Performativity and fragmentation in Samuel Beckettʼs That Time

Abstract

ABSTRACT Samuel Beckett’s stage play That Time offers an aesthetic exploration of the paradoxical and deconstructive nature of identity and selfhood where the ability of narrative acts to express and capture a preexistent, originary identity is put into question. That Time implies that there is no such core identity and that any identity is constituted by performing and narrating one’s selfhood, thus questioning the hierarchy of the signifier and the signified. In this essay, I therefore read this play alongside Judith Butler’s notions of performativity, citationality, and subject formation in order to explore That Time’s constitution of the self and to show that Beckett’s play and its performance present a perfect instance of how narrative, to use Butler’s description, can bespeak its own impossibility, i.e., to deconstruct itself at the moment of its construction. I aim to reveal some key intersections between That Time and Butler’s thought since the former allows one to aesthetically experience her philosophical ideas and the latter aids in better articulating the complexity of the play’s performance.