Beckett, Lacan and the Gaze

Forming a pair with the voice, the gaze is a central structuring element of Samuel Beckett’s creation. And yet it takes the form of a strangely impersonal visual dimension testifying to the absence of an original exchange of gazes capable of founding personal identity and opening up the world to desire. The collapse of conventional reality and the highlighting of seeing devices—eyes, mirrors, windows—point to the absence of a unified representation. While masks and closed spaces show the visible to be opaque and devoid of any beyond, light and darkness, spectres—manifestations without origin—reveal a realm beyond the confines of identity, where nothing provides a mediatio…