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Record W1975023516 · doi:10.4148/2334-4415.1560

Malone Dies and the Beckettian Mimesis of Inexistence

2003· article· en· W1975023516 on OpenAlexaff
Eric P. Levy

Bibliographic record

VenueStudies in 20th & 21st century literature · 2003
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicSamuel Beckett and Modernism
Canadian institutionsUniversity of British Columbia
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMetaphysicsPresuppositionPhilosophySubjectivityContemplationEpistemologyRepresentation (politics)Phenomenology (philosophy)Transcendental numberConsciousnessAntecedent (behavioral psychology)PsychologyLawSocial psychologyPolitics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

In the novel, it is not so much that Malone dies as that a mimetic convention concerning the representation of life is terminated or, more precisely, terminally minimalized. Through this reduction of life, Beckettian mimesis is enabled to represent a mode of existence unencumbered by antecedent associations or presuppositions. As the "axioms" (MD 187) and conventions regarding the significance of life are debunked or decomposed, the mimesis of inexistence emerges. But as this state of inexis tence is riddled with paradoxes, an intellectual device is required to facilitate analysis of it. The device in question concerns what metaphysics terms "transcendentals," which determine how we experience what we experience, and thus constrain the boundaries and possibilities of subjectivity. But far from mimicking the method of transcendental phenomenology to uncover the functions by which structure is constituted or filled in, Beckettian mimesis, as exemplified in Malone Dies, seeks instead to represent the process by which structure and order are drained. The hallmark of Beckettian mimesis is the representation of the process by which consciousness is emptied of the content which inexists in it. The deeper implications of this remarkable evacuation can be explored by reference to the doctrine of the kenosis or evacuatio (self-emptying).

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.005
Threshold uncertainty score0.024

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.000
Science and technology studies0.0050.029
Scholarly communication0.0050.007
Open science0.0010.004
Research integrity0.0020.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.055
GPT teacher head0.280
Teacher spread0.225 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2003
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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Same venueStudies in 20th & 21st century literatureSame topicSamuel Beckett and ModernismFrench-language works237,207