Namelessness from Artaud to Beckett

Abstract

After a period of electroshock therapy, Antonin Artaud claimed to have been able to regain his name and sense of self. The dehiscence of name and identification is reprised in Artaud’s final work, the radio play Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu. This consists of five texts, read by four people. Each text is followed by unintelligible, glossolalic screams performed by Artaud, as if Artaud were reacting against the speech acts performed by others in his name. The structure of this play suggests the predicament of Beckett’s Unnamable: an entity reacting in pain to its attempts to articulate itself in a language that is not his, but theirs.