Derrida on Beckett or the Painful Freudian Mark

Raymond Federman tells a touching anecdote about the last time he saw Samuel Beckett. After they finished lunch, when they stood up to leave, Beckett placed his hand on Raymond’s shoulder and asked him: “Do you remember that poem by Mallarmé: ‘Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui . . . ?’” Raymond nodded and then, on the spot, Beckett recited the whole poem, pausing imperceptibly on the words “blanche agonie.” After that they parted, but just before they did so, Beckett told him: “Parfois tu sais, Raymond, c’est pire de ne pas écrire que d’écrire” (Federman 304).

Facing this “blanche agonie,” the “white agony” of the writer, sometimes—according to Beckett—it would be worse not to write than to write. But when would this be the case? In literature, in the realm of fiction, when should a writer, instead of being silent, take his pen and start tracing words upon the white page? When should he or she, like the swan in Mallarmé’s poem (quoted by Beckett), shake with his or her neck “the white agony,” but—as the poem goes—“not the horror of the ground where its plumage is stuck”? As a writer, there would be a moment to do so, to try to shake this whiteness or this agony finally, and that moment was perhaps what Beckett tried to write, to describe; the moment when, while still stuck to the ground, we could shake this whiteness completely, and perhaps then accomplish the dream of finishing, or even better, of not having ever been born. The Beckettian moment in literature was perhaps this moment when, by writing, we could finish with writing, when, finally, it will be better not to write. But perhaps, for him, it was always better not to write—except for those particular moments when it would be worse not to do it, and when, because of this, one must continue writing. That is to say, one must continue writing without reason, just because one feels it would be worse not to do it.

But this is as a writer of literature, since, we assume, Beckett was one. But what about as a philosopher, or as a psychoanalyst? In one of his late (but not one of his last) texts, La veilleuse, Derrida gave himself what he called “a new rule of life”: “Nouvelle règle de vie: respirer sans écriture, désormais, souffler au–delà de l’écriture. Non que je sois essoufflé—ou fatigué d’écrire sous prétexte que l’écriture est tuante. Non, au contraire, je n’en ai jamais autant ressenti la jeune urgence, l’aube même, blanche et vierge. Mais je veux vouloir, décidément, je veux vouloir un renoncement actif et signé à l’écriture, une vie réaffirmée. Donc sans matricide. Il s’agirait de commencer à aimer l’amour sans écriture, sans phrase, sans meurtre. Il faudrait commencer à apprendre à aimer la mère—et la maternité, en somme, si vous préférez lui donner ce nom” (32).

Here Derrida (as Beckett) mentions this whiteness: “the young urge, dawn itself, white and virgin” (Veilleuse 32). He too feels the need or perhaps the agony of this whiteness, but in difference with Beckett, he makes a decision, he lays down—consciously—a new rule: “to breathe without writing [. . .] to exhale beyond writing” (32). He does so in order to reaffirm life, because for him—at least in this text—writing involves (always) a matricide. Writing is always this crime, since what the writer ultimately wants to do is to re–make himself, and in order to do so, he has to deny the mother and/or maternity (to deny his own birth). Thus, for him to renounce writing, to breathe without writing, would amount to “learn[ing] to love the mother—and maternity” (32). But this renouncement of writing does not necessarily mean that one has to drop the pen or put down the keyboard; before this absolute renunciation there is perhaps a possibility, another kind of writing opposed to writing, or at least to philosophical writing (in...