ABSTRACT
The plays explored in the previous chapters seem to be haunted by the ghost of the paternal logos, which animates the drive towards self-hood, knowledge and truth. However, while some of Beckett’s plays foreground the petrification of logocentric structures of authority and identity, others focus more on the underside of power and authority, the neglected spaces and margins of representation. Within Western patriarchal history, the repressed feminine is inextricably linked to the very concept of other spaces. Rosi Braidotti notes that ‘at times of crisis every culture tends to turn to its “others”, to become feminized, in the sense of having to face its limitations, gaps and deficiencies’.3 In this sense, Beckett can be seen as having adopted a ‘feminized’ practice. Central to this issue is the question of the relationship between the Symbolic and the Other. Is this a stable, unchangeable opposition, or is it subject to negotiation and change?
