žižek archive
archive / stories / Beckett's Unnamable as image of Singularity

Beckett's Unnamable as image of Singularity

example · literature: Samuel Beckett · retold in 3 talks

Žižek reads Beckett's novel The Unnamable, a confused self-conversation of an autistic, quasi-mad voice, as the true image of what Singularity would feel like: not collective divine awareness but blind, autistic machinery.

As told 2

“I read singularity as something that will effectively if it will be realized look like Sam Beckett's Unnamable”
46:45 What Does the Future Hold?2020-08-06 · 1:00:44
“Beckett's dream was what we imagine a Cogito prior to finding reference or firm foundation in the big other. Cogito which remains in this pure hallucination.”

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

Its cast and sources

populated by
alongside works

Every retelling 2

46:45 What Does the Future Hold?2020-08-06 · 1:00:44
Žižek reads Beckett's novel The Unnamable, a confused self-conversation of an autistic, quasi-mad voice, as the true image of what Singularity would feel like: not collective divine awareness but blind, autistic machinery., illustrating Singularity,consciousness,digital consciousness critique
Beckett's Unnamable models a Cartesian Cogito prior to any grounding in the big Other, a pure hallucinatory voice, which Žižek uses to predict what collective Neuralink consciousness might feel like from within., illustrating singularity,Cogito,Lacanian subject,Neuralink