1. Truth: All the Dead Voices 21 January 2016, Göze Saner

2. Questions/Provocations What is the truth or what is truth Where does it come from How do we know it What is its relationship to authority and power What is its relationship to father figures

3. Foucault quotes Beckett: ““‘What does it matter matter who is speaking, someone said, ‘what does it matter who is speaking.’” In this indifference appears one of the fundamental ethical principles of contemporary writing (écriture).” (What Is an Author? p. 101)

4. Author Function: Foucault The link between power and truth What does it matter who is speaking?

5. From this initial period of Beckett Studies, furthermore two philosophical readings emerged: the existential and the Cartesian[….]As for existentialism, so too for Cartesianism—at one point, the de rigueur philosophical interpretation of Beckett’s work—which may well be a red herring. Without doubt “Whoroscope,”Beckett’s first published poem in 1930, centered upon the life of René Descartes, and demonstrated some knowledge of Cartesian philosophy. However, this was inductively applied to a reading of Beckett’s work as a whole, creating the misleading impression that, as both online sources and the Encyclopaedia Brittanica have it, Descartes was “Beckett’s favourite philosopher.” (Feldman and Mamdani, Beckett/Philosophy, p. 18)

6. From Whorocope What's that? How long? Sit on it.

7. Meditations on First Philosophy Concerning those things that can be called into doubt Concerning the nature of the human mind: that it is better known than the body Concerning God, that he exists

8. Where do those things I take to be true come from? I know the world and my own body through my senses. But my senses sometimes deceive me. But I cannot question them, only insane people do!? But when I am --------, my senses do deceive me. So how can I be certain that I am now --------?

9. How about God? What if God did not create me and the world around me but is only making it appear to me that such is the case? But God wouldn’t do that because God is ----. Then it could be that an evil genius is deceiving me. If in doubt, withdraw assent until a solid, indubitable basis can be found.

10. Thinking? Senses, memories, feelings false. Only truth is that nothing is certain. But who is making me think these thoughts? God? Am I not the ---- of these thoughts? Does that not mean I am something? And even if I am not the -----, even if I am being deceived by the malicious being, then it is deceiving me! I think, I persuade, I consider, I question: I doubt, therefore I am.

11. To follow: Investigate how truth operates in the plays, particularly in Embers Question how the figure of the author or authority functions

12. listen: 11.00 the drip 18.40 hooves 22-23 piano lesson 25 approach to the sea 35 calling Ada, then hooves

13. continued… How does the radio play operate differently from the staged play? In a crudely Cartesian fashion: does the radio play engage the body or the mind? Is the radio play inherently modern or post- modern?

14. continued… How does the radio play reflect ones inner voices? Where is the author in the radio play? (Is it me???)

15. Conclusions? Embers is the flip side of meditations: it emphasizes the loneliness of what I am, given the interiority of what/how I think Each moment of I think therefore I am is the moment of death: it is unwitnessed, alone, unsharable My voice is my father’s voice, my daughter’s voice, my wife’s voice. There is no ‘I’ who thinks. I repeat, therefore I am.

16. Embers Is Henry in control of the sounds he hears/we hear or not? “Not a sound” How is the sound of a thing linked to its existence? Who is a reflection of Henry in this world? Who is a reflection of Beckett ‘the author’?

17. Embers Who is there? Really? (Ada? Father? Addie? Holloway? Bolton?) What is the sound of the sea? How do the sound-memories work: horse and the piano teacher? What happened on ‘that day’? What does Bolton want?