In the Company of Beckett: Gadamer, Benjamin, Levinas and the Ethics of (Self-)Translation

The ethical paradoxes of silence and self-translation in the works of Samuel Beckett are addressed from within the theoretical vocabularies of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Walter Benjamin, and Emmanuel Levinas. Among Beckett's works, particular attention is paid to "Three Dialogues," "Imagination Dead Imagine," and Company; in other words, the ethico - formal questions discussed in this essay preoccupied Beckett over his entire career. The Gadamerian concepts of "aesthetic differentiation" [ästhetische Unterscheidung] and "highlighting" [Überhellung], together with the Benjaminian concepts of "ripening" [nachreife] and "afterlife" [fortleben], and the Levinasian concept of "retroversion (chez Jill Robbins) increasingly clarify the ethical stakes of Beckett's project