Making of Samuel Beckett's Not I / Pas moi, That Time / Cette fois and Footfalls / Pas

This volume of the BDMP series charts the genesis of three iconic Beckett plays: Not I (1973), That Time (1976) and Footfalls (1976), all translated into French by their author. Including analyses of abandoned archival precursors the Kilcool drafts (1963) and the Petit Odéon Fragments (19671968) the book covers a crucial period in Becketts playwriting career, during which his long-held ambition to stage a mouth babbling in the dark became a catalyst for some of his most innovative work. This volume provides a comprehensive guide to the history of the three plays, tracking their development from compositional manuscripts through to publication and performance. The book contends that these plays should be seen as stagings of the subjectobject breakdown explored in Becketts early writing. Drawing on the notes he took on psychology and psychoanalysis in 19341935, it examines the many psychological and psychoanalytic concepts that are used in the authors later stagings of the mind. The plays are analysed through the lens of enactive cognition: not as representations of particular psychological conditions, but as pieces which encourage active interpretation on the part of their audiences. By staging minds in states of breakdown that resist diagnosis, Not I / Pas moi, That Time / Cette fois and Footfalls / Pas enact the subjectobject breakdown that is such a key part of Becketts aesthetics.