Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros: defiance vs. conformism / Eugene Ionesco'nun Rhinoceros adli eseri: muhalefet konformizme karsi

Interactions, Spring, 2008 by William S. Haney, II

Berenger's doubts about his existence, about the world being anything but a dream, and about the logical arguments of becoming a rhino all suggest that he has transcended the conceptual dimension of the finite "I" and taken his stand on the basis of the subtlest nonlocal level of human identity. Human in this sense refers to the phenomenologically unbounded state of nonpluralistic being. Throughout Rhinoceros, Ionesco dramatizes Berenger's resistance to the self-interest of the part in favor of the selfless whole.

Evidence of Berenger's penchant for wholeness emerges frequently in his nonlogical remarks. In conversation with Jean, he says, "Solitude seems to oppress me. And so does the company of other people," to which Jean replies, "You contradict yourself. What oppresses you--solitude, or the company of others? You consider yourself a thinker, yet you're devoid of logic" (25). In going beyond the logic of non-contradiction and either/or, Berenger assimilates to the wholeness of both/and. To wonder if he exists implies that he both does and does not exist: his finite socially constructed self is a dream, while his infinite better Self as pure consciousness, even though devoid of qualities, exists as the ultimate real. Most Western philosophers, particularly constructivists like Steven Katz (1978) and others, argue that consciousness always has an intentional object, and that even mystical experience is constructed by language and culture. As Robert Forman argues in Mysticism, Mind, Consciousness, however, mystical or sacred experiences "don't result from a process of building or constructing mystical experiences ... but rather from an un-constructing of language and belief ... from something like a releasing of experience from language" (99, original emphasis). By language he implies what the Rig-Veda and Indian grammarians such as Bhartrhari call the lower levels of language that involve space, time and the duality of subject and object. As Bhartrhari notes, language consists of four levels corresponding to different levels of consciousness, ranging from the spoken word in ordinary waking consciousness to the subtlest form of thought in pure consciousness (Coward 1976). As we move from the ordinary waking state toward pure consciousness (turiya), the unity of sound and meaning, name and form increases. Of the four levels of language, the first two are vaikhari and madhyama, which belong to the ordinary waking state and in Saussurean terms correspond to the general field of parole and langue, which consist of a temporal/spatial gap between sound and meaning. The two higher levels of language are pashyanti and para, which can only be experienced through non-intentional pure consciousness. They are transverbal in the sense of being without a temporal sequence between sound and meaning. In Derrida and Indian Philosophy, Harold Coward notes that the main difference between the two higher levels is that pashyanti consists of an impulse toward expression because it lies at the juncture between Brahman and maya (illusion or expressed form), while para, which has no impulse toward expression, lies within Brahman itself (90). Both of these levels, however, are conveyed in theatre through the power of suggestion.