Zápis o obhajobě disertační práce
Akademický rok: 2021/2022
Jméno a příjmení studenta: Mgr. Galina Nixon Kiryushina Identifikační číslo studenta: 62689923
Typ studijního programu: doktorský Studijní program: Filologie
Studijní obor: Anglická a americká literatura
ID studia: 438699
Název práce: Cinema, Television and Conceptual Transmutations in Samuel Beckett's 1960s Prose
Pracoviště práce: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
Jazyk práce: angličtina
Jazyk obhajoby: čeština
Školitel: prof. Mgr. Ondřej Pilný, Ph.D.
Oponent(i): doc. Clare Wallace, M.A., Ph.D.
prof. Shane Weller, Ph.D.
Datum obhajoby: 29.09.2022 Místo obhajoby: Praha
Termín: řádný
Průběh obhajoby: ZÁPIS Z OBHAJOBY DISERTAČNÍ PRÁCE Student:Galina Kiryushina
Datum narození: 7.5.1988 ID studia: 438699
Studijní program: Filologie
Studijní obor: Anglická a americká literatura
Název práce: Cinema, Television and Conceptual Transmutations in Samuel Beckett's 1960s Prose
Jazyk práce: angličtina Jazyk obhajoby: angličtina Školitel: prof. Ondřej Pilný
Oponenti: doc. Clare Wallace; prof. Shane Weller Datum obhajoby: 29.9.2022
Místo obhajoby: FF UK, nám. J. Palacha 2, Praha 1, učebna č. 111 Termín: řádný
Předseda komise: prof. PhDr. Martin Procházka, CSc.
12:32 Prof. Prochazka opens the defence and presents the agenda.
The supervisor (Ondrej Pilny) briefly introduces the candidate and summarises her results.
Describes the course of study. Kiryushina is an outstanding student who participated in 7 international conferences and taught a seminar at the department. Successfully applied for a grant and worked under the large interdisciplinary project KREAS. Did research in UK and Ireland. Co-organised multiple conferences, including Beckett and Technology, which resulted in an important publication. Published
profusely with international journals and chapters in academic books which is an exceptional achievement for a Ph.D. student.
Recommends the dissertation for defence.
12:37 The candidate presents an overview of her PhD dissertation Starts with the question of how the influence of film was carried from the 1930s to his prose texts of the 1960s. The thesis attempts to answer it. The thesis shows that film and television became a prism for Beckett’s writing, rather than discrete media.
The thesis identifies several concepts central to Beckett’s aesthetics and traces the origin and elaboration of these ideas through the work.
These concepts include subject-object relations, perception and more.
This is traced in a combination of close reading and archival work.
How is this different from other work? Previous work of other authors is comparative – between films and prose work, but the connection is taken for granted and is not explained. However, Beckett’s interest was in the technology itself, not just in the contents of particular works.
Chapter 1 deals with Beckett’s interest in film in the 1930s. The chapter claims that it is not until Beckett gets practical experience in directing that he puts the concepts into practice.
Chapter 2 deals with the TV work of the 1960s and the impact of film theories and Schopenhauer’s work on vision. It also discusses Beckett’s encounter with television and his work with TV directors, for the first time showing a connection to the French television industry.
Chapter 3 deals with the prose work of the 1960 and the closed space narratives constructed by principles taken from screen media. There is a shift from subject-object relations to observer-observer which raise questions of authority and gender as the male gaze encountering a female body. Beckett creates a seemingly objective mediation that is similar to the objective camera of TV and film.
Chapter 4 looks at the documentary genre and reads the narrative voice as the voice-over common to documentary. It creates a god- like perspective as in the television work Quad. The chapter shows the subjective-objective narrative voice in the text Ping and its genesis.
The thesis shows how the medium of film and media were part of the formation of Beckett’s mature prose.
12:49 The opponent Shane Weller presents a brief summary of her report, highlighting the most important questions for the candidate:
Rarely saw a thesis so perfectly presented in terms of clarity and presentation. In terms of content, the thesis restores a missing link in our understanding of the impact of Beckett’s early reading about film, and his own work in the medium, on his late prose. The thesis implicitly shows that it is not Comment c’est which is the decisive work in Beckett’s transition to his mature style. The question of how the readings of the 1930s managed to have such an impact on his writing 30 years later. The thesis persuasively shows how the work on film and television reignited this interest. This is a major
achievement.
The close analysis of the avant-garde texts can be seen in a new light and it shows how distinctive they are from work of the previous years, especially How it is.
Questions:
1. Kiryushina demonstrates very clearly how Beckett’s approach remains modernist
and even avant-garde throughout his writing career. Like Joyce, he continues to seek new and
radical ways of writing, even as his fundamental themes remain more or less constant. In this
context, it would be helpful to understand how Kiryushina sees this radicalism
alongside Beckett’s resistance to various forms of technical
2 153243 - Mgr. Galina Nixon Kiryushina
innovation, including sound and
colour. In the 1960s, the Nouvelle Vague in France (led by Jean-Luc Godard) embraced both
American film and colour; Beckett did not. How might we consider his work in that cultural
context? The 1930s historical-cultural context is examined in depth in the thesis; the 1960s context is not. This is understandable, but some discussion of it would be helpful.
2. Beckett’s interest in montage. This technique is clearly central to Beckett’s
conception of film, or at least the kind of film that he valued. It would be helpful if Kiryushina
could provide a little more on the nature and value of montage as a filmic technique, on the
extent to which it features in Beckett’s own televisual work, and how it translates as a
technique in his 1960s prose.
3. Kiryushina touches on the idea of the “male gaze” (via Laura Mulvey, 1975) in relation
to All Strange Away (82). It would be helpful to understand how widely across Beckett’s later
prose, with its intense focus on the image and the eye, Kiryushina sees the embodiment
and/or critique of a gendered gaze as extending. To what extent is the closed space a
heterosphere in which it is the male gaze that prevails? (In this context, it is striking that none
of the films referenced were directed by female directors, and the same goes for Beckett’s
engagement with television.)
4. The thesis could be expanded to a full monograph.
13: 00 The opponent Clare Wallace presented a brief summary of her report, highlighting the most important questions for the candidate:
As a non-Beckettian, the trajectory of influence the thesis is studying looks familiar but it adds a lot of details. Structurally the thesis could benefit from a more extended discussion of intermediality and a longer literature review that would clarify how the present work differs from what has been done before and the writer’s personal perspective. Also, the thesis is only getting to the titular subject only halfway through.
1.What is different between the work by Anthony Paraskeva and Olga Beloborodova and what you are arguing? How would you distinguish your research in terms of concept and outcomes?
2.Wouldn’t a term like technopoetics be more productive, since it seems that Beckett’s developing “poetry of moving images” is indebted to machines – the camera eye, the recording device, lighting, the film as surface and so on?
3.On p. 73 “This radical shift in narrative method” is attributed to Beckett’s engagement with visual/ film/ technologies. Yet it could be argued that these texts are not narrative since the key components of narrative – plot, character etc. are absent. What do you think?
4.Explain why the following works are excluded from the the discussion: Ulrika Maude, Beckett, Technology and the Body, Colin Gardner, Beckett, Deleuze and the Televisual Event: Peephole Art, James Little, Samuel Beckett in Confinement: The Politics of Closed Space
5.Did Beckett actually see a film by Einsenstein? Galina answered that yes, he mentions it in the correspondence.
13: 07 The candidate responds to the questions:
In answer to the questions of resistance to the technological
innovations available in the 1960. One answer is poetic, Beckett did in film what he believed cinema should be like. In the 1950s, he talks about how cinema was killed in the cradle, and how sound impeded
its progress. He sees it as a visualisation technique rather than a medium to carry a narrative. The pragmatic reason is that when he started working in film he was cooperating with Schneider who had no experience in film. He comes with his ideas from the 1930s and the people around him wanted to accommodate this. This changes when he starts working with Kermitz who managed to persuade him to do something more interesting using editing and other techniques.
He was particularly fond of Alain René and the genre of documentary. He had an artistic view of what cinema is.
Prof. Shane Weller adds a follow-up question – can you disaggregate Beckett’s understanding of film from his understanding of television which he learned more practically. This is just a trajectory for further thinking. Kiryushina answers that he does think about it differently.
There is a new thing that is happening with television when he starts to work in the medium, namely the introduction of recording and the feeling of liveness.
Prof. Weller adds a comment about how personal relationships affect his aesthetic direction.
The second question about montage – the initial answer is the fashioning of fragments into a whole. Arnheim says it concerns the things that set film apart from reality. Eisenstein sees montage as a contrast – a dichotomic clash. It creates a tension. That is actually missing in Beckett’s film, which is slow and lyrical, even non- dynamic. When he deals with television he has his own idea of liveness that is in the medium but he wants to make us see that it is not embedded in reality.
Prof. Weller’s follow-up question: how is montage used in the prose work? Kiryushina explains that he does not use film “tricks” but there is a clash between voice and image that uses Eisensteinian montage. Mentions a film by Chris Marker in which a scene is overlaid with three voice-overs – neutral, positive propoganda, and a negative. The voice is added to affect the emotion of the viewer. A similar effect is explored in The Lost Ones. In early documentary voice over speaks ‘for’ the people shown in a colonialist manner which is problematised later.
As regards the male gaze. All Strange Away is a really unusual work in its content. Beckett moves away from sexuality in the later period.
In The Lost Ones he deals with a colonial situation which is also singular. During the genesis of ASA he lets his imagination run wild and then he eliminates and leaves only remnants. In Imagination Dead Imagination the male gaze disappears and there is only lyricism. The male gaze does not appear again in the late work.
Regarding the comments on structure and the discussion of intermediality, Kiryushina explains it was difficult to keep the materials focused and coherent, but it may be useful to add this in a longer work. Regarding recent work, Kiryushina mentions
Paraskeva’s book which is often compared to her work. But the question of what cinematic influence becomes in Beckett’s work, while Paraskeva does a more comparative study of similarities and the cultural background. Nobody really approaches the late prose with an intermedial perspective.
13:35 A public discussion follows, during which further questions are asked.
Prof. Ondřej Pilný comments that the natural frustration follows from the temptation of taking the approach of the thesis to the very late prose which is more successful artistically. The texts handled by the thesis show traces of the artist struggling to write, which is also a struggle for the reader as well. Suggests that in a monograph project it would make sense to go back to Kiryushina’s master’s thesis about the second trilogy and examine them from this new perspective.
Prof. Prochazka suggests to reference contemporary theories of intermediality in an introduction. Asks about the silent film and the importance of gags. Kiryushina answers positively and cites a few
4 153243 - Mgr. Galina Nixon Kiryushina
instances of Beckett using gags in his work, e.g., Waiting for Godot or Film.
Prof. Weller asks about the next steps to turn the thesis into a monograph. Suggests the decisive contribution is how Beckett’s work in television changes the way he writes prose. Kiryushina mentions the late prose, further work on the 1960s, go back to the French manuscripts of Le Depeupleur and see if there is a vagueing process there as well.
13:55 Results were announced to the candidate, the unanimous vote of the committee to award the degree of the Doctor of Philosophy.
The awarded grade is “pass”.
Klasifikace obhajoby: prospěl/a (P)
Předseda komise: prof. PhDr. Martin Procházka, CSc. ...
Členové komise: prof. Mgr. Ondřej Pilný, Ph.D. ...
doc. Clare Wallace, M.A., Ph.D. ...
prof. Shane Weller, Ph.D. ...
5 153243 - Mgr. Galina Nixon Kiryushina
