Trauma, Testimony, and ‘the Vicissitudes of Listening’1 in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape | ||
| المجلة العلمیة لکلیة الآداب-جامعة أسیوط | ||
| Article 16, Volume 33, Issue 94, April 2025, Pages 1195-1214 PDF (1.39 M) | ||
| Document Type: بحوث علمية محکمة | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/aakj.2025.360733.1986 | ||
| Author | ||
| SYED ZAMANAT ABBAS* | ||
| College of Arts and Science, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape illustrates the repetitive and seemingly futile labour of its protagonist, Krapp, who listens to and records tapes cataloguing his past. This article explores and tries to problematise Krapp’s actions and identity through Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s (1992) framework of testimony as a crisis of witnessing, alongside Cathy Caruth’s (1995) theory of trauma. It argues that Krapp’s compulsive listening to previous tapes and recording further to listen to in future, is a mechanism of bearing witness to his trauma both as the survivor as well as listener to his testimony. However, this testimony is inherently fragmented, perpetuating his need to shape and reshape it every year till he has the last tape. Krapp’s tapes furnish an archive that testifies to the oppressive truth of abandoning love life as a result of which his present self has neither any comforts of personal relationships nor any intellectual attainment, the realisation of which reinforces his trauma. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Trauma; Testimony; Holocaust; Krapp; Tape | ||
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