'First the Place, Then I'll Find Me in It': The Unnamable's Pronouns and the Politics of Confinement
Abstract
This chapter analyses the pronominal anomalies of The Unnamable, in which a series of confined spaces are subject to 'denarration'. The chapter argues that the spatial uncertainty of Beckett's novel is inseparable from its 'denarration' of the narrative self, a self-negation which is even more forceful in the English translation's disjunctive use of non-reflexive object pronouns (such as in the phrase 'I'll find me').
The chapter traces the pronominal politics of The Unnamable back to Beckett's early poetry, arguing for the influence of John Keats on this aspect of Beckett's poetics. The oblique allusion to the incarceration of Antonin Artaud in the novel provides an example of Beckett's engagement with writers critical of carceral institutions; it also demonstrates the resistance to interpretation of his closed spaces within a fixed political paradigm.