Abstract

Through a rereading of Samuel Beckett’s Mal vu mal dit/Ill Seen Ill Said, this chapter considers what it means for a work of literature to “go on” when it is beholden to the seemingly self-defeating movement of what Maurice Blanchot dubbed le neutre (the neuter). Lurching from “neither” to “nor” and back ad infinitum, Beckett’s voices linger in a state of constant rehashing, which makes it difficult to identify a clear telos for their passive activity or active passivity. In the context of Mal vu mal dit/Ill Seen Ill Said, the narrator appears to be engaged in a process of mourning. As he attempts to describe, as objectively as possible, a scene involving a ghostly old lady, he is often at pains to exert the self-control his function ostensibly requires due to melancholy fits beyond his control. To go on, then, he seeks to become as thing-like as the ontologically neutral figure he is tasked with depicting. The chapter delves into the aesthetic mechanics of this operation as well as its ethical implications while simultaneously arguing that the tension between these two conjoined regimes is bound to remain unresolved.