들뢰즈와 베케트: 철학과 문학의 공통기호들(Ⅰ) - 감각의 논리로 그린 그림, Footfalls

Deleuze and Beckett: The Shared Signs of Philosophy and Literature (Ⅰ) - The Logic of Sensation in Footfalls

Based on Deleuze's philosophical concept of 'sensation' in The Logic of Sensation, this paper argues that Samuel Bekett's Footfalls is an artistic demonstration of Deleuzian philosophy which proposes "to think differences in itself independently of the forms of representation" For Deleuze, sensation is important because it encompasses 'forces' marking differences as various singularities. Art is unique since it captures sensation in itself and yields the vision of forces which is a condition of sensation In this sense, Artists do the same conceptual work with philosophers Footfalls is a painting in movement It performs on stage the Deleuzian sensation that consists of impersonal and nonorganic forces To make this invisible power visible, Beckett creates a ghostly character, May, real but indiscernibly interfused with the imaginary As the play unrolls, May erases her subjectivity to become 'a void" to be elevated to the level of sensation Isolated m the rectangular, May transforms herself to 'a Figure', by losing depth and departing from all natural situations and organic links May's walking on the strip epitomizes endless rising and falling movements within sensation It is an external expression which shows consistent differentiation of all the inner movement of sensation Walking constitutes May who in turns becomes walking itself As she walks up and down repeatedly, intensity grows inside the strip While concentrating the power m herself, she is concurrently coupled with a 'Voice' The Voice functions as a flat background(a'plate) which is itself another sensation having a power of darkness(chaos) It is May who calls for the 'Voice' to escape her isolation Through this coupling, May has to be dissipated into the darkness of back stage In other words, to melt into a molecular texture, she divides within herself vibrating with the voice The voice is just one affect among various strata of the division(becoming) because, throughout the play May scatters herself into the mother, the voice, Mrs Winter, and Amy This is a process of an aesthetic subtraction which brings her to the extreme point of the objective zone of indiscernibility Passing through the trajectory that consists of the isolation, the vibration with the voice, and subtraction, May finally accomplishes the maximum unity with the landscape introducing absolute deterritorialization It is here that art produces a Diagram that attests to the intrusion of another world into the visual world of figuiation On this level, every resemblance appears abruptly as the result of relations that are completely different from those it is supposed to reproduce In this last type of analogy, a sensible resemblance is produced, instead of being represented.