Derrida and Pirandello: A Post-Structuralist Analysis of Six Characters in Search of an Author

Derrida and Pirandello: A Post-Structuralist Analysis of Six Characters in Search ofan Author DAVID MCDONALD Introduction: The Phases ofAbsence DIFFERANCE IS the master term, from a Derridean perspective, for Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Derrida defines his differance as a new term that joins the notion of an "interval" with the notions of division and delay.' His use of the word differance approximates Foucault's use of the word "discontinuity"- a word that conveys the combined sense of interval, division, and delay' Used as a screen to interpret or describe the play, differance accents the qualities of discontinuity throughout: the empty theatre; the strange entrance and otherness of the Six Characters; their separation from their author; the disparity between the Actors and the Characters; the elliptical relationships among the Characters themselves- their past displacements and sudden, unexpected crossings together; and such incidents as the accidental fall of the curtain at the end of act two, the magical entrance of Madame Pace, and the mad rush off-stage at the end of the play, leaving the play "unfinished"- frozen in tableau, continuous in its discontinuity . Differance, of course, is not the only Derridean term that applies to the Six Characters. Other aspects of the play are highlighted, designated as structural threads within the weaving of the whole, by other terms. The theoretical model, composed of Derridean terms and used to inter421 422 DAVID McDONALD pret plays other than Pirandello's, is described in one of my earlier essays, "Forms of Absence: A Post-Structuralist Approach to the Tragic Theatre." This model is constructed of disparate Derridean terms arranged in a continuous form that reflects the structure of specific, given, unquestioned tragedies, notably Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. The formal model is composed of three major terms (cardinal phases): Differanee, Supplement, and Deconstruction. These three major terms are in tum divided into six minor terms (catalytic and peripetal phases) grouped in pairs:' difference and deferral; mark-sign and substitution; effacement and trace. The organizational model might be diagrammed as follows: Beginning Middle End Cardinal Differance Supplement Deconstruction Catalytic Difference Mark Effacement (Entrance) (Mme Pace) (Suicide) Peripetal Deferral Substitute Trace (Story) ( Mirror) (Tableau) The model reads from left to right and top to bottom indicating a continuous flow that discontinuously reverses and enfolds within itself - within its own disappearance. The model of a Moebius strip- the sign of infinity- is used in the same essay to give a dynamic image of the interaction of the phases. Difference (Entrance) Effacement (Suicide) Substitute (Mirror) Deferral (Story) DERRlDA AND PIRANDELLO'S SIX CHARACTERS 42) Differance, as already noted, is characterized by discontinuity. Supplementation is characterized by "doubling." (The division in clifferance is seen as a double in the supplemenl.) Deconstruction is characterized by "disappearance." (The division of differance is seen as the space of absence in the deconstruction.) Six Characters in Search 0/ an Author is a particularly appropriate play to use in discussing the relationship of Derrida's theory of writing (ecriture) to the theatre. The play itself, as the title indicates, is about written-beings and being-written. The "whole being" of the Six Characters , as in Foucault's image of Don Quixote, "is nothing but language, text, printed pages" that call attention to themselves as such: "made up of interwoven words." The Six Characters are like "writing itself, wandering through the world.'" They are at a loss without a text. Pirandelio , in the specific terms of a concern with writing, and in the broader, philosophic terms of a concern with absence, may be seen as a precursor of the modern post-structuralist movement. The effect of this association of Pirandello with Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, and others is that it highlights both the theatrical aspects of post-structuralist thought - the concern with a mimesis or the "simulacrum of a presence"5- and the tragic aspect of post-structuralist thought- the concern with peripetia , the disparity of "a shift ... to the opposite,'" the shift back into nothingness, back into the absence of mimesis. This association of mimesis and peripetia with the tragic vision places a new perspective not only on Derrida and Pirandello, but also on the nature and possibility of...