CLAIRE LOZIER - Watt’s Archive Fever

C L A I R E L O Z I E R

Watts Archive Fever

Commentators of a genetic persuasion have been impressed bywhat Carlton Lake calls a whale of a manuscript a white whale(Lake, 76), and what Chris Ackerley describes as the white whaleof Beckett studies, a mass of documentation that defies attempts tomake sense of it (Ackerley and Gontarski, 628). Watt has more tosay than any other of Becketts fictional works about the questionof the archive and this article aims to understand what is atstake conceptually in the novels play with textual materiality.First, the question of the archive is of crucial importance for anappreciation of the Watt manuscript held by the Harry RansomCentre, University of Texas at Austin. By their erratic dating,numerous hiatuses, or writing on the recto with later comments onthe opposite verso, for instance, the six Notebooks that constitutethe manuscript are records of the damage wrought on theirvery material. Second, due to Watts complex textual history itscomposition and slow journey into print the novel performsa double-move of inheritance and prolepsis (Byron, 496). MarkByron shows that Watt both archives aspects of Murphy and is areservoir for Mercier and Camier and the Trilogy. As Beckett himself

Journal of Beckett Studies 22.1 (2013): 3553Edinburgh University PressDOI: 10.3366/jobs.2013.0057 The editors, Journal of Beckett Studieswww.euppublishing.com/jobs

36 J O U R N A L O F B E C K E T T S T U D I E S

put it to his friend and literary agent George Reavey just after thewar (but before the novels completion), it [Watt] has its place inthe series, as will perhaps appear in time (Beckett, in Gontarski andAckerley, 228). In this sense, Watt supports a claim made by JacquesDerrida in Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, according to whichthe archive is both a register of past events and an irreducibleexperience of the future (Derrida, 68). Third, and perhaps mostimportantly, Watt both produces and exhibits its own archive on afictional level. This archive is produced through the numerous andabsurd lists of items that Watt contains and through the Addendathat both enact and document the archival process. Watt also stagesthe exhibition of its own archive by alluding to a manuscript,which is said to be either incomplete (Hiatus in MS [Beckett,2009, 207])1 or illegible (MS illegible [Beckett, 2009, 209]). Thearchival material thus both extends the narrative and drills holes init. Moreover, the fictional editorial authority of the novel refers to afictional archive that doubles the actual one. The text ostentatiouslyplays with its own materiality and blurs the limit between realand fictional archives (with what can almost be taken for a formof dramatic irony). In this regard, Watt illustrates the ambiguousstatus of the archive described by Derrida: The structure of thearchive is spectral. It is spectral a priori: neither present nor absentin the flesh, neither visible nor invisible, a trace always referringto another (Derrida, 84). Taken as a heuristic device, Derridasparadigm can be brought to bear upon both archives of Watt andupon the ludic dimension of the novel. It can also be used toexplore the operations, in Watt, of what can be identified, on the onehand, as a conservation or archive drive producing and extendingthe text and, on the other, as a destruction drive drilling andemptying it.

The unavoidable clash of these two interrelated drives createswhat Derrida calls archive fever or, in French, mal darchive.For Derrida, archive fever is a perpetual state that reached itsclimax during the Holocaust, when the destruction drive took over:masses of unwanted living and printed memories were reducedto ashes, while others were being carefully selected, organised andstored. Significantly, this was also the time at which Watt waswritten. In his Preface to the 2009 Faber and Faber edition of Watt,Chris Ackerley examines the genesis of Becketts novel:

Watts Archive Fever 37

Watt began, and ended, in Paris: the first entries in what wouldprove to be six notebooks dated II February 1941, and the lastsigned off with Dec 28th 1944 / End. Much of the writingwas done while Beckett was on the run from the Gestapobetween 1943 and 1945, in the small town of Roussillon, inthe Vaucluse, where he and his partner, Suzanne, had takenrefuge. (Ackerley, in Beckett 2009, viii)

While Watt echoes the destruction that was taking place at the timeof its writing, it also anxiously and compulsively resists it.

It can be said, then, that both in terms of its production processand production context Watt bears the marks of an archive fever.The novel is both surrounded and inhabited by a frenzy for thearchive, while an archive drive and a destruction drive are at workwithin it. Does this mean, though, that there is no remedy for Wattsarchive fever? To what extent can Becketts novel itself be saidto provide such a remedy? How can the novels ludic and comicdimensions be accounted for? Is it fair to say that a text that overtlyplays with its own archive and induces its critics to do the same isen mal darchive? To answer these questions, I will use Derridas owncategories which he borrows mostly from Freud and considertheir specific dynamic in the novel. I will examine the work of thearchive drive and of the destruction drive in the novel to show thatWatt suffers from an archive fever that is also, ultimately, a fictionaland farcical affliction.

Watts archive drive

For Derrida, the archive (or conservation) drive obeys a dual archicprinciple, originating from the double meaning of the Greek wordarkh. In Greek, arkh designates both commencement and, as aderivative, commandement.2 As commencement, arkh signifies anorigin or beginning. Therefore, the archive drive seeks out originsand beginnings. Arkh can also specifically refer to the beginningof a series. There is here an obvious and important connectionwith Watt (I shall return to this to the significance of series ina moment). As commandment, arkh is related to arkheon


a house, a domicile, an address, the residence of the superiormagistrates, the archons, those who commanded (Derrida, 2). Bydefinition, the archive is assigned a place and the power to speakthe law from this place. The archontic function3 of the archiveentails, for Derrida, an operation of four components: unification,identification, classification and consignation. Consignation has adouble task: on the one hand, it aims at assigning a residence or[. . . ] entrusting so as to put into reserve [. . . ], in a place and on asubstrate (Derrida, 3); on the other hand, it aspires to coordinatea single corpus, in a system or a synchrony in which all theelements articulate the unity of an ideal configuration (Derrida, 3).Therefore, in addition to its will to find origins, the archive drivealso seeks to unify, identify, classify and consign things and signs.Here again, the relation with Watt is straightforward. While theclassification and identification components of the archive driveare manifested in Watts lists and series, the task of consignationis performed by the Addenda, and the unification component ispresent in the continuity between Watt and a number of Beckettsother texts. The archive drive at work in Watt thus runs throughdifferent levels: the text itself, its paratext (the Addenda) andarchitext (other texts by Beckett).

I would now like to explore the connections between the archivedrive, the lists and series, the Addenda, and other texts (Murphy,Mercier and Camier and the Trilogy). The lists and series areconcerned with the two aspects of the archive drive: the searchfor origins and the archontic or power principle. In listing allthe elements of a series (for instance, the Lynch family members)or the possible combinations of a set of objects (the furniture inMr Knotts bedroom or Mr Knotts shoes), actions (Mr Knottsmovements in his bedroom or the exchange of looks betweenthe Grants Committee members) or features (Mr Knotts physicalcharacteristics or those of his servants), the text performs the seriesand stages their beginning. In this sense, the archive drive at workwithin the different series confirms Derridas analysis, accordingto which archivization produces as much as it records the event(Derrida, 17). In other words: the series, as archivisation, equallycreate and register their material. They do so with perfect accuracy(Becketts method is exhaustive, the manuscripts listing all thepermutations [Gontarski and Ackerley, 2005, 233]), from the first


lists to the more complex and extended ones: The lists get longerand more complex, Beckett again creating exhaustive truth-tables,ticking off each permutation in such a way as to cover everypossibility (Gontarski and Ackerley, 2005, 233). However, despitethe care taken to avoid mistakes, an error is introduced in the listingprocess. Just after the Lynch family members inventory has beenmade, a summary reads: Five generations, twenty-eight souls, ninehundred and eighty years, such was the proud record of the Lynchfamily, when Watt entered Mr Knotts service (Beckett, 2009, 87).This summary is accompanied by a footnote specifying that Thefigures given here are incorrect. The consequent calculations aretherefore doubly erroneous. The number of years in the lives ofthe twenty-eight members of the five generations composing theLynch family adds up, in fact, to nine hundred and seventy eight.4

Intentionally creating and endorsing inaccuracy, the text is able tolaugh, with solace, at its own archiving compulsion.

The peculiarity of the listed materials and of the recurrent, exten-sive, mathematically accurate listing process is also significant.Straying from the plot and into the narrative, Watts series buildabsurdity into the analytical mode in line with what is called,towards the end of the novel, Watts old error (Beckett, 2009, 196):his belief that rational inquiry can account for an irrational world.Another example of this is Watts reflection on the relationshipbetween Pot and pot (Beckett, 2009, 679). His legitimate doubtsabout the Cratylistic link between word and object are reported ina detailed account in which his reasoning is absurd but earnest.Watts old error is a symptom of the fever from which Wattsarchive drive suffers (and of Watts anxiety) and contributes to thenovels comic dimension.

The archontic or power principle operates through the desirefor classification. Mr Knotts house plays the role of the arkheon:it is here that the obsessive listing takes place. Arsene, Watt andArthur are Mr Knotts servants. Their function involves runningthe place and accounting for it. As such, they also play the roleof archons. Sam joins them as their scribe.5 Together, they speakthe law of the text: they list, classify and order. Archontic power isalso asserted through the archons interest in filiation. They tracethe lineage of the Lynchs, their dogs and the servants. The archons,even though they are also servants, control the hierarchy. In the


Addenda, Mr Knott himself is suspected by Watt of belonging to aseries of masters: Mr Knott too was serial, in a vermicular series(Beckett, 2009, 222). When and why this comment was introducedin the manuscripts is rather uncertain.6 However, if this were to betaken at face value, then Mr Knott would not be the still point ofa turning world, and the theological structure constructed in thenovel would be overruled. In the same way as his servants are insome regards in a position of power, he serves the role of master.Power of origin and origin of power: the two kinds of arkh areclosely interwoven.

The Addenda also obey the archive drive. Much like the listsand series, they are related to origin and power, but throughdifferent means. They archive early material of the main text,evolutionary accidents and consequent dead-ends. In this sense,they represent the texts origin. Chris Ackerley describes them asthe fossil records that bear witness to earlier states of creation(Ackerley, 1993, 175). For the archival perspective, they constitutean arkheon of the text and, as such, they also have a hermeneuticpower.7 It is not surprising, therefore, that the archontic editorialvoice, in a well-known footnote, informs the reader that theAddenda are precious and illuminating material which should becarefully studied (Beckett, 2009, 215). Their domiciliation is also ofinterest. The fact that they are located outside the narrative followsthe principle according to which there is no archive withoutconsignation in an external place (Derrida, 11).8 Derrida concurshere with Michel Foucault, for whom it is peculiar to the archiveto be heterotopic (Foucault, 1579). As an archive of the narrative,the Addenda contain material (Beckett, 2009, 215) that was notincorporated in the main text. Insofar as the editorial voice to whichthe Addenda can be attributed manages to put the material ofthe main text into reserve, it fails to coordinate a single corpus,in a system or synchrony in which all the elements articulatethe unity of an ideal configuration (Derrida, 3). The expulsion offragments that constitute the Addenda raises the question that, forDerrida, is the very question of the archive: where does the outsidecommence? (Derrida, 8). Outside Mr Knotts house, outside themain narrative, or outside the novel?

The archive drive at work in the novel is so strong, in fact, that itpasses through its back cover. As we have seen, Watt also fosters


an archival relationship with other texts, most notably Murphy,Mercier and Camier and the Trilogy. Significantly, Chiara Montiniwrites with regard to Watt that Cet enchanement dun livre lautre aura souvent lieu dans les ouvrages suivants (Montini, 234).As an archive, then, Watt is as much a recording of the past as itis a movement of the promise and of the future (Derrida, 29). Thismovement is, in fact, peculiar to Becketts work as a whole. EvelyneGrossman speaks, for instance, of its fonctionnement darchive.She writes:

Il y a [. . .] chez Beckett, une mmoire interne du texte, unemmoire autotextuelle o tout tend se rpter, o tout ce quise dit a dj t dit dans ce texte mme (dedans donc) ou dehors(cest--dire dans un autre texte de Beckett, voire, videmment,dans un autre autre texte, pas de Beckett). (Grossman, 474)

The archive drive runs across Becketts work (and from that workinto the work of others), which is, at least partially, its own origin(commencement) and its own law (commandment). His work isalso made of different archic layers: each text incorporates its ownexteriority a variety of outsides. Nevertheless, like any archive,Becketts work and, in this specific case, Watt, is plagued by thedestruction drive:

If there is no archive without consignation in an external placewhich assures the possibility of memorization, of repetition,of reproduction, or of reimpression, then we must alsoremember that repetition itself, the logic of repetition, indeedthe repetition compulsion, remains, according to Freud,indissociable from the death drive. And thus from destruction.[. . .] The archive always works, and a priori, against itself.(Derrida, 1112)

The mistake deliberately introduced into the lists, Watts old error,his doubts, his absurd but earnest reasoning, the absurdities builtinto the analytical mode, the servants who are archons and themaster who merely performs a masters role, and the problematicstatus of the Addenda: all these elements are symptoms of the


phenomenon described by Derrida. The archive drive workingagainst itself allows for mistakes, foolishness and paradoxes.Archiving also involves sabotaging and destroying. I would likenow to analyse more closely the different ways in which thedestruction drive works in Watt.

Watts destruction drive

For Derrida, the destruction drive is what makes the archivepossible since,9 without the properly in-finite movement of radicaldestruction identified by Freud, no archive desire or fever wouldhappen (Derrida, 94). Thus, anarchiving destruction belongs tothe process of archivization (Derrida, 94). In this regard, we canbring Derridas statement about the destruction drive to bearupon Watt, in that Watt can indeed be said to run after thearchive, even if theres too much of it, right where something init anarchives itself (Derrida, 91). The texts compulsive listing andrecording of all the elements or possibilities of a series, for example,follow the same process as the Freudian repetition compulsion thatDerrida associates with anarchiving destruction. In compulsivelyenumerating, recording and seeking to give a logical explanationfor each and every fact and event, the text pushes the archivedrive to its limits so that it can no longer sustain itself. It is boundto come unstuck. The text is torn and ripped open as a result.From this perspective, the holes in the text be they materialisedby aposiopesic or non-aposiopesic dashes,10 question marks, thementions of a hiatus in the manuscript or of the manuscriptsillegibility are inevitable.

While dashes11 can be used as aposiopesic signs as, for instance,in Arthurs story about Mr Ernest Louit, where they are usedeither to replace Louits swearing,12 to signify interruptionsin the conversation between Louit and the Grants Committeemembers13 or to symbolise Arthurs unwillingness to continuehis story14 they are also employed as non-aposiopesic elementsmarking gaps in the text. We find two examples of this towardsthe end of the novel. When Micks arrives to replace Watt as aservant at Mr Knotts, we read: I come from , said Mr Micks,


and he described the place whence he came. I was born at , hesaid, and the site and circumstances of his ejection were unfolded(Beckett, 2009, 187). While the narrator knows very well whatshould be there and reveals the nature of the missing information,the actual words are absent. The two dashes are hiatuses inthe text, if not in the manuscript. Question marks accomplish asimilar task, but they are not followed by supplementary narrativeinformation or explanation. They introduce hiatus in the text andappear principally in relation to either texts or lists.15 Questionmarks break the text where the words of Erskines song shouldbe inscribed (Beckett, 2009, 71), where the extract from the bookread aloud by Mr Case should be written down (Beckett, 2009, 197),and when reference is made to an inscription on the coloured printrepresenting the horse called Joss that Watt looks at in the waiting-room of the final train station (Beckett, 2009, 205). It seems that thetext we are reading the novel called Watt is too preoccupied witharchiving its own material to be able to make room for other texts.

Question marks also appear within or around lists. A questionmark splits the enumeration of the Lynch family members due tothe painfulness of relating certain aspects: And then to pass on tothe next generation there was Toms boy young Simon aged twenty,whose it is painful to relate

?

16 (Beckett, 2009, 86). Five question marks interrupt or break thetext just after Sam has finished relating and listing each of Wattsdifferent speech inversions. Ironically, the gap appears when Samcomments on the high efficiency of his mental faculties: My purelymental faculties on the other hand, the faculties properly so calledof ?

? ?? ?

were if possible more vigorous than ever17 (Beckett, 2009, 145).Thus, in listing and classifying all possibilities or elements of series,the text exhausts reality to the extent that reality can be said to havebeen partially erased. The text is also unable to welcome or hostother texts: texts, words and things are made to disappear. What


remains is diacritical signs (dashes or question marks) that are meretraces pointing out the disappearance of these texts, words andthings signifying the destruction (or at least corruption) of theirpresence.

Becketts text speaks directly of the hiatuses present in itsmanuscript. The two occurrences of hiatus, whether accompaniedby punctuation breaks ((Hiatus in MS)) or not (.. (Hiatus in MS) ..[Beckett, 2009, 207]), indicate that bits of text are missing eitherbecause they have been destroyed or because they have not beenrecorded properly (if at all).18 The same is true of the texts ownreference to its manuscripts illegibility ((MS illegible) [Beckett,2009, 209]). Having archived compulsively, the narrating voice hasarchived too much: it is exhausted and has reached a point ofunsustainability.19 Consequently, the text cracks, breaks and fails.20

It is not surprising, therefore, that the destruction drive operatespredominantly at the end of the narrative. The question mark21 anddash22 that break the text in the final pages can be understood assimilar signs of exhaustion.

The narrating and editorial voices are literally exhausted by thetask they perform. This is how the existence and location of theAddenda are explained: despite being precious and illuminatingmaterial, their incorporation has been prevented by fatigue anddisgust (Beckett, 2009, 215). In the end, the Addenda are as muchthe product of the archive drive as of the destruction drive.

What about Watts speech inversions? If they do not rip the textapart, they still damage its syntax, its orthography and, ultimately,its meaning. However, in a similar way to the Addenda, theycan be said to be as much the product of the archive drive as ofthe destruction drive. On the one hand, they struggle to conserveWatts words, but, on the other, they simultaneously record itsdestruction. The inversion of chapters acknowledged by Watt andthe narrator can also be put down to this paradox.23

Derridas contention that the archive always works, and a priori,against itself (Derrida, 12) finds here an indisputable illustration.While the archive and destruction drives may appear to runthrough the text as much as they contribute to its creation,I would nevertheless like to show that this dynamic of drives canbe understood as something other than the mere symptom of anarchive fever.


Watts archive fever: a fictional affliction

Derridas book explores the threat that radical evil represents formemory and, ultimately, humanity. The conservation drive andthe destruction drive confront each other in a perpetual fight thatgenerates a permanent state of archive fever. In the course ofhistory, the destruction drive can sometimes take over. This, forDerrida, was the case at the time of the Holocaust (the spectreof which haunts Derridas entire book). Significantly, Watt waswritten for the most part at least at a time when archives andliving memories were being stolen and destroyed throughoutEurope (the first notebook dates from February 1941, the lastfrom December 1944). The destruction drive at work in Watt cantherefore be linked to and viewed as an echo of mass destruction.However, the archive drive is also particularly strong in Watt(almost as if the novel were trying anxiously to resist destruction).This consideration notwithstanding, the workings and dynamics ofthe drives in the novel need to be considered more carefully if theirspecificity is to be grasped.

At one point in his argument, Derrida evokes the possibilityof another economy of drives that could prevent the turmoil ofarchive fever:

The death drive tends [. . .] to destroy the hypomnesic archive,except if it can be disguised, made up, painted, printed,represented as the idol of its truth in painting. Anothereconomy is thus at work, the transaction between this deathdrive and the pleasure principle, between Thanatos and Eros,but also between the death drive and this apparent dualopposition of principles, of arhkai, for example the realityprinciple and the pleasure principle. (Derrida, 12)

If the pleasure principle enters the fray, the day can be saved. Bypleasure principle, which he also calls Eros, Derrida means artforms which disguise, make up, paint, print and represent thanksto the help of tekhn. There is no doubt that the transaction ofwhich Derrida writes, which could also be called a negotiation,takes place in Becketts text. The hypomnesic archive the archivearchiving memory as opposed to memory itself as mnme or


anamnesis is indeed made up and printed. The same is also true,though, of its counterpart, the destruction drive. All is artifice,not to say artistic, and everything is redeemed by the pleasureprinciple.

Nevertheless, Watt also stages a game with and a joke about thevery notion of archive and its destruction. The archivisation anddestruction process is too obvious and too systematic; it deals withtoo many absurdities and presents too many inconsistencies to betaken at face value. By taking the farcical aspect of the novel intoaccount, Watt can be read as a parody of archive fever.

First, if a destruction drive is at work in the text, itsmanifestations are nonetheless made up they are part of the textsmise-en-scene. On each occasion, signs and words are used tosignify the disappearance or destruction of other signs. Thereis always a trace left behind in the text. The text is thus arecording we could say archiving of the destruction of thearchive. Textual patches are applied where the holes should be. Itis worth noting, though, that in his later texts, Beckett will pushthe trick further in erasing all traces and signs this is the case inHow it is, where sentences are suspended by blank space.24 Thissuspension is also an effect of the texts artifice, of course, but it canbe experienced by the reader. In both cases, we are being playedwith by Becketts texts.

Second, the lists and series that can be related to Freudianrepetition compulsion also evoke Bergsonian comic repetition inthis case, of words. The lists and series enumerate items in amechanical fashion adopting systematically the same linguistic andsyntactical pattern, with very few exceptions. Within the mechaniclies the comic. The recording of Watts speech inversions generatesthe same comic effect, but here it is enhanced by the permutationsof systematic letters, words, and groups.

Third, the archic principles whose presence we haveacknowledged in the text are mocked in many ways and on manyoccasions. The search for the arkh as origin is for instance depictedas an inane, but highly amusing, quest when Arsene, whom Wattreplaces when arriving at Mr Knotts house, tries to remember thenames of the servants employed before himself, Walter, Vincentand Erskine, but is unable to do so. He nonetheless continues to listthem for over a page, referring to them as (for example) that other


whose name I forget (Beckett, 2009, 50), that other whose nameI never knew (Beckett, 2009, 50), that other whose name Waltercould not recall either (Beckett, 2009, 50), and that other whosename even Vincent could not call to mind that other whose nameeven Vincent never knew (Beckett, 2009, 51) and, finally, and soon, until all trace is lost, on account of the vanity of human wishes(Beckett, 2009, 51). The vacuity of such recollections illustrates thefutility of the desire to archive. In so doing, it discloses also whatDerrida calls the play of diffrance.

If we consider that the Addenda, as an archive of the maintext, take us back to [its] origins (Gontarski and Ackerley, 234),it is interesting to note that this origin comes after. The archivedrive seems to have gone off track and to be highly inefficient.The archontic or power principle undergoes a similar treatment.As Mark Byron points out, some of the Addenda items explicitlyand sardonically refer to their codifying and archiving functions(Byron, 503). He gives as an example the Latin quotation fromSaint Jeromes commentary on Ecclesiastes pereant qui ante nosnostra dixerunt (Beckett, 2009, 219) that warns against the verynotion of quotation (Byron, 503). The hermeneutic authority of theAddenda is thus undermined by their very content.

While Mr Knotts house can be viewed as an arkheon andArsene, Watt, Arthur and Sam as its archons, this situation is highlyparodic. In other words, Mr Knotts house is also the antithesis ofan arkheon. Gontarski and Ackerley explain that Part III is set in anasylum, metaphorically the station at the end of the line (Gontarskiand Ackerley, 232). Diane Lscher-Morata compares this asylumto Mr Knotts house and defines both places as improbables:Lasile est situ, comme la maison de Mr Knott, dans des limbesindfinissables, ces deux lieux sont aussi improbables lun quelautre (Lscher-Morata, 516). As for the apprentice archons, theyconfess willingly even proudly to their unreliability and thedifficulties they encounter in recording facts and events:

Mention has already been made of the difficulties thatWatt encountered in his efforts to distinguish between whathappened and what did not happen, between what was andwhat was not, in Mr Knotts house. And Watt made no secret of


this, in his conversations with me, that many things describedas happening, in Mr Knotts house, and of course grounds,perhaps never happened at all, or quite differently, and thatmany things described as being, or rather as not being, forthese were the more important, perhaps were not, or ratherwere all the time. But apart from this, it is difficult for a manlike Watt to tell a long story like Watts without leaving outsome things, and foisting in others. And this does not meaneither that I may not have left out some of the things that Watttold me, or foisted in others that Watt never told me, thoughI was most careful to note down all at the time, in my littlenotebook. It is so difficult, with a long story like the story thatWatt told, even when one is most careful to note down all atthe time, in ones little notebook, not to leave out some of thethings that were told, and to foist in other things that werenever told, never never told at all. (Beckett, 2009, 1078)

The length and repetitive character of Sams explanation regardinghis and Watts unreliability and difficulties at telling the storycontribute, of course, to the comic dimension of this parody of thearchiving process.

In addition, the cast of the novel contains an archivist who isfiercely ridiculed. The Grants Committee in Arthurs story hasa Record Secretary (Beckett, 2009, 161) un archiviste (Beckett,2004, 194) in the French translation who everybody knows to besuperb (Beckett, 2009, 161), but who, despite trying for more thantwo pages, fails to record unprecedentedly high and complicatedfigures (Beckett, 2009, 161) i.e. to make the difference betweenseventeen and seventy. The satire of the archive is striking here.Thanks to the texts comic, parodic and satirical components, thepleasure principle (which, Derrida observes, is also art or literature)plays with the archive and redeems the death drive. Watts archivefever is not fictitious: it is a farcical affliction.

Derridas Archive Fever proves useful for reading Watt and forunderstanding its specific relationship with the archive. It hashelped to investigate connections between Watt and other texts byBeckett and, more interestingly, to account for peculiar aspects ofWatts aesthetics. The distinction between grey and white canons


often adopted in Beckett studies is also blurred by Watt, which bothclaims to be its own archive and is the archive of other texts. Thepursuit of the origin of things and the classifying desire that playsuch an important role in the novel, together with the consignationof textual elements in the Addenda, are manifestations of anarchive drive that runs through the whole text and even reachesbeyond it. Watts archive also has its arkheon and its archons, asamateurish as they clearly are. However, the different kinds ofholes made in the text, be they editorial or part of the fiction,as well as the expulsion of the Addenda, can be imputed to thedestruction drive. As Derrida tells us, the archive always works,and a priori, against itself (Derrida, 12), hence the mal darchive. Ihave also shown that signs of the archive and destruction drivescan be found in Becketts work more generally. Nevertheless,the status of the archive in Watt, written in Roussillon between1941 and 1944, when Beckett was in hiding from the Gestapo, isunique in Becketts uvre. In spite of the undeniable importanceof the context of Watts composition, I have tried to show thata transaction takes place that changes Watts archive fever into afarcical affliction. The novels numerous comic features repetition,linguistic and structural inversion, ludicrous characters allow thepleasure principle to dominate, or at least to intervene. Rather thanjust suffering from a mal darchive, then, Watt creates a jeu darchive,that is, ultimately, also a creative process.

N O T E S

1. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Watt are to the correctedversion of the text, edited by Chris Ackerley and published by Faber andFaber in 2009.

2. Derrida understands arkh as both commencement andcommandment. According to Liddell and Scotts GreekEnglish Lexicon,the Greek arkh means beginning or first principle and, as a derivative,sovereignty or power.

3. This archontic function of the archons is, as Derrida observes, bydefinition patriarchal (see Derrida, 95).

4. Chris Ackerley elucidates the problem: The discrepancy isexplained on page [88], where Liz is 40, whereas she was previously


said to be 38 (Ackerley, 20045, 11112). Even if corrected, the error is stillbuilt into the text and the subsequent inconsistency in Lizs age is anothermark of discordance.

5. Sam enters the archive at a later stage than Arsene, Watt andArthur. He is absent from the early drafts of the novel, arrives only at thebeginning of the third part of the final text and his subsequent presenceremains fragmentary. His archival role is progressive and reinforced as themanuscript evolves.

6. Gontarski and Ackerley describe the Addenda item in whichMr Knotts seriality is mentioned as: the most important of the Addenda,as it encapsulates many of the earliest details from the notebooks andtouches lightly on the novels central themes (Gontarski and Ackerley,2005, 238). They also observe that The episode, with minor variations, ispresent in all the early drafts: an encounter between Quin and an old manin Quins garden, with some of the dialogue later given to Mr Hackett.A revised typescript adds a crucial reference to the Knott family and itsserial nature (Gontarski and Ackerley, 2005, 238).

7. The archons in charge of the arkheon are also accorded thehermeneutic right and competence. They have the power to interpret thearchives (Derrida, 2).

8. All emphasis in original texts.9. The archive is made possible by the death, aggression, and

destruction drive, that is to say also by originary finitude andexpropriation (Derrida, 94).

10. The 2004 Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford:Oxford University Press) defines aposiopesis (becoming silent in Greek)as a rhetorical device in which the speaker suddenly breaks off in themiddle of a sentence, leaving the sense unfinished. The device usuallysuggests strong emotion that makes the speaker unwilling or unableto continue.

11. It should be noted that, in his Preface to the 2009 Faber andFaber edition of Watt, Chris Ackerley warns against the inconsistency andvariations in the use of hyphens and dashes in the Olympia, Grove andCalder editions. He states that The principle in editing such details is,again, conservative and that all editions of Watt are haphazard in theserespects (Ackerley, in Beckett, 2009, xviii). Error in Watt [. . .] is deeplyrooted (Ackerley, in Beckett, 2009, xvi), and Ackerley recognises that hisown editorial choices have been made rightly or wrongly (Ackerley, inBeckett, 2009, xviii). Ultimately, this uncertainty, coupled with editorsattempts to resolve it, can be put down to the work of the destruction andarchive drives.


12. Annoyed by this feeble conclusion, Louit added, I call that the act ofa , , , , , , , , , and here followed a flow of language so gross thata less sweet-tempered man than Mr OMeldon would certainly have beenoffended, it was so gross and fluent (Beckett, 2009, 164).

13. Several examples of this kind can be found on pages 159, 160, 161,167 and 168. A similar use of dashes also occurs in Mr Nolans interruptionof Mr Gorman (Beckett, 2009, 209).

14. Now the next day But here Arthur seemed to tire, of his story, forhe left Mr Graves, and went back, into the house. (Beckett, 2009, 170) Theunusual spatial representation is in the Faber and Faber edition and in theWatt manuscripts.

15. Two occurrences from the beginning of the novel do not complywith this model. After Lady McCann throws a stone at Watt, we read:And it is to be supposed that God, always favourable to the McCannsof ? , guided her hand, for the stone fell on Watts hat and struckit from his head, to the ground. This was indeed a providential escape,for had the stone fallen on an ear, or on the back of the neck, as it mightso easily have done, as it so nearly did, why then a wound had perhapsbeen opened, never again to close, never, never again to close, for Watthad a poor healing skin, and perhaps his blood was deficient in ? (Beckett, 2009, 25). Interestingly, though, these two question marks areconcerned with origin: the first one obliterates the place the McCanns comefrom while the second blots out information about Watts blood and breed.Destruction bears on the revelation of origins.

16. The distribution of question marks in the Faber and Faber editionand in the Watt manuscripts can be viewed as a symptom of thedestruction drive.

17. See previous note.18. An interesting parallel can be drawn here with the extra blank page

between parts I and II in the American edition of Watt (Beckett, 1959, 66).Commenting on page forty-five from the same edition, Chris Ackerleywrites: Arsenes conclusion is followed by a blank line, the next linethen indented halfway across the page. On his personal copy Beckettmarked the space for closure, and the Calder text is continuous (Ackerley,20045, 63). Ackerley explains that the Parisian Olympia editions from1953 and 1958, as well as other earlier versions, all contain a poem anda commentary on an Indian Runner Duck, Arsenes pet (Ackerley, 20045,63), located on page thirty-seven in the Olympia editions. He concludesthat this ended in mid-line, and when the poem and commentary, asmarked off by Beckett on his copy of the Olympia text, were deletedby Grove the irregularity was not adjusted (Ackerley, 20045, 63). Theshaping of the text the extra blank page is a pragmatic compromise that


allowed for the Olympia pagination to be respected. In any case, a gapremained. With this in mind, we can argue that in the same way as thearchive drive runs across Becketts work, the destruction drive is at workthrough the text and its different editions. I am indebted to Mark Byron forbringing this point to my attention.

19. Asja Szafraniecs observation concerning the relationship betweenarchivisation and exhaustion in Beckett moves in the same direction asmy reading of Watt: Exhausting can to an extent be seen as parallelto archiving: whatever their gesture, they are both concerned witheverything + n. The one who archives, archives everything, includinghimself; the one who exhausts, exhausts everything, including himself(114).

20. The cracking metaphor is used in the novel at the end of Part II whenWatt reports the phone call from a so-called friend of Mr Knott inquiringafter him. Watt stated this incident as follows: A friend, sex uncertain, ofMr Knott telephoned to know how he was. Cracks soon appeared in thisformulation (Beckett, 2009, 127). The irony is that no actual cracks appearin the text at this point. The text plays here with readers expectations whiledisplaying its playfulness: the destruction drive has been overtaken by the(wise)crack in the cracking game.

21. But Mr Cases way brought him behind the station, and his footfallscame again, four or five, a little wale of stealth, to Watts ears, which stuckout wide on either side of his head, like a ? s (Beckett, 2009, 202).

22. Issue him a third single to , said Mr Gorman, and let us have done(Beckett, 2009, 212).

23. As Watt told the beginning of his story, not first, but second, so notfourth, but third, now he told its end. Two, one, four, three, that was theorder in which Watt told his story (Beckett, 2009, 186).

24. The text does not make use of punctuation marks, and none of itsparagraphs ends with a full stop. While most of these paragraphs havea semantic and syntactic unity, others are marked by syntactical gaps andincompletion: oriented as he is he must have been following the same roadas I before he dropped theres one (Beckett, 2006, 450).

W O R K S C I T E D

Ackerley, C. J. (1993), Fatigue and Disgust: The Addenda to Watt, SamuelBeckett Today/Aujourdhui, 2:1, pp. 17588.

Ackerley, C. J. (20045), Obscure Locks, Simple Keys: The Annotated Watt,Journal of Beckett Studies, 14:1&2.


Ackerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski (eds) (2004), The Grove Companion toSamuel Beckett: A Readers Guide to his Works, Life, and Thought, New York:Grove Press.

Beckett, Samuel (1959), Watt, New York: Grove Press.Beckett, Samuel [1968] (2004), Watt, Paris: Minuit.Beckett, Samuel (2006), How it is, in Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary

Edition, volume II, ed. Paul Auster, 4 vols, New York: Grove Press.Beckett, Samuel (2009), Watt, ed. C. J. Ackerley, London: Faber and Faber.Byron, Mark (2004), The Ecstasy of Watt, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourdhui,

14:1, pp. 495506.Derrida, Jacques (1995), Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, translated by

Eric Prenowitz, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Foucault, Michel (1994), Des espaces autres, in Dits et crits II, eds. Daniel

Defert and Franois Ewald, Paris: Gallimard, pp. 157181.Gontarski, S. E. and Chris Ackerley (2005), Samuel Becketts Watt, in

A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 19452000, ed. Brian W. Shaffer,Oxford: WileyBlackwell, pp. 22740.

Grossman, Evelyne (2006), Quest-ce quune archive ? (Beckett, Foucault),Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourdhui, 17:1, pp. 46781.

Lake, Carlton (1984), No Symbols Where None Intended, Austin: Universityof Texas Press.

Lscher-Morata, Diane (2004), Mise en mots de la souffrance dans Watt:a Soliloquy under Dictation , Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourdhui, 14:1,pp. 50719.

Montini, Chiara (2003), Watt et le quatrain hroque ou le chaos en rimecroise, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourdhui, 13:1, pp. 23146.

Szafraniec, Asja (2007), Beckett, Derrida, and the End of Literature, Stanford:Stanford University Press.

Documents

CLAIRE LOZIER - Watt’s Archive Fever