Watt: Inclusion and Reading, or, Effing the Ineffable

            In “15 January 1975” Michel Foucault describes two distinct forms of power—that of marginalization and exclusion (negative power) and that of normalization and inclusion (positive power). Inclusive power involves “a series of fine and constantly observed differences between individuals who are ill and those who are not” and  “is a question of individualization; the division and subdivision of power extending to the fine grain of individuality.” With this form of power, which Foucault locates particularly in the plague city, “there is close and meticulous observation…an ever more constant and insistent observation” (46) of “abnormal individuals.” Clearly (?) positive power permeates (alliteration!) our current social institutions, so it seems appropriate to think about how this model might apply to reading fiction, and what it might mean to be a reader of “abnormal” characters.

            It is safe to say that Beckett’s fiction is populated almost exclusively with “abnormal individuals.” His protagonists are often mentally-ill, homeless, or institutionalized and incessantly define themselves in relation to the “normal” individuals around them. Watt/Watt is no exception. As is (hopefully) clear from previous posts, Watt becomes alienated from his external reality as his ability to make meaning deteriorates—it might be useful to think of the breakdown of the signifying chain in Jameson’s “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” in which the “schizoid” experiences language as a “rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers.” In Watt, as his predecessor in Mr. Knott’s house explains, Watt “partakes in no small measure of the nature of what has so happily been called the unutterable or ineffable, so that any attempt to utter or eff it is doomed to fail, doomed, doomed to fail” (50). Watt’s attempt to glimpse that which lies behind systems of meaning (be it something or no-thing) leads him quite literally to an asylum, as we learn in Part III of the novel that the preceding two parts have been dictated by Watt to a man named Sam (get it?) through the fence that surrounds the asylum.

            In Foucault’s model of power, it would appear that Watt, a clearly abnormal individual, has been inclusively neutralized by positive power structures. However, the sheer opacity of the novel occludes a reader from reaching any safe position from which to “observe” Watt’s abnormality—indeed, the novel forces the reader into the position of a plague-city observer, and then shows you how imperfect observation (and therefore power-through-observation) can really be. To begin with, narrator Sam explains that “Watt spoke as one speaking to dictation, or reciting, parrot-like, a text, by long repetition become familiar. Of this impetuous murmur much fell in vain on my imperfect hearing and understanding, and much by the rushing wind was carried away, and lost for ever” (127). Here the reliability of the narrative is undermined considerably. Soon after, Sam asks

But what kind of witness was Watt, weak now of eye, hard of hearing, and with even the more intimate senses greatly below par? A needy witness, an imperfect witness. The better to witness, the worse to witness. That with his need he might witness its absence. That imperfect he might witness it ill. That Mr. Knott might never cease, but ever almost cease. Such appeared to be the arrangement. (167-67)

Here the inclusive power of observation (read: the act of reading) is destabilized—no longer can we trace the movement of power through the various structures of observation and normalization. Instead, Beckett seems to suggest that such mastery was always an illusion, and that perhaps traditional structures of power (language most of all) can be undermined by changing our relation to the structure, and acknowledging our weaknesses and almost inevitable failure.