Toward a Politics of Vocal Expression: Beckett and Video Art

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Tubridy, Derval. 2025. Toward a Politics of Vocal Expression: Beckett and Video Art. Journal of Beckett Studies, 34(1), pp. 48-64. ISSN 0309-5207 [Article]

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Official URL: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/jobs.202...

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This article examines the televisual version of Beckett’s play Not I (1973) as a work of video art, placing it in dialogue with video work by Bruce Nauman (Lip Sync, 1969), Vito Acconci (Open Book, 1974), Gary Hill (Mouth Piece, 1978), Stan Douglas (Deux Devises: Mime, 1983), and Mona Hatoum (So Much I Want to Say, 1983), with reference also to Agnieszka Polska (I Am The Mouth, 2014), and Kurdwin Ayub (Pretty-Pretty, 2015). By exploring modalities of asynchronicity, slippage, awkwardness, and obstruction through the philosophies of Adriana Cavarero and Hannah Arendt – who argue that speaking up is a deeply political act – the article positions Not I within an ethics of voice, and situates Beckett’s work as a significant contribution to twentieth-century video art.

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Article

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https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2025.0441