Permeable screens, porous borders: encountering Samuel Beckett’s works for television with Bracha L. Ettinger’s Theory of the Matrixial

Graham-Dixon, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8898-390X (2025) Permeable screens, porous borders: encountering Samuel Beckett’s works for television with Bracha L. Ettinger’s Theory of the Matrixial. PhD thesis, University of Reading. doi: 10.48683/1926.00127656

Abstract/Summary

This thesis examines encounters with alterity, vulnerability and suffering in a selection of Samuel Beckett’s works for television and does so specifically through the lens of Bracha L. Ettinger’s theory of the Matrixial, a feminist reformulation of the relationship between self and other. Bringing together works that were written for television and works that were adapted for television, it analyses televised productions of Not I (1977), Eh Joe (1966/1990), Footfalls (1990), Rockaby (1990), Ghost Trio (1977) and …but the clouds… (1977) that were made for the BBC and Süddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany. Paying attention to the material reality of how these productions are encountered now – on VHS tape, DVD, as digital files and online – a situated analysis is used to consider the impact that the material realities of the screen-based image have on the affective, aesthetic and ethical questions that the works for television raise. Drawing together the encounters that take place in the plays and the encounters that they engender, each chapter unpacks a different aspect of Matrixial theory in relation to the physical and subjective borders that are negotiated in and with the plays. As well as exploring the impact that Beckett’s own working practices and collaborations have had on the works for television, the thesis also considers how the work of several other artists and practitioners helps to illuminate the encounters in and with Beckett’s work. Shifting the focus from artistic influence and authorial intention, the encounter and its feminist aesthetic application provides a unique perspective on Beckett’s works for television as we find them today.

Item Type	Thesis (PhD)
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/127656
Identification Number/DOI	10.48683/1926.00127656
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Arts and Communication Design > Film, Theatre & Television
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