich they cannot recognise and integrate into their sensory-motorschema. As Knowlson and Pilling write of Plays spotlight: It doesnot function, then, only by prompting them into speech, but isitself prompted like them to enact and re-enact a role within this

strange, purgatorial world (Knowlson and Pilling 1979: 119). AlthoughMinghellas camera consciousness automates our perception, it weakensthis sense of our participation with Plays world. Minghellas camera,moving independently of the characters, lacks this element of victimhoodin which the audience, through the spotlight, are forced to enact ahelpless and impotent role that shares much with Plays characters.With the spotlight, we too are trapped within this image; perceptionand consciousness forced to continue through our failure of recognition.

In his earliest drama, Beckett included references to his audience andtheir efforts to make sense of his work. Vladimir and Estragon turnto the auditorium, declaring Inspiring prospects and . . . that bog

(Beckett 2006: 1516). Endgames Clov turns his telescope upon usobserving: A multitude . . . in transports . . . of joy. {Pause} Thats whatI call a magnifier (106). These darkly comic inclusions of the audienceare mirrored by characters concerned that they are beginning to meansomething (108). In Happy Days, Winnies tale of the Shower (orCooker) couple dramatises, ridicules and finally refuses the audiencesdemand to be told the meaning of Becketts play.9 FromGodottoHappyDays, the audience and their struggle to recognise the images beforethem appear in Becketts texts.Playradicalises this tendency by drawingthe audiences perception into the image itself. Now, the audience arenot only unable to construct a coherent description of the images beforethem but are included within the image as victims of this failure. Wehave passed from the presentation of a pure optical-sound image, whereMinghellas production perhaps remains, and towards the inclusion ofthe audience within a pureand theatricaloptical-soundsituation.

As argued here, Ruby Cohn identifies Play as marking a break inBecketts development. In the post-Play plays fictional and theater

situation and place can converge theatereality. InPlaythe light belongsto theatereality (Cohn 1980: 28). Cohns conception of theaterealityparallels, in some respects, our notion of a pure and theatrical optical-sound situation. From Godot to Happy Days, Cohn argues, Becketts

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theatrical spaces are intended to represent fictional worlds the countryroad where Godots tramps are waiting; Endgames house or shelter.While the light in Happy Days represents an unforgiving sun, Plays

spotlight belongs to a necessarily theatrical situation. Where Winniefictionalises her audience through the Shower (or Cooker) couple, thecharacters ofPlay address the spotlight, and the audience, directly andonly because the audiences gaze has fallen upon them. This goes farbeyond a brief suspension of the fourth wall, experienced as Estragon orClov insult the auditorium. In theatereality, Beckett no longer produces

a fictional representation, even one that draws attention to its statusas fiction or representation. Rather, the pure optical-sound situationencloses audience and stage within a single world, the fourth wallextending to the boundaries of the auditorium.

In Deleuzes account, heroes of the modern cinema find themselvesenclosed within and part of a world in which the sensory-motor schema

has broken down. Man is not himself a world other than the one inwhich he experiences the intolerable and feels himself trapped . . . thepsychic situation of the seer, who sees better and further than he canreact, that is, think (Deleuze 2010: 164). Rather than offering a theatreof representation, Becketts pure and theatrical optical-sound situation

becomes a device for immersing the audience within his own intolerableworld. We do not merely observe this theatre but find ourselves to be

an immanent and constituent part of Becketts creation. Automated,our perception is at once an inquisitor and victim of the inquisition;both the vision and the casualty of an eye that sees, in Deleuzes terms,further than we can think. Locked within Becketts unbearable world, wefind ourselves belonging to the unthinkable image. While theatre mighttraditionally ask to be interpreted, this pure and theatrical optical-sound

situation demands that it is lived. It forces itself and an encounter uponus that draws thought and consciousness beyond their habitual bonds.We can now ask, expanding our discussion to include Becketts Not I,what may be at stake in such an encounter.

II. Description: A Crystal-Theatre

Like Play, Becketts Not I demands the construction of a pure andtheatrical optical-sound situation. Eight feet above the stage and a little

off-centre, we must spotlight a womans mouth while leaving the rest ofher body in darkness. A covered figure, identified as Auditor, remains

silent and still but for four brief and diminishing gestures of hopelesscompassion that punctuate MOUTHs monologue. Beckett indicates a

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pause: There is just enough pause to contain it [Auditors gesture] asMOUTH recovers from vehement refusal to relinquish the third person

(Beckett 2006: 374). Spoken in the third person throughout, MOUTHs

text is delivered at pace but broken up by bursts of laughter, piercingscreams and brief, nervy pauses. From her words, we gather that she kepta near permanent silence until her seventieth year when, while pickingcowslips in a field one April morning, she began to both hear and speakher buzzing of words.10

. . . and all the time this ray or beam . . . like moonbeam . . . but prob-

ably not . . . certainly not . . . always the same spot . . . now bright . . . now

shrouded . . . but always the same spot . . . as no moon could . . . [. . . ] all part

of the same wish to . . . torment . . . (Beckett 2006: 378)

Not I gives us MOUTH who speaks, Auditor who hears and theaudience who see. Theatereality is produced, in part, through thisscheme that extends the stage into the auditorium. Not Is stationaryspotlight, like Plays mobile spotlight, casts the audience into aninquisitorial role from which we too emerge as a victim. As in Play,recognition fails. Not I, however, goes beyond Plays heautonomy ofsound and vision and achieves a more radical splintering and autonomy

of its parts.Not Is audience will ask themselves who or what is speaking. But

MOUTHs monologue resists this question. She is herself not I; split

from her thoughts, her voice and her body.11 Five times, she repeats. . . what? . . who? . . no! . . she! . ., refusing to surrender the thirdperson (Beckett 2006: 37782). Further, MOUTH insists that she hasnot begun to touch upon the most vital element of her tale and renounceswhat little she has told as being a mere diversion and mistake.12

. . . something she had to tell . . . could that be it? . . something that wouldtell.. . how it was (. . .) something she didnt know herself (. . .) what? . .

not that? . . [. . .] nothing she could tell . . . try something else . . . think

of something else... oh long after... sudden flash ... not that either (...)

so on . . . [. . .] keep on . . . trying . . . not knowing what . . . what she was

trying . . . (Beckett 2006: 3812; my emphases)

We circle, with Becketts text, around this obscure kernel of somethingthat cannot be spoken. The fragmented and repetitive monologue

unfolds like the testimony of one who is missing and whose final objector meaning cannot be reached. Failing to speak this something, the

voice must begin again and MOUTH must return to the moment thather speech began. . . . new every morning . . . back in the field . . . April

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morning . . . (Beckett 2006: 383). As our own concentration flags,MOUTHs stream of words may periodically rush together into a kind of

white noise; the materiality of language overtaking its signifying function

and forming a literal buzzing beneath the threshold of meaning.13 Thememories that MOUTH relates the field in April, a single tear fallingonto her hand, a day in court arise as sudden flashes that refuseto tell us how it was. Rather than forming a narrative whole, likePlays tale of adultery, the fragments of MOUTHs monologue refuse tocommunicate amongst each other. MOUTHs discourse is splintered into

sudden flashes, separated by illogical cuts and dislocations, and gainingan asignifying affective autonomy. Finally, Auditors gesture diminishesinto a barely perceptible quiver, no longer representing compassion butreceding into a mere intensive vibration of the figures cloak.

In Not I, there are no longer two heautonomous elements of soundand vision but a fragmentation and dispersal of the theatrical situation

into a range of autonomous singularities. As she fails to tell us how itwas, as irrational cuts and intervals splinter Becketts text and his world,we fail to recognise the pure and theatrical optical-sound situationin which we are immersed. Beyond this failure of our intellectualautomatism, however, Becketts theatre forces another mode of thought

upon us; the crystalline description of Deleuzes crystal-image.In Bergsons habitual and attentive recognition, we draw upon the

virtual images of memory. These are actualised as recollection-imagesthat make sense of the present. We link a perception-image withrecollection-images in order to construct the action-images of oursensory-motor schema. Memory makes sense of the world by findingresemblances between present experiences and our past. As noted,however, the pure optical-sound situation causes the sensory-motor

schema to break down. Here, memory does not seem equal to theencounter. We cannot make sense of what is happening to us. Withinhis cinema books, Deleuze claims that his crystal-images are the truegenetic element of the pure optical-sound image (Deleuze 2010: 67). Itis an actual-virtual circuit on the spot, and not an actualisation of thevirtual in accordance with a shifting actual (77).

In Play and Not I, Beckett encloses his audience within a crystal-theatre. As no virtual image is equal to the situation, recognition fails.Yet we remain trapped within Becketts drama. As we fail to actualise

any virtual image in relation to Becketts world, we enter onto Deleuzesactual-virtual circuit. Deleuze claims that, in the course of this thoughtthat thinks through its failure, the process of attentive recognition mayachieve a kind of hyperactivity. Virtual memory, in its entirety and

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624 Daniel Koczy

in an indefinitely prolonged process, is called upon to make sense ofthe encounter. Crystalline description stands for its object, . . . both

creates and erases it . . . It is now the description itself which constitutes

the sole decomposed and multiplied object (Deleuze 2010: 122). Theimmanence of Becketts crystal-theatre is founded upon the prolongationof this process. Trapped within the actual-virtual circuit, any oppositionbetween spectator and spectacle, real and imaginary, subject and objectthat description establishes is erased as soon as it is posed.

What is Plays spotlight? It is a spotlight, a common enoughtheatrical device. Once we affirm that Play is merely a theatricalconstruction, however, we discover that this light has drawn us intoa role within Becketts fiction and that this role does not belong tothe imagination alone. Once we say that the spotlight represents animaginary inquisition, we find ourselves to be the reality behind theinquisitor and that our pursuit for answers is very real. InNot Iwe havea mouth speaking, a figure listening and the audience observing. Weare invited to understand the piece as an explicitly theatrical construct,simply set in whatever theatre it is performed. However, throughoutNot I, the relationship between spectator and spectacle is continuallyundermined. Auditor is not alone in appearing to be both a spectator

and a part of the performance. While the audience find themselves castinto their inquisitorial role, MOUTH is presented as a spectator to her

own speech; unsure, as we are, precisely what is being said of whomor why. All three audience, Auditor and MOUTH are continuallypassing through the roles of spectator and spectacle, forcing the circuitof our description to begin again and fail again. In Becketts crystal-theatre, we are at once I and not I; both audience and actor, torturerand victim, the automaton and the visionary.

In an essay that deals with the ethical experience of Deleuzesphilosophy, Aislinn ODonnell describes the cinematic hero in preciselyBeckettian terms. The figure of resistance is not the hero. It is theone who fails. Fails again. Fails better. Wandering takes the placeof action (ODonnell 2011: 229). If Becketts crystal-theatre is atheatre of resistance then this is because it disrupts the given structures

of consciousness. For Deleuze, the perpetual failure of crystallinedescription transfigures the power of memory. Memory ceases to fix theworld and our place within it in accordance to our habitual patterns

of thought. Instead, our encounter with the unthinkable prolongs theinterval between perception and understanding, action and reaction.By means of this gap, memory is deployed as a creative becoming;what Bergson would call creative emotion.14 As our description is

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multiplied, displaced and modified, the various clichs that haveautomated our thinking lose their sensory-motor coordinates. Taken

up by this process of creation and erasure, their interconnections

enter a potentially limitless series of metamorphoses. Immersed inBecketts world, our consciousness takes on Becketts fragmentation anddisorder; a constellation of singularities as we graspNot Is autonomousintensive flashes, a schizophrenic split as we are caught astride Playsheautonomous worlds of sound and vision. In Becketts crystal-theatre,we find ourselves living and breathing a logic that is not our own;

our failure to think becoming the power of thought to breach its ownboundaries and wander, briefly, beyond its walls.

Notes

1. Due to the brevity of this essay, it has not been possible to offer a full account ofDeleuzes complex notions of the outside and the unthought in thought as theyare developed within his cinema books and throughout his wider philosophicalproject.

2. Discussing Deleuzes antipathy towards the theatre, Cull writes: For instance,we cannot ignore Deleuzes occasional denigration of theatre in relation tohis apparently favoured art of the cinema. In LAbcdaire, for instance, asCharles Stivale has reported, Deleuze remarks that theatre tends not to provide

opportunities for encounters, though with certain exceptions (like Bob Wilson,Carmelo Bene). (Cull 2009: 12).

3. Ronald Bogue, in his commentary on Deleuzes cinema studies, situatesDeleuzes conception of the inferiority of the theatre entirely within hisdiscussions of the relationship between audio and visual elements of film (Bogue2003: 194) Theatre cannot, for Deleuze, create the cinematic single soundcontinuum where the speech-act becomes inseparable from the out-of-field,non-verbal eruptions and the films soundtrack or incidental music. Deleuze,however, identifies automation and its relationship to the unthinkable inthought as a more fundamental difference between the cinematic and theatricalexperience. It is cinemas automatic character which gives it this capacity in

contrast to the theatre (Deleuze 2010: 172).4. One senses that Deleuze is compelled to write One Less Manifesto partly in

order to critique the theatres representational and molar functions and clear theway for a genuine encounter with Benes world of universal becoming (Deleuze2000a: 256). Throughout, Deleuze argues against molar structures of thoughtthat identify only a representational function of the theatre; particularly thosethat would glorify and limit the theatre to its capacity to represent conflicts,contradictions and oppositions (Deleuze 2000a: 252). Deleuzes somewhatoffhand dismissal of so-called angry women who accuse Bene of sexism andphallocentrism in his representation of the female body can be explained (if notentirely excused) by Deleuzes determination to present Benes drama as a theatre

of minority becoming that would be, for Deleuze, impervious to such critique.5. For a discussion of the crisis of clich, habitual modes of thought and the

corresponding development of time- and crystal-images, see the last chapter ofCinema 1: The Movement-Image (Deleuze 2009: 20119) and the first chapterofCinema 2: The Time-Image(Deleuze 2010: 123).

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6. See the third chapter ofCinema 2: The Time-Image(Deleuze 2010: 4252).7. A purely optical and sound situation does not extend into action, any more than

it is induced by an action. It makes us grasp, it is supposed to make us grasp,something intolerable and unbearable (Deleuze 2010: 17).

8. Here, Deleuze is discussing the relationship between cinema and Bergsonsphilosophy in reference to their shared concerns with movement and time.

9. . . . this man Shower or Cooker no matter and the woman . . . standing theregaping at me . . . Whats she doing? he says stuck up to her diddies in thebleeding ground coarse fellow What does it mean? he says Whats it meantto mean? and so on lot more stuff like that usual drivel . . . (Beckett 2006:156).

10. ... what? . . the buzzing? . . yes ... all the time the buzzing ... so-called ...in the ears . . . though of course actually . . . not in the ears at all . . . in theskull . . . (Beckett 2006: 378). MOUTH refers to this buzzing throughout andin such a way as to imply that it is a voice in her skull, transmitted by her mouth.

11. MOUTH is clearly not in control of the buzzing voice which she is transmitting.Further, she insists on the absence of any physical or emotional feeling. Duringthe first minutes of the play, she asks whether she is being punished and mustsuffer for her sins before asserting that she is not suffering after all (Beckett2006: 377). Though she screams, she does so only in order to see whether sucha thing is possible and what might come of it (Beckett 2006: 378). She does notknow whether she is standing, sitting or lying down and merely presumes thather eyelids have continued to blink (Beckett 2006: 377, 378).

12. This element ofNot Is construction should put one in mind ofThe Unnamableand Becketts question: What am I to do, what shall I do, what should I do,in my situation, how proceed? By aporia pure and simple? Or by affirmations

and negations invalidated as soon as uttered, or sooner or later . . . Otherwiseit would be quite hopeless. But it is quite hopeless (Beckett 2009: 285). Indeed,Knowlson reports: Asked further about the sources ofNot I, Beckett referredquestioners back to his own novel The Unnamable (Knowlson 1997: 590).

13. This is an experience recounted in Ruby Cohns description ofNot I. As ourconcentration flags in the theatre, MOUTH and her words become for us anactual buzz and a ray (Cohn 1980: 20).

14. In his study of Bergson, for example, Deleuze notes: By means of this interval,something extraordinary is produced or embodied: creative emotion . . . a cosmicMemory, that actualises all the levels at the same time, that liberates manfrom the plane or the level that is proper to him (Deleuze 2006: 111). The

importance of this interval or gap for Deleuzes conception of art encountersthat force thought beyond its habitual bonds has been recently emphasised byboth OSullivan (OSullivan 2006: 456) and ODonnell (ODonnell 2011: 223)to name only two writers who have influenced this study.

References

Bair, Deirdre (1990)Samuel Beckett:A Biography, London: Vintage.Beckett, Samuel (2001) Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment,

ed. Ruby Cohn, London: John Calder.Beckett, Samuel (2006)The Complete Dramatic Works, London: Faber and Faber.Beckett, Samuel (2009) Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable,

New York: Grove Press.Bogue, Ronald (2003)Deleuze on Cinema, New York: Routledge.

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Cohn, Ruby (1980) Just Play: Becketts Theater, Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.

Cull, Laura (2009) Introduction, in Laura Cull (ed.), Deleuze and Performance,Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 121.

Deleuze, Gilles (2000a) One Less Manifesto, trans. Eliane dal Molin and TimothyMurray, in Timothy Murray (ed.), Mimesis, Masochism and Mime: The Politicsof Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought, Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, pp. 23959.

Deleuze, Gilles [1986] (2000b) The Brain is the Screen, in Gregory Flaxman (ed.),The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, pp. 36573.

Deleuze, Gilles [1988] (2006) Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and BarbaraHabberjam, New York: Zone Books.

Deleuze, Gilles [1986] (2009) Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. HughTomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, London: Continuum.

Deleuze, Gilles [1989] (2010) Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinsonand Robert Galeta, London: Continuum.

Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (2009) What is Philosophy?, trans. HughTomlinson and Graham Burchell, London: Verso.

Knowlson, James (1997) Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, London:Bloomsbury.

Knowlson, James and John Pilling (1979)Frescoes of the Skull: The Later Prose andDrama of Samuel Beckett, London: John Calder.

ODonnell, Aislinn (2011) Beyond Sexuality: Of Love, Failure and Revolutions, inFrida Beckmann (ed.),Deleuze and Sex, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 21737.

OSullivan, Simon (2006) Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari; Thought Beyond

Representation, Palgrave.Play, DVD, directed by Anthony Minghella, Ireland, 2001.

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