Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Daniel (ed.). Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts 2007.

Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 116

ALEX MANGOLD
THE EMPTY ‘I’ – ECHOES OF SUBJECTIVITY IN
SARAH KANE’S CRAVE

I
When Sarah Kane’s first play opened at the Royal Court in London in January
1995, no one could possibly foresee that one of the most notorious playwrights
of the decade would not only become one of the most influential but also one of
the most innovative playwrights of the later 20 th century. Despite her early
notoriety, however, it was not until 1998 that critics came to appreciate her work
for its artistic value rather than its obvious shock aesthetics after missing the
formal and poetic challenges of Kane’s earlier plays1.
Along with other writers of her generation, Kane not only altered theatrical
imagery and style, deconstructing social realism by “blasting” her naturalistic
setting in the middle of her professional stage debut of Blasted (1995), but also
introduced a somewhat raw and yet immediate emotional authenticity to the
British stage that would influence a whole generation of ‘in-yer-face’ and avant-
garde playwrights after her. Far from being merely voyeuristic or keen on shock
aesthetics, Kane drew attention to the psychological and emotional despair of
her cultural environment; to a generation of artists who were still struggling
with cultural and political changes of the Thatcher era and who, consequently,
set out to explore social and psychological consequences of the DIY mentality
of earlier years. The social and political changes of the late eighties and their
aftermath during the early nineties did more than merely alter the socio-
economic realities of British citizens. The in-yer-face generation turned to
describing the microcosm of psychological consequences after struggling with
the idea that “there is no such thing as society” (Keay 1987).
Regardless of its intertextual references, my argument here will be that Sarah
Kane’s fourth and penultimate play, Crave, was more than a postmodernist
poetic achievement. It was a modernist legacy which was highly influenced by
Beckett’s later dramatic work and modern questions of subjectivity such as can
be found in the works of, for example, Julia Kristeva and Jaques Lacan. In
accordance with Derrida’s notion that the “subject and the living ‘who’ is at the
heart of the most pressing concerns of modern societies” (Derrida 1991, 115), I
will show how the psychological conflicts Sarah Kane portrayed in her earlier
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plays found their way into the poetic language of her later work and how this
was in keeping with both modernist and postmodernist theories of the self.

II
“The widest definition of in-yer-face theatre”, Aleks Sierz reminds us, “is any
drama that takes its audience by the scruff of the neck and shakes it until it gets
the message” (Sierz 2000, 4). And Sierz’ list of in-yer-face playwrights
comprises most of the Royal Court debuts in the early nineties, with Mark
Ravenhill, Anthony Neilson and Sarah Kane as its most prominent figures. But
despite the fact that Kane used to employ numerous shock aesthetics right from
the start, she did not only strive to provide the audience with “an emotional
journey” by “getting under our skin” (ibid), she also wanted to portray the
despairing psychological reality of the individual self.
I want to suggest that Sarah Kane was portraying an individual who lacked
the unity of modernist subjectivity while at the same time displaying clear traces
of its absence. Even though the individuals Kane portrays in her plays are of a
highly stereotypical character, they always seem to demonstrate their
universality by sharing nightmarish visions of emptiness and frustration, thereby
constantly underlining their existential despair after having lost any sense of
unity. “No God. No Father Christmas. No fairies. No Narnia. No fucking
nothing”, Ian says in Sarah Kane’s notorious debut B1asted (Kane 2001, 55).
And be it Blasted’s Ian, Hippolytus in Phaedra’s Love or Grace in Kane’s third
play Cleansed, the psychological landscapes she portrays have all lost any sense
of the other, both transcendental and social.
There are many modern and intertextual references in Kane’s work, most of
which have been discussed in some detail elsewhere, for example in the work of
Eckhard Voigts-Virchow and Heiner Zimmermann2. Mark Ravenhill even once
asked Kane whether all of her idols started with the letter ‘B’, hinting at the fact
that her favourites were modernists such as Büchner, Brecht, Beckett and Barker
(see Ravenhill 2006). But before taking a closer look at one of these major
influences and its significance for a more detailed analysis of Crave, I would
like to suggest that there is one major difference between the works of the
aforementioned writers and the plays of Sarah Kane. If for the existentialist
Jean-Paul Sartre “l’enfer, c’est les autres” (‘hell are the others’, Sartre 1944, V),
for the playwrights of the nineties, and for Sarah Kane especially, l’enfer, c’est
moi, ‘hell am I’. And it is this that we need to bear in mind when analysing her
plays. Sarah Kane’s plays may well display postmodern formal devices and hints
of deconstruction. Yet it is the despair and the loss of subjectivity suggested in
her characters’ stereotypicality that make for the work’s raw emotional
authenticity.
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118

In Crave, Kane’s characters have all been deprived of any sense of

significant individuality and their language constantly fails to express their
subjectivity. Although in Lacanian terms, “language defines the subject from
outside, instilling in it a sense of lack, which it perpetually tries to satisfy
through an endless and constant desire” (compare Mansfield 2000, 66), the
language these characters use is neither their own nor do they ever receive a
genuine response, no matter how much they may crave it. As opposed to her
modernist predecessors, however, Kane’s characters are not absurd or surreal in
a way that would question language or culture itself. In the experiential theatre
of Sarah Kane, the characters question their selves; selves which are persistently
characterised by a genuine lack of a relationship with the other. And as Julia
Kristeva suggests, “[b]ecause the psychic functioning of transference is
fundamentally dependent on the intercourse between the living-symbolic […]
and the other” (Kristeva, 1987, 14), it is this lost sense of individuality and the
respective loss of the other that is responsible for the trauma and subsequent
melancholia of an empty ‘I’ that can be found in Sarah Kane’s plays.

III
There are 4 stereotypical characters in Crave. All of them are stripped of any
individual points of reference, the characters are merely indicated by the letters
A, B, C and M and there is no such thing as a coherent plot. All these characters
have to offer are stereotypical phrases and stories, mostly other than their own. If
A, B, C and M indeed stand for Abuser, Boy, Child and Mother – or Arsehole,
as Simon Kane once suggested for A (see Rebellato 1998, no page numbers) –,
they could indeed be anyone. If they could be anyone, however, they most
certainly can’t be someone. And even though they express themselves by lucid
articulation (at least most of the time), they never converse. Above all, even
though their language and the fact that they talk makes them linguistic subjects,
the absence of discourse marks them relentlessly helpless and lonely. If the
subject can only achieve some sense of selfhood by establishing a relationship
with the other, the language Kane’s characters use in Crave will not – cannot –
do the trick. According to Kristeva, selfhood can only be derived from the
symbolic by means of language3, and it is precisely this language, as a means for
communicating with the other, which has to fail these characters. Whenever the
slightest hint of a relationship emerges, A, B, C and M ramble on with their own
thoughts, completely oblivious to the others’ words.
Take, for instance, the following. At the beginning there are several hints on
possible relationships the characters might have with each other. A could be the
abuser of C, C the daughter of A or M, and M could be the mother of either C or
B (see figure 1). Leaving the feminist implications aside for a minute (by this, I
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mean the ‘phallocentric’ implications of A’s sexual abuse and M’s maternal yet
fragile instincts and any resulting Freudian ‘name-of-the-father’ implications),
we can assume that these characters at least have something in common. They
are all conceivable others. Yet M is but a mother, just the same way as C is but a
daughter. And unlike Cleansed – where one of the characters interferes every
time a loving relationship could have been established – a real opportunity for
establishing a relationship with the other never arises. These characters use
language only to talk to themselves and not for the purpose of communicating
with each other.

Character
Character constellation
constellation in
in Crave
Crave

B
B CC

SEXUAL
SEXUAL ABUSIVE
ABUSIVE

PATERNAL
PATERNAL MATERNAL
MATERNAL

A
A M
M

Figure 1

I would now like to illustrate how this modernist influence can be identified
formally by comparing Crave to another modernist work of the aforementioned
‘B’s.

IV
In Beckett’s shorter play Quad, which he first produced for the Süddeutscher
Rundfunk in Germany and which was first transmitted by BBC2 on 16 Dec
1982, four players enter a square at different points A, B, C and D. Within about
seven minutes, they perform several movement patterns, meticulously laid out in
the script. Every player has their own course, moving from their assigned
starting point to their end position offstage. Every player is assigned his own up-
tempo rhythm on a percussion instrument in keeping with their steps and a
hooded robe in a distinctive colour, namely white, yellow, blue and red. Apart
from the colours, however, the hooded figures bear no distinguishable features.
 “The Empty ‘I’ – Echoes of Subjectivity in Sarah Kane’s Crave”
120

All of them perform their individual patterns, leave the stage and subsequently
reappear for yet another round of geometry, thereby fulfilling the premise of
Beckettian minimal art in a most poignant manner. “Four actors, whose coloured
hoods make them identifiable yet anonymous, accomplish a relentless closed-
circuit drama”, says Rudolf Frieling on a German website dedicated to the
original production of Quad (www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/quadrat – my
emphasis), and Jim Lewis, Beckett’s camera man at the time, said “it was
feverish, feverish monotony” (quoted in Brater 1987, 107).

Basic
Basic Pattern
Pattern in Beckett’’ss Quad
in Beckett’
Beckett
Beckett’ Quad II

BB CC

EE

A
A D
D

Figure 2

But the most interesting aspect of the play lies within another detail I have
not yet mentioned. The pattern laid out in the script is composed in such a way
that the players have to avoid a certain point “E” in the middle of the square;
they have to carefully avoid crossing paths by performing a geometric pattern
around the centre that would keep them out of each other’s way, thereby creating
another, smaller square in the centre. “There was something terrifying about it
[… ]. It was danger,” as Martha Fehsenfeld commented in Modern Drama in
1982 (MD 25, 360). And in his review from the same year Gontarski noted that,
“since the figures always turn left, not only at the centre but at the corners also,
the pattern is that of the damned in the Inferno” (Gontarski 1984, 137).
 Mangold
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Movement
Movement pattern
pattern ofof the
the four
four
‘‘hooded figures’’ in
hooded figures’
figures
figures’ in Quad
Quad II

Figure 3

V
My argument is that Sarah Kane’s Crave is in many ways similar to this modern
classic of minimal art. Apart from the obvious anonymity of Beckett’s hooded
figures and the neat formal framework of the play, the letters of the Quad and
the hooded figures inside represent a modern notion of lost individuality which
offers no way out. As Fehsenfeld rightly puts it, “[d]arkness is the only relief,
and like all relief in Beckett it is only temporary. […] the players […] are
committed to an endless unyielding punishment – continuous movement of
excruciating sameness” (Fehsenfeld 1982, 361). Just like the anonymous hooded
figures in Quad, Kane’s anonymous characters A, B, C and M only strive for
something they can never get: individuality, some sense of ‘I’. Even through the
means of language, originally perceived as a means to establish subjectivity in a
linguistic way, A, B, C and M do not connect. It seems as if they, like Beckett’s
figures, are persistently trying to avoid each other’s discourse, their pattern, by
carefully avoiding the centre or any encounter with the other. The further the
play develops, the more emptiness the characters convey. And after about two
thirds of the play, they realise that they did, in fact, nothing:

C I did nothing, nothing.

B I did nothing (p.181).

The characters consent to an inability to act on their craving for some sense of
individuality; or in C’s words: ”[y]ou can only kill yourself if you’re not already
dead” (p.183 – my emphasis). To these characters, language is what movement
 “The Empty ‘I’ – Echoes of Subjectivity in Sarah Kane’s Crave”
122

was to Beckett’s hooded figures, a pattern they have to anonymously perform.

And since subjectivity and the self present

M A private iconography which I cannot decipher (p.183),

death indeed becomes an option; a way to end the need for the other and the
perpetual longing for a connection.
The closer the ending of the play, the more desperate the characters become
for a way out of their personalised inferno. And yet, in the end, it is their
subjectivity (or rather echoes of its notion) that won’t let them die. Their words
still constitute a discourse of the ‘I’ which creates an illusion of the speaking
subject, albeit that this subject is no longer conversing but soliloquizing in
echoes of its lost stability. As C states while the pounding rhythm of the play
draws towards its end:

I hate these words that keep me alive

I hate these words that won’t let me die (p.184).

All these, Kane’s, letters are left with is a language which is no longer their own.
And yet, even though the words are not genuine, are no longer a true expression
of selfhood, they won’t let them die, carrying on

B expressing [their] pain without easing it (p.184).

The process of modern repetition with a difference, already displayed in

Beckett’s hooded figures, has here turned into postmodern infinite regression,
ridiculing Kane’s characters. If it is not “acceptable” for C to be “me” (p.185),
due to the dire hopelessness and artificiality she finds herself trapped in, there is
no need to be ‘her’ at all. The choices these subjects are left with after
establishing that hell is in fact me and not the other are to concentrate on simple
Yes-No questions for which real decisions are no longer required.

M Yes.
B No.
A Yes.
B No.
C No.
A Yes.
A beat. (p. 186)

How should the empty ‘I’ know what it wants when it is faced with options it
doesn’t want to have? A connection with the other in order to gain some sense of
subjectivity is the one thing it wants and can never achieve. The last ten pages of
 Mangold
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the play thus herald an option which will end the suffering by killing the self. In
the end, the loss of love, the inability to connect with the other and the abolition
of the centre all illuminate a simple truth:

C I am not ill, I just know that life is not worth living (p.188).

The ending of the play has been described as “happy” on several occasions,
probably due to its last lines

A Happy
B So happy
C Happy and free (p. 200).

It seems to me, however, that, in accordance with what I outlined above,

B when our sense of centre shifts […] the balance has gone. The balance, my
baby has gone” (p. 193).

In Crave the characters may appear as subjects at first sight, but none of
them is self, while at the same time all of them are other. The objectification
they long for can only be found in a physical disembodiment that only death can
offer. Maybe, in the end, A, B, C and M really

have to be where […] they were meant to be (p. 189),

and the only thing we as an audience can offer these characters is to grant their
wishes and to

let B Let
them C Me
go M Go (p.189).

VI
My argument in this paper was twofold. First of all, I wanted to briefly establish
the term of the empty ‘I’ for describing the melancholic structure of Kane’s
characters in general. In a second step, I then tried to link the content of her
plays to modernist issues of subjectivity, while at the same time pointing out that
the most striking difference between modernist existentialism and Sarah Kane’s
work lies within the fact that where, e.g., Sartre’s characters found hell within
the other, to her characters hell mostly lies within the ‘I’ itself.
 “The Empty ‘I’ – Echoes of Subjectivity in Sarah Kane’s Crave”
124

By finally comparing Crave to Beckett’s later work Quad I, I suggested

formal similarities between minimalist art and the poetic structure of Kane’s
penultimate play. It will have become clear during the course of this paper that,
while Kane’s writing may have been influenced by postmodern formal
approaches like intertextuality and deconstructivism, the interpersonal conflicts
she portrayed were of an existential and thereby rather universal nature. This
might also explain why they seem even more accurate today as they were only
nine years ago.

Notes
1
Compare, e.g., Michael Billington’s review on Blasted in 1995: “I was simply left
wondering how such naive tosh managed to scrape past the Royal Court's normally
judicious play-selection committee”. In Billington’s defence, however, it has to be said
that he later retracted his earlier views on Kane’s work: “I made an idiot of myself over
Sarah Kane's Blasted” (Billington 2001).
2
See, e.g., Zimmermann, Heiner (2001) and Voigts-Virchow, Eckart (2001) for a more
detailed discussion on intertext and other influences on Kane’s work.

3 Compare Kristeva, 1984, 49: “The symbolic, as opposed to the semiotic, is this
inevitable attribute of meaning, sign, and the signified object”, while the semiotic may be
expressed verbally but not according to coherent linguistic rules. This finds its expression
in the term “speaking subjects”, a term Kristeva uses throughout her work. To her, the
subject is not only constituted by language itself but rather by its use of language.

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