Freedom in Language from Beckett to Schreber: A Study of the Characters Lucky, the Unnamable, and the Delirious Judg

Freedom in language is to Jacques Derrida a paradoxical concept, according to which the speaking subject must abide by the linguistic constraints before he can conduct a "freeplay" in language. The present study inquires into this freedom exercised by three characters: Lucky, from Samuel Beckett's tragicomedy Waiting for Godot, the first-person narrator of Beckett's novel The Unnamable, and Judge Schreber, in his Memoirs on his recovery from psychosis. Lucky, when urged to perform his "thinking," speaks gibberish, a lampoon no less on philosophy. Lucky's effort resonates with the pre-Socratic thinking on ontology, which has equated thinking to being. Rather than a philosopher, Beckett assumes the role of a poet to depict the abject state in which Lucky seeks to assert his existence. By speaking gibberish (loosening the linguistic constraints on him and losing thereby his freedom in language) he retrieves his ontology.;The Unnamable, by contrast, manages to exercise his freedom in language, but fails to attain a good life. His unending discursive act parallels Beckett's own unfinished psychoanalysis with Wilfred Bion. Beckett's anxiety, scholars have argued, is written into the Unnamable's sorry state in which he is flooded by waves of words. Worse still, words may turn into a "noise" which can be disturbing to him at times. He strives to keep his sanity but is held captive by words.;The paranoia that confronts Schreber is nearly identical but, unlike the case of the Unnamable, the intruding "noise" or "voice" is dispatched by God. Language had never become available to him as a means to ward off God's hostile act until November 1895, when he suddenly discovered that he had been "unmanned." By being transformed into a woman, he accepted his destiny to become God's Woman. Falling prey to a fantasy no less, Schreber can now curb his psychosis and have recourse to language to put his life in order. He has recuperated his freedom in language by being incarcerated by his castration fantasy.;Each character---Lucky, the Unnamable, and Schreber---has received what each bargains for by negotiating a deal with language, be it existence, sanity, or fantasy.