Understanding Beckett: A Study of Monologue and Gesture in the Works of Samuel Beckett by Peter Gidal (review)

132 Book Reviews century Russia with a cool, lucid guide who shows all but avoids commentary" (pp. 300-01). Much like Chekhov in his stories, Troyat has attempted the difficult task of portraying a primarily intemallife by means ofexternal description. While the result is of limited value for one seeking insight into the work of that life, taken in its entirety , the book succeeds nicely in characterizing the life itself. If this helps us return to Chekhov's literature with a new attitude, ready for new discoveries, then the book may be considered a success. JOHN FREEDMAN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY PETER GIDAL. Understandi"8 Beckett: A Study ofMonologue and Gesture in the Works ofSamuel Beckett. New York: St. Martin's Press 1986. pp. 278, illustrated. $27.50. Anglo-American criticism has traditionally constructed Samuel Beckett's plays as avenues to metaphysical enlightenment about "the human condition." Such criticism constructs Beckett as the link to enlightenment, his texts as manifest potential, and the critic as necessary mediation between audience and enlightenment. Critics such as Martin Esslin and Ruby Cohn have exemplified this metaphysical construclion of Beckettfor the past twenty-five years and, ifrecent publications within Beckett criticism are any indication. there seems to be a fair amount ofevidence that this construction is gripping desperately to maintain its metaphysical hegemony. Understanding Beckett: A Study ofMonologue and Gesture in the Works of Samuel Beckett written by mm-maker and theorist Peter Gidal proposes a "materialist feminist" analysis to challenge metaphysical criticism. As such it is an extremely important work not only for Beckett scholars but for Anglo-American literary criticism in general. It succeeds in its self-conscious engagement in a polemic against dominant AngloAmerican criticism; it fails, however, to save itself from reproducing the very "patriarchal bourgeois" discourse it purports to disallow. Gidal draws heavily on Marx's and Engels's notion of commodification as a process which conceals, and thus naturalizes, the historical relations that produce a product and invest it with value. According to Gidal, if we are to understand - and intervene - in relations of power. we must read the use and exchange of speech as a set of relations comparable to the use and exchange ofcommodities. The gesture pivotal to "bourgeois" processes of (re)production, be it in economic or cuJturai production, is the one of concealment - commodification. For the "feminist" prong of his analysis. Gidal draws from such French feminists as Monique Wittig. Christine Delphy. and Monique Plaza. whose models read the construction of gender as economic, political, psychological, cultural. and racial. These critical perspectives allow Gidal to posit that "patriarchy" conceals the tenns of power relations by naturalizing "woman" as commodity for male consumption and "man" as phallocentric broker ofdesire. Within textual production. it is the narrative fonn which, according to Gidal, reproduces commodification within the cultural realm. Narrativeerases its own material (historical) reproduction by articulating Book Reviews 133 itself within a discourse of universal truths and the necessary coherence of meaning. This narrative closes in on itself, denying access to anything but itself. It thus reproduces the dominant discourse and conceals the productions of meaning and distributions of power the discourse authorizes. As such, Gidal claims, narrative is "bourgeois" as a system of conunodification which is necessarily "patriarchal," for in reproducing the dominant discourse, the narrative also reproduces the engendered discourse of "patriarchy" by which male-identified desire constructs the female subject/object. A disruption of narrative will necessarily disrupt "bourgeois" commodification of meaning and "patriarchal" commodification of the female subject/object. It is here that Gidal discloses Beckett's texts as acts of "materialist feminist" disruption. Conventional fonns of monologue, described by Gidal as "patriarchal bourgeois," assume an unproblematic point of reference which functions as the inviolable source of meaning, identification, and authority. In contrast, Beckett's texts disallow the essentially "bourgeois" and "patriarchal" system of commodification by constantly revealing speech and gesture in process, constantly "un-understanding" themselves through the radical dis-location of coherent meaning. This fonn, named by Gidal the "materialist" monologue, reveals its very own production, and thus disallows commodified subjectivity. This "monologue" is presentation, not representation; it is quotation, not naturalized meaning. As such, Beckett's "monologue" de-authorizes itself and...