Begam, Samuel Beckett

[Dave Monroe]

>From Richard Begam, Samuel Beckett and the End of
Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1996), Chapter
Four, "Beckett's Mirror-Writing: Doubling and
'Differance' in 'Molloy,'" pp. 98-119 ...

"While Derrida rejects all first principles,
differance comes perilously close to functioning as
the first principle of deconstruction, the
transformational logic according to which an
intellectual category can simultaneously be both
itself and its opposite.  Beckett was attracted by
this kind of thinking an discovered its Renaissance
analogue in Giordano Bruno's notion of the 'identified
contrary.'  According to Bruno, when the individual
terms within a binary pairing are carriedto their
logical extremes, they cease to function as terms of
opposition and become instead terms of identification.
 As Beckett explains it:

The maxima and minima of particular contraries are one
and indifferent.  Minimal heat equals minimal cold. 
Consequently transmutations are circular.  The
principle (minimum) of one contrary takes its movement
from the principle (maximum) of one another....
Maximal speed is a state odf rest.  The maximum of
corruption and the minimum of generation are
identical: in principle, corruption is generation.
(Disjecta, 21)" (Begam, pp. 100-1)

I'm skeptical of Begam's characterization of Derrida
here, but ... but this all seemed nonetheless fair
game for the ol' compare 'n' contrast here, and I
thought maybe somebody up on their Bruno might be
interested, comment as well.  Have, but have yet to
read ...

Yates, Frances A.  Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic
   Tradition.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1964.

Let me know ...


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