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editors
IOCIIO IOSCnO & nIn pOWCI
Copyright Clinamen Press 2003
Translation, introduction
Postface Andrew
published by Clinamen Veg
Unit B
Aldow Enterprise Park
Blackett Street
Manchester
M12 6AE
.clinamen.co.uk
'The Writing of the Genenc' publIshed in French
in the work Conditions by Editions du Seuil as
'L'ecriture du generique: Samuel Beckett'
Editions du Seuil, 1992
Editions du Seuil, 27 rue Jacob, Paris
Tireless Desire published in French by Hachette
as Beckett: 1'increvable desir
Hachette, 1995
Hachette Livre, 43 quai de Grenelle, Paris
'Being, Existence, Thought: Prose and Concept'
published in French in the work Petit manuel d'inesthetique
by Editions du Seuil as
Z
'Etre, existence, pensee: prose et concept'
First English translation Stanford University Press
Stanford University Press, 1450 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, Califoria
This book is supported by the French Ministry for Foreign Afairs
as part of the Burgess Progrde headed for the French Embassy
in London by the Institnt Franyais du Royaue-Uni
All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced, stored in or intoduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written pennission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available fom the British Library
hardback
paperback
ISBN 1903083 26 5
ISBN 1903083 30 3
Designed and typeset in Times New Roman with Verdana display by Ben Stebbing, Manchester
Printed and bound in the UK by Biddies Ltd
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This book is dedicated to the memory of ou friend Sa Gillespie

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Contents
Notes on References
Note on the Contributors
Acknowledgements
Editors' Introduction - 'Think, pig!'
Author's Preface
The Writing of the Generic
2 Tireless Desire
3 Being, Existence, Thought: Prose and Concept
4 What Happens
5 Postface - Badiou, Beckett and Contemporary Criticism
Andrew Gibson
Notes
Index

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1 37
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Note on the References
The situation regarding Beckett translations is without doubt a complicated one, for a variety of
of-discussed authorial and editorial reasons. In order to allow the reader to navigate Badiou's
essays and refer to the Beckett texts when necessary, we have endeavoured to render the references
in On Beckett as practicable as possible, opting for the insertion in brackets of the British (Calder
Publishers and Faber and Faber) and American (Grove Press) page references in the main body
of the text. Because of important terminological differences and due to the interest of Beckett's

own 'self-translations' we have placed the original French (Les Editions de Minuit) quotes in
the endnotes. Any other comments made by the editors will appear in brackets. Page references
are to the editions currently in print by each publisher. The abbreviations used throughout the
texts for the British and American editions are as follows:
L - Company (Calder Publishers, 1 996)
LDM- The Complete Dramatic Work (Faber and Faber, 1 990)
LS1 - Collected Shorter Prse 14J-10(Calder Publishers, 1 986)
Endgame (Grove Press, 1 958)
GS1 The Complete Short Prose 12-1(Grove Press, 1 995)
HD- HappyDays (Grove Press, 1 983)
H11- How It Is (Calder Publishers, 1 996)
H111S How It Is (Grove Press, 1 988)
1S1S - !Seen !Said (Calder Publishers, 1 997)
%- Murphy (Calder Publishers, 1 997)
%1S- Murphy (Grove Press, 1 970)
NO - Nohow On (Company, !Seen 1Said, Worstward Ho) (Grove Press, 1 996)
S1 Collected Shorter Plays (Grove Press, 1 984)
T- Trilog (Calder Publishers, 1 994)
TN - Three Novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) (Grove Press, 1991)
M Watt (Calder Publishers, 1 970)
M1S Watt (Grove Press, 1 970)
WG - Waiting/or Godot (Grove Press, 1 954)
MH - Worstward Ho (Calder Publishers, 1 983)

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Note on the Contributors
^H0IcW LDS0H is Professor of Moder Literature and Theory at
Royal Holloway and is the author of Postmodernit, Ethics and the
Novel: From Leavis to Levinas. He is currently preparing a book on
Badiou's reading of Beckett.
DHB 0WcI is currently studying for a PhD in philosophy at
Middlesex University, London.
^DcIt00ScBH0teaches at Goldsmiths College and is the author of
several articles on Badiou, De1euze, Nietzsche and Schelling. He is
the translator of Badiou's forthcoming Handbook of Inaesthetics
and The Centur.
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ACRnOWCOgCUCnIS
The editors wish to thank Leslie Hill for his insightfl comments and advice
on the original manuscript, Bill Ross at Clinamen for his patience, amiability
and usefl interventions, Peter Hallward and Ray Brassier for their vital
insights into Badiou's thought, Dr Julian Garforth at the Beckett archive
7
University of Reading, for his assistance and generosity and Bruno Bosteels
for kindly providing us with his original translation of ' The Writing of the
Generic' . Above all, our thanks go to Alain Badiou for his unflagging support
of this project.
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'Think, pig!'
An InIIOOUCIIOn IO BOIOUS BCCRCII

These writings on Samuel Beckett by Alain Badiou, assembled here for the
first time, comprise ten years of work by one of France's leading thinkers on
one of the 20th century's most innovative and vital writers. This volume brings
together translations of 'Samuel Beckett: L'ecriture du generique' (the
concluding chapter of the collection Conditions ( 1 992)); a short monograph
entitled Beckett. L 'increvable desir ( 1 995); a long chapter on Worstward Ho
fom the more recent Petit manuel d 'inesthetique ( 1 998); and finally 'Ce qui
arrive' , a brief conference intervention, also fom 1 998.1 Viewed as distinct
moments in a prolonged intellectual encounter, these texts reveal a complex
and rigorous reading of Beckett, but a Beckett quite distinct fom those of
other French thinkers such as Deleuze, Bataille, Blanchot or Derrida (to note
some of the most obvious of Bad iou's 'rivals' in this enterprise), as well as
fom the majority of Anglo-American Beckett scholarship.2 This introduction
will seek to develop two basic theses: Firstly, that Badiou's reading of Beckett,
whilst in part a response to other currently more celebrated French
interpretations, and, indeed, indebted to some of their key insights (such as,
for example, Blanchot's insistence on the relationship between writing and
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silence, or Bataille's account of Beckett's impersonal ontology) is ultimately
different in kind to them, in its general aims as well as in the detail of its
arguments. Secondly, that, whilst Badiou's writings on Beckett fnction to
some extent as occasions for the rehearsal or mise-en-scene of the principal
components of his philosophy - event, subject, truth, being, appearance, the
generic -they are by no means a mere 'application' of Bad iou's doctrine to a
figure writing (ostensibly) in another discipline. Rather, we shall argue that
the encounter with Beckett forces Badiou to introduce concepts and operations
which, if not entirely new to his thinking, nevertheless constitute considerable,
and possibly problematic, additions to, or variations upon, the fndamental
tenets of his enterrise. Taken together, these two lines of inquiry will also
give us the opportunity to consider the vexed question of the relationship
between philosophy and literature, as it comes to be defined by Badiou's
recent doctrine of 'inaesthetics' .
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In order to indicate in what sense these texts present a unique exposition
of Beckett's thinking, it is worth beginning with one of Badiou's decisive
formulas: 'the lesson of Beckett is a lesson in measure, exactitude and
courage' . From the outset, we can of course note the polemical nature of
such an affirmation, designed as it is to elicit the surrise and consteration
of a certain sensus communis pervading both Beckett criticism proper and
the reception of his work beyond the narrow confines of the academy. In his
exploration of Beckett's writings, Badiou outlines a vision ofa pared-down,
philosophically amenable, and ultimately (and, prima facie, surprisingly)
resourcefl literary and intellectual project. In stark contrast to prevalent
readings of Beckett's work by either Anglo-American or (the majority of)
other European commentators, Badiou conceives of Beckett's oeuvre as in ,
toto, more hopefl than hopeless, more optimistic tan nihilistic.
How, in the first place, is this afirmative, courageous - though
atheological and non-redemptive - Beckett possible? The Beckett we know
fom Blanchot, from Bataille, from Ricks on the British side, and fom
numerous others, necessarily and constitutively cannot be this strong ' ethical'
writer; Badiou's reading must therefore surely betray what Derrida, above
all, points to as the 'impossibility' of writing defmitively about Beckett. Indeed,
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!I \`1 i||Iulo!has this edict of 'timidity' subtended the 'post-humanist' rules
:I (:oll1mentary about Beckett, that it is seemingly impossible to assert
ii\IItnat all about Beckett; all one can do is acknowledge that every possible
usscr|tun already becomes its negative within Beckett' work itself, so that
uIcriticism begins already from a position of inherent weakness, prefigured
hy |hcwry 'admission' that Beckett has stranded his critics in the position of
IuVtnnothing lef to do. From the outset Badiou's unusually strong reading
IIus upsets the (admittedly understandable) trepidation that has always
accompanied the more carefl readings of Beckett undertaken during the
|ullO|half of the 20t century.
Badiou will thus engage in none ofthe rhetoric, so often manifested in
IIc scholarship, that finds in Beckett so many hypostases ofthe 'paralysing'
i mperative of language and silence, the opacity of the signifer, the end of
1l10dernity, etc. In fact, Badiou fails to even discuss the vast bulk of
contemporary Anglo-American Beckett scholarship, as well as refsing any
protracted engagement with any of his French predecessors. Indeed, he has
been explicitly criticised for failing to engage with either of these two strands
of Beckett study.3 Certainly this lack of dialogue is revealing, but arguably
indicates more about the nature of our expectations when it comes to a critical
reading of Beckett rather than demonstrating any outright omission or
shortcoming on Badiou's part. It is, above all, Badiou's desire to read Beckett
'at his word' or 'to the letter' that indicates that what we are dealing with,
quite simply, is Beckett's texts themselves, and not their critical reception.
We are also a long way here from Derrida's half-humble, half-arrogant
declaration: 'Beckett, whom I have always "avoided" as though I had always
already read him and understood him too well. '4 In the frst place, Badiou
seems to say, we cannot ' avoid' Beckett, however much he seems to pre
empt us - the singularity and intellectual weight of his work is such as to
demand an explicitly philosophical response and articulation (witout, of
course, over-determining its 'literary' qualities; as we shall see below, this
distinction is precisely at stake in Badiou's notion of 'inaesthetics'). Moreover,
the complexity ofthe categories and operations deployed in Beckett's work,
as well as their tansformations, is such that, without a stringent and systematic
investigation, it is entirely fatuous to think that we have (always) already
understood Beckett. Indeed, as with all thining worthy of the name, Beckett's
writing draws its force and urgency precisely from the way that it subtracts
itself fom our impressions and intuitions; in other words, fom the manner
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in which it excavates our muddled and spontaneous phenomenologies to reveal
a sparse but essential set of invariant fnctions that deterine our 'generic
humanit' .
Where then, does Badiou fnd the critical resources to present us with
a Beckett so vigorously opposed to many of the shared presumptions of
contemporary scholarship and philosophical reception? Simply in order to
orient the reader, we would like to point to one of the crucial instances in
which these resources ae to be found: The importance of the much-overlooked
and, as Badiou puts it, ' worst understood' 1960s prose text How It Is, and the
identifcation of a chronological break (corresponding to a real crisis in
Beckett's thought) before and afer this text. This will help us the better to
discern the stakes of his approach and the challenge it poses to rival
interpretations. We will then move on, in section two, to assess the
consequences - both for his reading of Beckett and for his thinking as a
whole - of Badiou' s concern with Beckett' s method and with the
'philosophical anthropology' that the latter implies.
While the so-called ' Trilogy' (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)
has received copious and exacting attention for its exploration of the
vicissitudes of language, SUbjectivity and ' aporetics' , and Watt and Murphy
are seized upon as anticipation oflater problematics and for their characteristic
humour, How It Is (published as Comment c 'est by Minuit in 1 961 , with
Beckett's English version published by Calder in 1964) seems most ofen to
be filed under the category of' anomaly' for many Beckett scholars (although
there are indications that this is increasingly no longer the case). For Badiou,
however, the text occupies an absolutely crucial role in Beckett's oeuvre,
indicating a decisive shift in both the themes and the style of his prose. Badiou
nevertheless professes to agree with all those who see impasse and the tortre
of language in the prose works up to and including the Trilogy and Texts for
Nothing. But this is not the end of the matter, and Badiou chastises himself
for having originally accepted this vision of Beckett as manifesting ' the
(ultimately inconsistent) alliance between nihilism and the imperative of
language, between vital existentialism and the metaphysics of the word,
between Sartre and Blanchot.' In this respect, we should note that Badiou
wishes to evacuate the defeatist pathos accorded to the impasse, together
with any intimation that we are here faced with the linguistic 'tth' of human
fnitude or with an episode in the genealogy of nihilism; rather, he intends to
approach it as a problem that demands resolution from Beckett at the level of
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the writing itself.
In the kind of ad hominem argument that would scandalise any good
Derridean, Badiou argues that the incessant repetitions in Beckett's early
works, what he refers to as an oscillation between the cogito and the ' grey
black', led to a crisis for Beckett - both personally and as a writer.s That by
the early 1960s he had, in some sense, reached a ' last' state; all that remained
to be said is that there was nothing more to be said. ' Saying' had, for Beckett,
reached its absolutely maximal degree of purifcation. As Badiou puts it:
It was necessary to have done with the alteration of neutral being and
vain reflection so that Beckett could escape the crisis, so that he could
break with Cartesian terrorism. To do this, it was necessary to find some
third terms, neither reducible to the place of being nor identical to the
repetitions of the voice. It was important that the subject be opened up to
an alterity and cease being folded upon itself in an interminable and
torturous speech. Whence, beginning with How It Is (composed between
1 959 and 1 960), the growing importance ofthe event (which adds itself to
the grey black of being) and of the voice of the other (which interrupts
solipsism).
Badiou thus argues that there is a break with two key early positions:
the schemata of predestination that emerge in Watt and Murphy and the
oscillation between the solipsist cogito and the ' grey black' of the ' Trilogy' .
In order, therefore, to understand Badiou's seemingly indefensible claim
regarding the affirmation and hope present in Beckett's work, we must now
refer to the key concept that sustains this view ofthe later Beckett: the event
or encounter. What exactly happens with How It Is for Badiou to find these
' third terms' so crucial? In How It Is the prose is grounded in different
categories: the category of 'what-comes-to-pass' [ce-qui-se-passe] and, above
all, the category of alterity - of the encounter and the fgure of the Other,
fissuring and displacing the solipsistic interent of the cogito. In order to
shed some light on this transformation we will need to shif our focus onto
the philosophical armature that subtends Badiou's various readings. As we
shall argue, the constellation of concepts employed in these texts is neither
(explicitly) Beckett's nor (entirely) Badiou's, but is rather the product of a
philosophical or ' inaesthetic' capture of a literary work which does not leave
philosophical doctrine untouched. The aforementioned division of Beckett's
oeuvre into two distinct periods, before and after How It Is is crucial to
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understanding the role of the ' event' , both for Badiou's reading of Beckett,
and indeed, for Badiou's own work as a whole. Bearing in mind this ' shift',
the notion of an unforeseen event or encounter that constitutes subjectivity in
the meeting of an other, radically separates Badiou's ' afrmative' reading
fom any interpretations centred on the notion of a human condition, as in
Martin Esslin's work on the absurd, for example. This is partly because there
is nothing inevitable about the event, only that ' something happens to us' ,
and partly because what follows fom the event is absolutely singular, though
( crucially) universalisable.
The encounter, if it happens at all, is absolutely not pre-determined.
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Encounters in Beckett always arise by chance: Prior to a meeting there is
only solitude. One consequence of this state of solitude is the lack of any
essential or substantial sexual difference. It is true that Beckett's characters
often seem without sex or androgynous. It is only as a consequence, therefore,
as an effect of the encounter, that sexuation becomes possible. As Badiou
writes: 'In the fgure oflove . . . the Two occurs, together with the Two of the
sexes or sexualised fgures. ' The numericalit of this newly arisen pair is
crucial. Prior to the encounter, the solipsistic One has no resources to escape
its One-ness. The encounter, the absolute novelty of the event of love, fom
whence arises the Two, does not lead back to a new One, the love which
would be denigrated as 'fsion' in the Freudian sense, or even in a banal,
romantic, popular-cultal sense, but to infnit. One, Two, infinity: For the
voice of How ItIs, there is: 'before Pim with Pim afer Pim' . This 'exponential
curve' to infnity derives fom the fact that the Two of love, of the pure
encounter is a passage. But to what? Badiou replies: to 'the infinity of beings,
and experience' . The Two oflove introduces a new opening onto the sensible
world, away from the endless circuits of language. Love permits 'beauty,
nuance, colour' . It also permits - in fact, it is the only event to do so -
happiness. Perhaps we are now in a better position to see where the 'hope'
and potential in Beckett's work ultimately lies for Badiou - not, as a reading
that would wish to re-inscribe him into the long wave of humanism, in the
commonality of human properties, but, on the contrary, in the absolute'
singularit of an unforeseen encounter.

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What How It Is indicates, then, is a movement beyond the impasse in
the prose itself, and the revelation that, indeed, 'the narrative model is not
enough' , that something else can happen, within the prose, that is not itsel
limited to it (here we are obliged to bracket the - always ironic - question:
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what else is there 'besides' the prose?). What does this ' lack of limitation'
mean? Simply that, amidst the Dante-esque crawling and drowning in the
mud of How It Is, the violent tussles involving can-openers and bashed skulls,
the darkness and silence, there is possibility of an existence that is wholly
other, wholly new, not only in the life of memory and images, but in the
present, with and through another: 'two strangers uniting in the interests of
torment' . The encounter, however temporary, however sadistic, smashes apart
the solipsistic linguistic oscillation, such that the speaker of How It Is can
recognise that ' with someone to keep me company I would have been a
diferent man more universal' . What the temporary, non-fsional, conjunction
of the Two allows is an opening onto infinity, onto universality; 'that for the
likes of us and no matter how we are recounted there is more nourishment in
a cry nay a sigh tom fom one whose only good is silence or in speech extorted
from one at last delivered from its use than sardines can ever offer. '
II.
If anything marks out Badiou's approach to the literary and stage works
of Samuel Beckett, it is the steadfast conviction that in order to really think
through their uniqueness, a thorough and unapologetic operation of
formalisation is in order, one demonstrating the ultimately unequivocal
character of Beckett's thought, even (or especially) in what concers its
oscillations and aporias. This position, which can be expediently summarised
as a concer with method-and which does not exclude carefl considerations
of both the methods of failure and the failures of method - is undoubtedly
what makes these commentaries so alien to the more or less pervasive vision
of Beckett as a relentlessly elusive and anti-systematic writer. Whether the
reader of these pages will recoil in horor at such an unwavering Beckett or
assent with enthusiasm to their formal systematicity will depend to a
considerable degree on the manner in which he or she responds to the claims
made herein about the existence and nate of a rationally re-constructible
and rigorously actualised method. Indeed, it is only by confonting this
question that we can come to terms with what constitutes, for better or worse,
the uniqueness of Badiou's reading, and what sets it apart drastically from
the interpretations of most, if not all, his contemporaries when it comes to
the writings of Beckett.6
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In this respect, to focus on analogous identifications of recurrent
Beckettian ' themes' that Badiou may share with other writers, or upon
apparently convergent assessments of certain characters or texts would in the
end divert us fom a lucid appraisal of Badiou's challenge. For Badiou, it is
only by confronting the characteristic operations or procedures defining
Beckett's work that we can really come to terms with the singularity and
force of Beckett's contribution to thought. In ' Tireless Desire' these are
enumerated as follows:
Rectification, or the work on the isolation of tens. Expansion, or the
poetic incision of memory. Declaration, or the fnction of emergence of
prose. Declension, or the tender cadence of disaster. Interption, or the
maxims of comedy. Elongation, or the phased embodiment of variants.
It could not be any clearer that what captivates Badiou is not the
equivocity or impotence claimed for Beckett's writing, but rather the
relentlessness and precision that mark its fndamental moves, those formal
aesthetic inventions which are both technical discoveries and new postures
for thinking.7 This is, after all, the crux of the problem: What is thought in
Beckett's work? This question needs to be understood in both senses. Firstly,
what do Beckett's many texts allow us to think which was previously
unthought, whether in literature or philosophy? Secondly, what place does
thought (la pensee, an insistent presence in these pages) have in Beckett's
work? Rather than, more or less explicitly, according to writing the dubious
privileges of expressive imprecision and fleeting affect, Badiou's
uncompromising penchant for formalisation is designed to affrm the rigour
of writing as a discipline of thought, a rigour that the seriousness of Beckett's
impasses (especially the one sealed by Texts for Nothing) bears witness to.
The comparisons with Kant and Husserl, as well as the more sustained
consideration of Beckett's Cartesianism, should therefore be taken at their
word. Leaving aside for the moment the vexed question of the demarcation
of the literary (or aesthetic) fom the philosophical, it is worth spending a
brief moment to elucidate this method of Beckett's, and to do so through the
problematic, absolutely central to Badiou's approach, of ' thining humanity' .
The first approach to the question of method is couched in explicitly
philosophical parameters. Tracing a lineage fom Descartes to Husserl in
terms of a postulate of suspension, Badiou argues that Beckett's method of
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suhtractive paring-down-or 'leastening' in the vocabulary of WorstwardHo
t8 akin to Husserl's epoch? 'ted upside down' . By this Badiou means
| It rather than ' bracketing' or suspending the world in order to examine the
pu|cI formal conditions of that world in and for consciousness, Beckett
slIsfiends the subject in order to see what then happens to being per se. This
t8 an intriguing reversal, and links back to Badiou's initial formulation for
t Iucondition of possibility for the encounter, for the Two. Before this event,
lIO|Ois only the solipsistic 'torture' of the cogito. In other words, we have a
tormented subject oflanguage, on the one hand, and a non-intentional analysis
of the ' landscape' of being, on the other. Badiou, via Beckett, links the
circularity of the cogito to the 'nothing' beyond it - this is the noir gris, the
'grey black' of being. It is in this space that the language ofthecogito attempts
|o approach its Qwn origin, but necessarily always falls short of its object.
The grey black of being is precisely 'nothing' , but as Molloy points out,
following the Atomists: 'Nothing is more real than nothing' .
The ' torture' of the cogito is precisely the imperative or 'pensum' , as
Hugh Kenner would argue, to commence again, to say again. Because ofthe
necessary interiority of the cogito, its self-supporting persistence, ' It is
necessary that the subject literally twist itself towards its own enunciation' .
We are thus left only with a voice that oscillates, struggling relentlessly
between temporary self-afirmation and the 'beyond' of being, which is
precisely void. For the cogito, all saying is precisely 'ill saying' because it
can never come close to touching the void from out of which language speaks.
The desire for silence cannot, therefore, succeed, for the imperative to repeat,
to begin again, cannot be matched by the desire for cessation. In this reading
ofthe 'void' and the impossibility of silence, we can see an implicit criticism
of those commentators who stay with the aporia, who see in Beckett only the
problem of language and its impossible constraint. Beckett himsel as if
realising the temptation of following the ' pathless path' , begins The
Unnamable with an aporetic joke: ' I should mention before going any further,
that I say aporia without knowing what it means. '
As a second approximation to this delicate question of method, let us
contrast it with the explicit discussion of method through which Badiou
elsewhere approaches the works of Rimbaud and Mallarme.8 For Badiou,
Rimbaud's work, despite its formidable inventive capacity and unmatched
vigour, is ultimately incapable of accepting the conditions imposed by the
undecidable character of the event, the fact that the latter can never be tansitive
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to, or coincide with, the situation that it affects. In brief, that being and the
event can never enter into any sort of communion. Hence the tendency of
Rimbaud's poetry, when faced with the non- or extra-ontological demand of
the event's emergence, to resort to the operation of interruption, which in the
end denies the 'now' of an event that can itself never be identified with the
situation - thereby signalling both the denial of novelty and the defeat of
language. Given over as it is to what Badiou regards as the ' mirage' of a
complete possession of truth, Rimbaud's poetry manifests the incapacity of
assuming the hardships of subjectivation, the painstaking work of a truth that
can never be immediately present as the truth of things, or as the linguistic
celebration of the appearance of the world.
With Mallarme's method, we move instead to a writing that is entirely
positioned ' afer ' the event , or rather, a writing that wholly afirms the
undecidability proper to an event that can never be attested in or by the situation
without a long labour of detection and reconfiguation. This is why Mallarme's
method is concered with the isolation of an event that is constitutively
evanescent, that must be wagered upon in order then to register its traces and
effects upon a situation. These traces and effects are to be considered in terms
of how the event both inscribes and subtracts itselffrom an ontological state
of affairs, being as such neither present nor non-problematically individuated
in the realm of appearances. Mallarme's method thus establishes something
like an intrigue of the event 's disappearance, a syntactically driven
investigation into the potentially determinate but inapparent effects of
something that can never exactly be said to be. How, in the absence of any
normal ' evidence', can we affrm in a given situation that something has
happened, and, on the basis of this wager (this dice-throw) deduce its
consequences for the situation? Such is the axis of Mallarme's method,
conferring upon it its singular place as a reference for Badiou's work, as 'the
thought of the pure event on the basis of its decided trace. '
Forcing our schematisation somewhat, we could say that if Rimbaud
shows us the abdication oflanguage in the face ofthe present demands of the
undecidable, and Mallarme the retrospective detection of the traces of a
vanished novelty, Badiou's Beckett is almost (and this ' almost' marks the
very place of the event in Beckett's work) wholly devoted to delineating the
conditions demanded for the emergence of truth and novelty -including those
conditions of a cognitive or linguistic order that threaten to forestall any such
emergence, consigning the subject to the infinite ordeal of solipsism, to that
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( 'artesian torture which so preoccupies Badiou in these pages. The
identification of the fnctions of the human on the basis of the torsion of the
cogito onto the imperative oflanguage, together with the cartography of the
places and inscriptions of being, all seem to indicate, in Badiou's reading, an
at tempt to 'prepare' for an event that is only liminally introduced through the
ligures of the Two and the Other.
It could therefore be said that Beckett's method partly inverts the
methods of the two other writers considered by Badiou. In it, the event
functions as an interption of torture (rather than an interruption of joy in
defeat, as in Rimbaud) and prose lays out the ontological groundwork prior
to an event (rather than thinking it in its disappearance, as in Mallarme). In
sum, we have Beckett as the couageous preparation for the event (,before'),
Rimbaud as the defeatist decision against the undecidable of the event
('during' ), and Mallarme as the protocol of fidelity in its subtractive
'relationship' to a disappearance and to the isolation of a pue multiple (' afer').
Lest this partition appear all too tidy, it is worth ting now to the peculiar
and problematic effects that this preparatory or anticipatory character of
Beckett's method has with regard. to the elaborate doctrinal apparatus,
principally set out in L 'etre et I ' evenement, that allows Badiou to isolate this
method in the first place. To emphasize this more conflictive dimension of
Badiou's encounter with Beckett, we will now look at the role of appearance,
subjectivit and language in these essays on Beckett, focussing throughout
on how these notions determine a certain perspective on thinking humanit,
that is, on humanity as a pure capacity to be affected by the irption of
novelty and to decide upon the event.
We have grown accustomed to (and accustomed to criticising) claims
that Beckett's work ofers us a disquisition on the 'human condition' , that it
is the bearer of universal formulations regarding 'human nature' . Exemplary
of this position is Esslin who, writing in the late ffties and early sixties,
sought to extract from the dramatic works a Beckett absolutely existentialist
in his proclamations and scope. As he put it: '[Beckett's] creative intuition
explores the elements of experience and shows to what extent all human
beings carr the seeds of such depression and disintegration within the deeper
layers of their personality. '9 Badiou's take, whilst seemingly sharing the
universalising impetus of Esslin's reading, sees in Beckett not so much a
delving into deeper and deeper layers of humanity (and the subsequent
'redemptive' conclusion that always follows these humanist attempts via the
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isolation of some unalienable qualities or prperties that sum up what it is to

be 'human' ), but rather proposes that in Beckett's work we encounter an
absolutely formal reduction of ' thinking humanity' to its indestructible
fnctions, to its atemporal determinants.
It is in this respect that Beckett is compared to Descartes - suspending
all that is inessential and doubtfl before beginning his ' serious enquiry' into
humanity. Certain of Beckett's prose works (Texts for Nothing among them)
can therefore be read as asking the following question: What is the composition
of thought, if it is reduced to its absolutely primordial constituents? With
explicit reference to Plato's Sophist, Badiou isolates certain generic fnctions
1
of Beckett's characters in the early texts: movement and rest, being and
language.1o Just as Kant and Husserl vehemently refused any form of
' psychologism' in their work, so Beckett can be read, in a similar way, as
proposing, within a literary set-up, the same move away from personal
descriptions of' states of mind'. Rather than witnessing in Beckett the essential
' miseries' , the inevitable and ultimately ' absurd' 'predicament' that Esslin,
for one, argues universally underlies 'personality' and ' culture' , Badiou views
this suspension of cultural and individuating traits in Beckett as anabsolutely
positive procedure, because it allows one, he argues, to go ' straight to the
only questions that matter' . What's more: ' Thus reduced to a few fnctions,
humanity is only more admirable, more energetic, more immortal' .
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However, aside from texts that lie somewhat outside the speculative
core of Badiou's philosophy (namely the Ethics and its discussion of the
immortal, and the defence of universalism in the Saint Paul, it is hard to say
that the notion of humanit receives any sustained formal treatment in Badiou
- something that should not elicit surrise, given both Badiou's fdelity to
the tradition of philosophical anti-humanism and his 'post-Marxist' decision
for a theory of the subject that regards it as predicated upon the irruption of
an event. But as it arises in his readings of Beckett, this attempt to determine
an ' atemporal' humanity in its basic fnctions arguably involves certain
deviations from the mainstays of Badiou's philosophy. For instance, it
demands an interrogation of subjects that come ' before' the event (something
seemingly written out of his major works). It also requires a consideration of
the relationship between te human as capacity and the imperative oflanguage.
Lastly, it demands the introduction of the crucial concept of Bad iou's recent
work, appearance. Something in the critical and ascetic approach of Beckett
can thus be said to lead Badiou to an interrogation, otherwise absent or latent
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in his philosophy, of philosophical anthropology. What weight are we to give
to this attempt to delineate the pre-evental ' ethical substance' of fidelity and
subjectivation, and what importance must be ascribed to the fact that this is
done in language?
The hypotheses on humanity that Beckett sets out through his derelict
figures and desolate landscapes are initially staged by Badiou, as we have
already noted, in the confrontation between the tortured cogito and the
indifferent cartography of the places of being. The frst thing to note, if we
wish to measure the distance between Badiou's own doctrine and how it
responds to Beckett's art, is that the ' Cartesian' concers in the latter's work
introduce the problem -which is otherwise alien, if not contrary, to Badiou's
stance - of a subject before or without the event. Though Beckett's epoche
subtracts the subject in order to lay out the place of being (or rather, of its
appearance), it ts out that the resolute anihilation of all subjectivity is
simply impossible - language and its subject abide even (or especially) in the
most extreme moment of their destitution. As Badiou states: ' all fiction, as
devoted as it may beto establishing the place of being -in closure, openness
or the grey black -presupposes or connects to a subject. This subject in t
excludes itself fom the place simply by the act of naming it, whilst at the
same time holding itself at a distance from this name:
l l
In other words, the
very attempt to establish a literary or fictional ontology (as opposed to a
neutral mathematical ontology) cannot do without the supplementation
provided by a subject; to borrow from Badiou's friend Natacha Michel, it
can never evade the problem of enunciation: ' Who speaks?
,
12
This subject of fiction or subject oflanguage, as acogito constitutively
determined by the imperative to speak and name being, is itself not a simple
or point-like instance, but rather a tom fgure, thrice divided into a subject of
enunciation, a passive body ofsubjectivation and a subject ofthe question.
On this ' third' subject, it is worth quoting Badiou at length.
' Question' can be taken here in its judicial sense, as when we speak of a
subject being questioned. For what is in fact this torture of thought? As
we've already said, the dim - the gey-black that localises being - is
ultimately nothing but an empty scene. To fll it, it is necessary to U
towards this irreducible region of existence constituted by speech - the
third universal fnction of humanity, along with movement and immobility.
But what is the being of speech, if it is not the speaking subject? It is
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therefore necessary that the subject literally twist itself towards its own
utterance. This time, it is the expression 'writhing in pain' that must be
interreted literally. Once one perceives that the identity of the subject is
triple, and not just double, the subject appears as tom.
It is the tension within this subject of language, and its incapacity to
twist fee ofthe equivocity that defines its triplicate composition, which will
lead Beckett into the notorious impasses, and chiefy to the crisis which we've
already seen is punctuated by and surassed in How ItIs. What is of interest
for our purposes is the realisation that this subject of language is in no way
that subject ofthe event whose theorisation has abidingly occupied Badiou's
speculative energies at least fom the Peut-on penser fa politique? ( 1 985)
onwards. Unlike the subject of the event, the torsion of this triple subject of
language is transitive to the situation, to the place of being, that it names and
configures in fction. In this sense, it is not rare and dependent on chance,
decision and fdelity; rather, it is an inescapable and constitutive feature of
the fictional set-up, or, if one will allow the expression, it fnctions as its
intrinsic supplement.
Beckett's 'misuse' oflanguage is in this respect initially aimed, via the
aforementioned operations, at the stepwise elimination of this subjective
excess; its anti-humanist drive amounting to an attempt to efface the tortre
of speech into the grey black of being. Badiou's reconstruction of the impasse
thereby amounts to the thesis that it is only in the introduction of another
supplement (as testified by the fgures of the Other, the Two, the Event), a
supplement which is entirely incalculable and which is only glimpsed at the
far edge of Beckett's work (namely in the conclusion ofWorstward Ho), that
the linguistic and ontological ordeal ofthe subject oflanguage can be alleviated
or interrupted. The mutation signalled by the works after Texts for Nothing
can thus be conceived as the passage from a nihilist solution to the problem
of a subject oflanguage (the attempt to peretrate its demise, to destroy even
the voice) to a hazardous but ultimately productive one (the conversion of
the subject by the event of alterity). In this sense the subject of Beckett's art
'which according to Badiou Sina esthetics is not the author but the work-is
defned by the movement beyond the tormenting excess of a subject of
language towards the ftural fidelity of a subject of the event.
Where does this leave the problem of language, which had initially
attracted our young Sartrean cretin (as Badiou portrays his former self) to the
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works of Beckett? Surely, Beckett's Cartesian scenarios preclude any crypto
I{omantic dissolution of human subjectivity into the One of language. But
.quu|!,they forestall anythanatological abdications of the obstinate courage
that so insistently marks his figures and voices, even and especially at their
most ragged and risible. In this respect, and to the very extent that most of his
work is driven by the wish to 'ill say' , to puncture speech and corrode its
authority, Beckett does demand from Badiou the recognition, otherwise
I(u'cign to his doctrine, of an irreducibility proper to language or speech as a
'rcgion of existence' . Moreover, though language is not itself an object of
spcculation (whether structural or hermeneutic) or adulation (it is the very
stuff of our earthly ordeals), it is nevertheless identified as an ineluctable and
i ncliminable ' fnction' of the human, an essential component of that capacity
/()r thought that determines the existence of humanity. It is this role oflanguage
that Badiou is obliged to assume and, in a qualified manner, affrm. What his
rcconstction of Beckett does not involve however, is any specific attention
to the 'texture' oflanguage itself-to the operations undergone in Beckett by
grammar, to the usage of certain tropes, etc. Whilst the linguistic dimension
is indeed ineliminable, what captivates Badiou when it comes to Beckett as a
thinker is precisely what emerges fom a subtraction ofand, of course, thrugh
language (though this does not stop Badiou, himself a novelist and playwigh
from indicating, on a number of occasions, fertile grounds for discussions of
style and technique).
The same impossibility of outright destruction, coupled with the
requirement to subtract and supplement, marks that category which is not
simply a 'dimension' but the defning name for existence (as opposed to
being) in Badiou: appearance. The doctrine of appearance, which has been a
chief preoccupation ofBadiou in recent years, fnds one of its most elaborate
accounts to date in the painstaking theoretical reconstruction of Worstward
Ho. Whereas the first two of our essays find the counterpart of the cogito in
an ontology oflocalisation (the theme ofthe 'place of being' , or ' grey black'),
in 'Being, Existence, Thought: Prose and Concept' we are presented with a
far more systematic distinction between being ('the void' ) and appearance
('the dim'). What is at stake is once again the notion that what 'lies behind'
can only 'seep through' (to use Beckett's expressions from his letter to Axel
Kaun) if we begin from the inscription of being in language and things, in
other words, if we begin fom existence. The purity of the void can only be
attained in the intervals of appearance, through those operations that 'worsen'
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existence, divesting it of (almost) all order and orament. Ultimately, however,
the simplification that defines Beckett's confontation with appearances -
with the ' shades' , with 'visible humanity' , with all that Badiou classes under
the rubric of 'phenomenology' -needs to be supplemented by the only thing
which, in Badiou's eyes, can truly announce an upsurge of the void that would
not be founded on the pure and simple annihilation oflanguage and existence:
the event. It is with the event that for Badiou we attain the maximal purification
(but not destruction) of language, the ' last state' of saying, when we can
rejoice at the poverty of words. It is also with the event - with beauty, love
and the Other - that a novelty beyond the ordeal of speech can make itself
known.
III.
The fact that Badiou's reading of Beckett does not result in any
straightforward illustration or ventriloquist application of the former's
philosophical doctrines, but on the contrary introduces themes otherwise not
prominent in Badiou's work (from the positive characterisation of the Other
to the idea ofthe atemporal determinants of humanity), opens the question of
how such an encounter may reconfgure the relationship between philosophy
and literature as separate, if interacting, disciplines of thought. Badiou's
'offcial' position, whilst not the object of a thoroughgoing deduction, is clear
enough. Against any deconstructionist or postmodernist penchant for
disciplinary hybridisation, or worse, for the abdication of speculative
rationalism at the altar of some supposed literary intuition, Badiou has been
proposing for some time a steadfast distinction between the thinking of
philosophy and the thinking of art. This proposal is driven by his identifcation
of the four intellectual disciplines (or generic procedures, in the technical
vocabulary) that serve as the 'conditions' of philosophy: art, science, politics
and love. It is these conditions, and not philosophy, that are responsible for
the subjectivating capture of events and the production of multiple truths
(though questions about the number and nature of the 'conditions' remain
opcn). This is why Badiou provocatively describes philosophy as the ' go
between' or 'procuress' in our encounters with truth.
Philosophy itself therefore has no ' truths' of its own, and art, for one,
remains ent i rely irreducible to philosophy. Under what Badiou calls the
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Jlantic schema (the key figure here is Heidegger, though neither Nietzsche
hefore him, nor Nancy after, for example, are exempt fom the appellation)
u|l alone is capable of truth, and particularly in the form of the poem. In this
schema, philosophy has been ' sutured' to one of its conditions, and no longer
possesses the ability to operate as the formal (and empty) mediator between
one specifc condition and the others, as well as between each condition and
lhOabstract indiferent discourse which is set-theoretical ontology. Conversely,
Hadiou's schematic presentation ofthe so-called classical view of art indicates
that, for classical thought, art is ' innocent' of all truth. For such a classical
stance, whose primary impetus is didactic, art cannot do the work that
philosophy does, and there are thus no meaningfl parallels to be drawn
between what philosophy says about 'being', for example, and what art says
about 'being' . Badiou takes a somewhat diferent tack. For him, art is not
' i nnocent' of truth; there are truths specific to art, and they are always
immanent and singular. is not blind to its own truth-content, rather, it is
'the thinking of the thought that it is', though this thought of thought is
predicated upon the production of works (otherwise, art wld be
surreptitiously sutured to philosophy as an ultimately speculative or reflexive
pursuit). Philosophy as the ' go-between' is thus duty-bound to make the truths
ofart apparent and consistent with the abstract discourse of ontology, but not
to assimilate them to itself and claim them as its own 'property' (after all,
philosophy itself strictly speaking possesses no truths of its own). It is this
'relation' between philosophy and art that Badiou has baptised as
' inaesthetics' , defining it as ' a relation of philosophy to art which, maintaining
that art is itself a producer of truths, makes no claim to tum it into an object
for philosophy. Against aesthetic speculation, inaesthetics describes the stictly
intra-philosophical effects produced by the independent existence of some
works of art. ' `
How then are we to square this inaesthetic protocol of demarcation and
vigilant commerce between philosophy and art (literature) with what appear
as the invasively philosophical claims made for Beckett's thought, not to
mention the concepts that his writing seems to suggest or add to Badiou's
own approach? After all, there is nothing in the least ironic about the
methodological parallels drawn with Plato, Descartes and Husserl -if nothing
else, these essays wish to convince us that there is as much rigour and as
much thought in How It Is as in the Meditations, in The Un namable as in the
Parmenides. The formalising tour de force which generates the systematic
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reading of Worstward Ho as a distilled ontology, whilst obviously indebted
to much of the work undertaken by Badiou inL'etre et l 'evenement and the
forthcoming Logiques des mondes, is also an attempt to show, in considerable
detail, how literature has nothing to envy philosophy in matters of complex
thought. Indeed, Badiou, as he does elsewhere with regard to that great French
dialectician, Mallarme, avows that in the case of Beckett the practice of
inaesthetic demarcation might fnd itself stretched, that we might be in the
presence of a thinking transversal to those disciplinary borders that Badiou
himself sets up to avert the disaster of suture - that reciprocal parasitism of
philosophy and its conditions which periodically announces the weakening
or abdication of thinking. This is what Badiou writes in the Petit manuel by
way of introduction to his formally exacting reconstruction of Worstard
Ho:
Samuel Beckett [ W . + ] loved to gnaw at the edges ofthat peril which all high
literature exposes itself to: No longer to produce unheard-of impurities,
but to wallow in the apparent purity of the concept. To philosophise, in
short. And therefore: To register truths, rather than producing them. Of
this wandering at the edges, Worstard Ho remains the most accomplished
witness. 14
This effort toward purification, Beckett's characteristic ascesis, is
therefore revealed both as the singular resource of his writing (its capacity to
vie with the great philosophers in a delineation of both the parameters of
appearance and the deterinants of humanity) and as the specific threat it
incurs (that it might tum into an amphibious entity of suture: neither art nor
philosophy; neither the empty capture of evental truths nor their production
in a generic procedure). So that Beckett's work is indeed a specifically artistic
or literary confontation with the resources of language and the power of
fiction, but it is also an attempt to think through and beyond the limitations
imposed by the linguistic set-up and -in operations ofleastening, worsening,
subtraction - to attain something other than language, something other than
fiction. This at least seems to be the 'programme' laid out in the famous letter
to Axel Kaun of 1937, the very same that Beckett later dismissed as ' German
bilge' :
[ . . ] more and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must
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be tor apart in order to get at the things (or the No_ngness) behind it.
I . . . ] Let us hope that time will come, thank God that ain circles it
has already come, when language is most eficiently used when it is most
eficiently misused. As we cannot eliminate language all at once, we should
at least leave nothing undone that might contribute to its falling into
disrepute. To bore one hole after another in it, until what lurks behind it
be it something or nothing - begins to seep through, I cannot imagine a
higher goal for a writer todayY
If only that, as Badiou is adamant to point out, since the dim can never
go - since appearance or inscription is ineluctable -it is not in the destruction
Ollanguage (which would amount to the annihilation of humanity and the
i mperative to speak that defnes it) but in its subtraction and supplementation
|hat 'the things (or the Nothingness) behind it' can see the light.
It is thus in its very drive to purity - in its wish to purge language of
i tsclf-that Beckett's thought remains impure -never able or willing to flly
abandon the injunction and the constraints of utterance, nor to do without its
speculative, universalising desideratum, however corroded by comedy it may
be. Following Jacques Ranciere, we could appropriate the case of Beckett
I(lr a critique of the demarcationist purism and philosophical sovereignty
potentially evinced by Badiou's 'conditional' schema. Or we could enlist it
i n an appraisal of Beckett as a thinker for whom the category of 'art' or
' literature' is far too narrow. Whilst these are both valid pursuits, and the
questions raised by Badiou's Beckett are perhaps not ultimately capable of
doctrinal resolution, in light of the very themes raised in these essays there is
perhaps another avenue worth considering. This consists in seeing Beckett's
writing as centred around the notion of a capacit for thought, and specifically
around the capacity for thinking through the radical consequences of
cncounters and events that defnes the very being of thinking humanit.
Whilst Badiou is explicit in his affrmation of the multiplicity of
cognitive disciplines and generic procedures,16 and wary of any over
determination ofthought either by philosophy or by any one of its conditions,
his own encounter with Beckett seems to push us towards the recognition
that there is a place for thinking thought itself, or the capacity thereof, in a
manner both transversal to the multiplicity of disciplines and anterior to the
irruption of any event. In brief, that even a doctrine for which every subject
hinges on the incalculable upsurge of a novelty and the systematic deduction
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of its consequences has a place for something like a philosophical
anthropology, a thinking of generic humanity that pivots around the capacity
for thinking and which, whilst never reducible to its linguistic inscription,
moves through a resolute confrontation between subj ects and their
enunciations. Whether such a capacity is itself open to a formalisation
equivalent to that provided for the event is of course a matter that can only be
addressed elsewhere in a critical engagement with the resources of Bad iou's
own thought.
IV.
We have seen, briefy, how Badiou can argue that Beckett is a writer of
hope, but a hope based on nothing. 'Nothing', because the event or encounter

with the other does not operate as a principle or foundation that could serve
to plot the outline of a ' hope-giving' series of texts. 'Nothing' , because the
ultimate resource from which generic humanity draws its cognitive and
practical capacity for novelty, as well as its courage to confront the torture of
the cogito and the indifference of the dim, is the void, and the way its pure
inconsistency can burst through the partitions of apparent order, to reveal the
most radical, and most generic, equality. In this regard, it is indicative that
the encounter with the other only appears as a question for Beckett following
the impasse of the investigations of the operations of language in the ' Trilogy' .
Badiou is clear: We cannot simply rest content with an exploration of Beckett's
work that colludes with the sophistical obsession with language. The major
shif in potential that Badiou sees with the encounter fromHow it Is onwards,
provides Beckett's characters with the only 'way out' of the peretual linguistic
oscillation between the solitary cogito and the grey-black of being . Ultimately,
it is this incalculable encounter that fees generic humanity fom the relentless
and aporetic contortions of language and subjectivity. Though Beckett allows
Badiou to consider the ' figural preparation' of this event, or even the quasi
anthropological invariants required for its irruption, it is the event which in
the last instance permits us to think the figure of ' thinking humanity'.
Perhaps this is the real challenge posed by the conceptual configuration
that has arisen between Badiou and Beckett: To think the entanglement and
reciprocal deterination of a thinking of the human as pure capacity, on the
one hand, and a thinking of the incalculable novelty of the event, on the
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l l llT Or: To produce a radically egalitarian notion of the human that would
' : l I l l 1lhow remain entirely faithfl to the anti-humanist legacy of Althusser
i 1 l 1 d hlli cault, among others this is what Beckett allows us, or rather forces
I I ; , | o do. 1 8 Whilst Beckett shows us that an inquiry into the atemporal
I I l I gui stic and cognitive determinants of humanity on its own cannot but lead
l '* i nt o the ordeal of the subject and the impasse of fction, into the wretched
\ I i I t i I i sm of annihilation or (worse) the pieties of humanism, he also manifests
| Ht i nescapable demand that ' thinking humanity' fnd its fictional and
jI I I i l osophical determination, even if this means moving beyond the boundaries
u|l anguage into the realm of the incalculable, moving beyond the 'on' of
spL'cL'h to the invention of operations capable of afirming new beginnings.
| i i t his light, if we must ' shelter and retain' the truth that arises fom an event,
i I ' wc must remain ' tirelessly' faithful to the event, it is because of its
potcntiality for thought, and not only for thought, but for action .
Nina Power and Alberto Toscano
| An English translation of the entirety of the Petit manuel d 'inesthetique (Paris:
SL'uil, 1 998) is forthcoming. See Alain Badiou, Handbook ofInaesthetics, translated
hy Alberto Toscano (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
?See Andrew Gibson's postface for a critical comparison of Bad iou's work on Beckett
| ithat of recent Anglo-American commentators.
JAgain, see Gibson's essay for an analysis of Bad iou's implicit decision not to engage
with other critics and commentators. See also Dominique Rabate's stimulating essay
. Continuer-Beckett' in a recent collection of essays on Badiou entitledAlain Badiou:
J>enser Ie multile, ed. by Charles Ramond (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002), pp. 407-420.
4 Jacques Derida, Acts ofLiterature, ed. by Derek Attridge (London: Routledge,
1 991), p. 60.
5 Regarding this question of the ' grey black' lying beyond the solitary subject, it is
interesting to note that Beckett has so many words in English for this ' nothing' -
among them ' half-light', `d'(Worstward Ho) and ' gloom' (The Lost Ones) whereas
in French, he tends to use penombre across the texts. The French term perhaps better
encapsulates the exact sense of the empty, colourless, topography that Beckett seems
to wish to convey - it is neither light nor dark, neither one colour nor another. It is, in
effect, a term to designate being ' in its localisation, empty of any event'.
6 Beckett shares his identifcation of a method of subtraction or reduction (Beckett's
'leastening') with two of the 20th century's great philosophical readers of Beckett:
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Theodor WAdoro and Giles Deleuze. In 'Trying to Understand Endgame' (1958),
in Notes to Literature, vol. 1 (New York: Colombia, 1 991 ), Adoro explicitly argues
for Beckett's opposition to the ' abstraction' of existentialist ontology in favour of 'an
avowed process of subtraction' (p. 246) that reduces it to a single category: 'bare
existence' (p. 243). However, steeped as it is in the condemnation of 'the irationality
of bourgeois in its late phase' (p. 244) and the 'pathogenesis ofthe false life' (p. 247),
Adooro's reading of Beckett is, to use Badiou's terminology, strictly ' anti
philosophical' ; Adoro refuses to see in Beckett any concession to the speculative
drive and also discounts a priori any reading of him as an afirmative or hopeful
thinker (Adoro concludes that in Endgame ' [h]ope skulks out ofthe world' [po 275]
back to death and indifference). In Adoro's estimation, Beckett's 'metaphysical
negation no longer permits an aesthetic formthat would itself produce metaphysical
afrmation' , his ' anti-art' culls ' aesthetic meaning from the radical negation of
metaphysical meaning' (Aesthetic Theory [Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 1 997],
pp. 348, 271). In this light, Adoro reads Beckett's method of subtraction against
'modem ontology' and the 'poverty of philosophy' , as revealing 'an existence that is
shut up in itself like a mollusk, no longer capable of universality'; despite his somber
acumen and eloquence, Adoro ultimately retains the category of the absurd as the
key to Beckett's work, and is impervious, in Badiou's terms, to the aesthetic relevance
of concepts of eteral novelty or generic humanity (see ' Trying to Understand
Endgame' , p. 246). In this respect, Deleuze's stdy of the stepwise, combinatory
'reduction' of language in Beckett's television plays (, The Exhausted', in Essays
Critical and Clinical [London: Verso, 1 997], pp. 1 52- 1 74) bears far greater afinity
with Badiou's depiction of Beckett as a rigorous thinker of foralising procedures.
Nevertheless, Badiou's preoccupation with the place of 'thinking humanity' in
Beckett's work -together with its Cartesian and Husserlian echoes -has no counterart
in Deleuze's reading, for whom Beckett's reductions lead to a becoming-imperceptible,
to a spiritual and cosmic experience of Life (as he concludes in 'The Greatest Irish
Fihn Ever Made' , also in Essays Critical and Clinical. Needless to say, these diff erent
appreciations of reduction and formalisation find their deeper reasons in Badiou's
polemical engagement with Deleuze's philosophy in Deleuze: The Clamor ofBeing
(Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 2000).
7 Badiou's own philosophy is itself articulated in terms of such' operations, many of
which are drawn fom the domain of mathematical thought, operations such asforcing,
intervention, avoidance, subtraction, connection. The very process of evental
subjectivation is eminently operational in character, a trait clearly attested to by
Badiou's recurrent references to the production (rather than intuition) of truths.
8 See Conditions (Paris: Seuil, 1 992).
XXX

.
A| a| 8ad | ou On oec/en
' Mar| i n Esslin (ed.), The Theatre ofthe Absurd (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
|'; , p. 66.
|l | l Iadiou will write of the manner in which Beckett's ' anti-phenomenological' or
I l I I I l i l l lentional reduction allows us to grasp the moment when 'movement becomes
1 |cma| | yindiscerible from immobility' , that is, when movement becomes nothing
I I I"' than a diferential of rest, expressing a sort of minimal and ideal mobility. It is
\VII lh noting that Beckett himself draws on this theme fom the calculus in his ' Joycean'
dl Sl'ussion of the thought of Giordano Bruno and its infuence on Vico. ' [N]ot only do
l i l t' I l l i nima coincide with the minima, the maxima with the maxima, but the minima
\V|h the maxima in the succession of transformations. Maximal speed is a state of
I ('sl . ' See 'Dante . . . Vico. Bruno . . . Joyce' , inDisjecta (London: John Calder, 1 983),
| '
^ I 4 Arguably the irreducibility of the 'functions' allows Beckett, in his later work,
! l I Iove beyond this identity of contraries.
I I | | i s worth noting that the problem of the name, and specifcally of the naming of
I h" vent, is far more prominent in the first two essays in this collection than in 'Being,
' i sl ence, Thought: Prose and Concept' . This is explained by the fact that the
lkpendence of the theory ofthe event on a philosophy ofthe name has been the object
! I laself-criticism on the part of Badiou - on the basis both of Lyotard's doubts about
I he theory ofthe two names of the event inL 'etre et l 'eVnement and ofthe immanent
I ki llands of Badiou's own thinking of subjectivity, especially as it has come to
i l lcorporate a thinking of appearance (see the preface to the English edition of the
ltl/c:,the forthcoming Angelaki interview with Bruno Bosteels and Peter Hallward
| kyond Foralisation' , and the forthcoming maj or work by Badiou himself,Logiques
. /10ndes).
I 2 See her fne
'
essay on the novel, L' ecrivain pensif (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1 998), pp
' -o?.
| ` Petit manuel d 'inesthetique, p. 7.
1 4 Petit manuel d'inesthetique, p. 146.
1 5 Disjecta, pp. 1 71 - 1 72.
1 6 See Conditions, p. 1 41 .
| 1 This link between a capacity for thought and the event (of the Two) is one of the
pri ncipal objects of Badiou's essay ' Qu' est-ce que l ` amour?' , from Conditions. It is
lso a crucial materialist postulate of Bad iou's that we cannot consider thought outside
o|its inscription in bodies and places (i.e. in appearance) and that any straightforward
identification of a transcendental subjective capacity (one unhinged fom the irruption
of the event and the procedures that can ensue in its wake) would merely occlude the
ordeal of the cogito for the sake of a meta-head, thereby ignoring the seriousness of
Beckett's impasses, as well as their singular resolution.
XXX1

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1 8 In this respect, it would be interesting to measure and interrogate the gap that
separates the dictum fom The Unnamable of which Badiou is so fond - ' I alone am
man and all the rest divine' - from the classically humanist pronouncement fom
' Dante . . . Vico. Bruno . . . Joyce' : 'Humanit is its work itself. [ . . . ] Humanity is divine
but no man is divine' (Disjecta, p. 22). The humanity recast in the later Beckett under
the (empty) sign of the generic is a humanity stripped of such transcendence, and
'blessed' with immortality only through the arduous fidelity to a vanishing event.
Whence Badiou's Beckettian programme, as formulated in ' What Happens' : 'To
relegate the divine and its curse to the periphery of saying, and to declare man naked,
without either hope or hopelessness, relentless, surviving, and consigned to the
excessive language of his desire. ' At the antipodes ofthe divine, it would be of interest
to consider how the capacity for thought which sustains Badiou's Beckettian venture
into philosophical anthropology also signals a caesura within man separating him, as
rare but Immortal subject ofthe event, fom a 'nihilistic' substrate of corporeality and
animality - whence the emblematic nature ofPozzo's exhortation: 'Think, pig! ' .
XXXV

3
A' a| 8ad | ouOnoec/en
Author's Preface
! ! ere then is what I have tried to say about Beckett in French brought back
i l l i o English, moving contrariwise to my French captre of this immense
wr| |OIof the English language.
For we can say that Beckett, from a French perspective, is an entirely
' ! nglish' writer. He is so even in the translations made on the basis of his
l IM French, which amount to something quite different than translations.
W|O can fail to see that in English any of Beckett's fables simply do not
sound the same? They are more sarcastic, more detached, more mobile. In
>hOI|,more empiricist. French served Beckett as an insUent for the creation
l I f an ofen very solemn fonn of distance between the act of saying and what
| > said. The French language changed the paradoxes of the given into
metaphysical problems. It inscribed into verdicts and conclusions what, in
||cEnglish, led to irony and suspension. French -the language of Descartes,
Beckett's great philosophical referent - changed picaresque characters into
|hc witnesses of the refexive Subject, into victims of the cogito. It also
permitted the invention of a colder poetics, of an immobile power that keeps
||C excessive precision of the English language at bay. Beckett's French

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substitutes a rigid rhetoric that spontaneously lays itself out between orament
and abstraction for the descriptive and allusive finesse of English. There is
something of the 'grand style' in Beckett's French. However, radical as his
inventions are - like the asyntactic continuum of How It Is - in Beckett's
prose we glimpse the elevation of Bossuet, the musical grasp of Rousseau,
the finery of Chateaubriand, far more in fact than the taut ' modem style'
which is characteristic of Proust. This is because, like Conrad in English, the
language that serves Beckett as a model is a language leared in its classical
form, a language to which he resorts precisely so as not to let himself be
carried away by familiarity. A language adopted in order to say things in the
least immediate way possible. It is thus that Beckett's French is 'too' French,
just as Conrad's English is a much 'too' mannered sort of English.
So that when Beckett rets to English, he must undo this 'too much' ,
this excess, and thereby attain a strange 'not enough' - a kind of subtracted
English, an English of pure cadence. He abandons himself to speed and its
variations. His English is a French laid bare.
And what of me, placed in this in-between of languages? This is for
the reader to say. It must be noted, nevertheless, that what I have described is
Beckett in French, even when this language did not exist for him (such is the
case of Worstward Ho, translated into French by Edith Fouier). You will
read a French philosopher speaking of a French writer. Who is ' English' .
And of whom I am here speaking of in English. Speaking of what? Of his
English? Of his French, reconfigured here into English?
It is impossible to find our bearings here. But thought, in the end,
speaks no language. Plato claims that philosophy ' starts from things, not
from words' . But Beckett too starts from things! So let us simply say that
these essays, between Beckett and me, speak the Anglo-French of things.
XXXV
A' a| 8ad ' ou On oec/ett
The Writing of the Generic1
I . The Imperati ve a n d i ts Desti nati on
Our starting point: some verses of doggerel, a mirlitonnade written by
Beckett around 1 976.2 It is quite singular, in that it brings Mirliton together
wi th Heraclitus the Obscure:
fux cause fux causes
que toute chose that every thing

tout en etant while being

toute chose every thing
donc celle-la hence that one
meme celle-la even that one

tout en etant while being

J
n est pas is not
parlons-en speak on3

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To speak will always remain an imperative for Beckett, but an imperative
for the sake of the oscillation or the undecidability of every thing. The thing
is not withdrawn, it can be shown, it is this thing, and yet, once determined,
it oscillates according to its fux between being and non-being. We might
then say that writing - the ' speak on' - holds itself at the place of a decision
as to the being of the thing. It is clear, if only because the doggerel form is
suited to it, that this decision will never be sublated by a dialectic. The image
of the flux conveys the fact that the thing can stand simultaneously at the
place where it is and at the place where it is not. But this flux is never the
synthesis of being and non-being, and is not to be confsed with Hegelian
Becoming.
Writing installs itself at the point where the thing, on the verge of
disappearing, summoned by the non-being of its flux, is exposed to the
undecidable question of its own stability. This is precisely why writing -
never destined by what is immobilised in its being - presents itself, with
respect to the uncertainty of the thing, in the guise of an imperative.
In quite general terms, what this interminable imperative must contend
with is the curse of the oscillation reau d' oscillation] between being and
non-being - of the balancing and weighing of the thing - but this curse is
also transformed into a number of questions.4
Kant's thought organised Critique around three questions: What can I
know? What should I do? What may I hope? There are also three questions in
Beckett, caught up in an ironic analogy that characterises his relationship to
philosophy. These three questions are clearly stated in Texts for Nothing.
Here is one variant:
Where would I go, if! could go, who would I be, if! could be, what would
I say, if! had a voice [ . . . J ? (CSP, p.82; GSP, p. 1 14)
The three-fold interrogation bears ongoing, being, and saying.6 Such
is the triple instance of an ' I' that is transversal to the questions themselves,
of a subject captured in the interval of the going, the being, and the saying.
Until 1 960, and perhaps a little after, in what constitutes the best-known part
of Beckett's work, the ' character' will be -always and everywhere the man
of a trajectory (going), the man of an immobility (being), and the man of a
monologue (saying).
|laving grasped this triplet of elementary situations of the subject, we
z
1
A' a| 8ad| ou Onoec/en
. | i i immcdiately pinpoint what I will call Beckett's fundamental tendency
l ownrd8 the generic. By ' generic' desire I understand the reduction of the
" ' l l l plcxity of experience to a few principal fnctions, the treatment in writing
. l | Un|which alone constitutes dessential determination. For Beckett, writing
nl l act govered by a severe principle of economy. It is necessary to subtract
I l lorc and more everything that figures as circumstantial orament, all
I 'lTiphcral distraction, in order to exhibit or to detach those rare fctions to
wUtch writing can and should restrict itself, if its destiny is to say generic
h I I l 1 lanity. Initially, at the beginning ofthis prodigious enquiry into humanity
|Un|Bcckett' s a constitutes, these fctions are three in number: going, being,
Ul id saying.
In Beckett's ' novels' , this subtraction of ornaments has an inner
I l ldaphor: the characters, who realise the fction of generic writing, lose their
i lll;sscntial attributes in the course of the text: clothing, objects, possessions,
hody parts and fagments oflanguage. Beckett ofen lists what must be lost
so that the generic fnctions may emerge. He does not miss an opportunity to
(' ;I st unpleasant epithets upon these pointless oraments and possessions; in
I his way he points out that it is only by losing and dissipating these peripheral
calamities that the essence of generic humanity may be grasped. Consider,
lill' i nstance, one of these lists in Rough for Theatre II:
Work, family, third fatherland, cunt, finances, art and nature, heart and
conscience, health, housing conditions, God and man, so many disasters
(CDW, p. 238; SP, p. 78).1
The subtraction of ' disasters' gives rise within Beckett's prose to a
fictional set-up of destitution [dispositij de denuement] . I think it is very
i mportant to relate this set-up to the fnction that it has for thought, because
i 1 has far too often been interpreted - taking what is simply a figuration too
Ii Icrally -as a sign that for Beckett humanity is a tragic devastation, an absurd
a bandonment. Allow me to say that this is the point of view of an owner, for
whom possessions are the only proof of being and sense! In fact, when Beckett
presents us with a subject who is at the extreme point of destitution, we are
dealing precisely with one who has succeeded - volens nolens - in losing,
amidst the vicissitudes of experience, all the disastrous oramentations of
circumstance.
We must repudiate those interpretations of Beckett that are filtered
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through the 'nihilistic' worldliness ofthe metaphysical tramp. Beckett speaks
to us of something far more thought out than this two-bit, dinner-party vision
of despair. Beckett - who is very close to Pascal in this respect - aims at
subtracting the figure of humanity fom everything that distracts it, so as to
examine the intimate articulation of its fnctions.
The fctional device of destitution is, first of all, a progressively purified
operator for the presentation of 'characters' . It is also, in the fesh of the
prose, an altogether fagrant process that moves, fom Beckett's frst to his
last writings, towards a kind of rupture that submits the prose to a hidden
poem. Finally, it is a restricting of the metaphorical aspect of the prose to a
fnite stock of terms, whose combination and recurrence in the end organise
the entirety of thought.
Little by little, Beckett's text is oriented towards an economy that I
would readily call ancient, or categorial. We have already seen that the
primitive fnctions are movement, rest, and logos. Ifwe note (and how can
we not?) that, from 1 960 onwards, the centre of gravity shifts to the question
ofthe Same and the Other, and, in particular, to that of the existence -whether
real or potential -of the Other, we will argue that behind the trajectory of this
body of work are the five supreme genera (or kinds) of Plato 'sSophist. These
genera are the latent concepts that capture the generic existence of humanity,
and they underlie the prosodic destitution, understood as what makes it
possible to think our destiny. We will say that these supreme genera
(Movement, Rest, the Same, the Other, Logos) as displaced variants of the
Platonic proposal, constitute the points of reference, or primitive terms, for
an axiomatic of humanity as such.
On the basis of these axiomatic terms we can grasp the questions proper
to Beckett's work, those that organise the fiction of a humanity treated and
exhibited by a fnctional reduction oriented towards the essence or the Idea.
I will limit myselfto treating only four of these questions. The work of
Beckett is a summa, simultaneously theological and a-theological, and it is
not possible here to exhaust its set-up [disposition] . The four questions are
the following:
1 ) That of the place ofbeing, or, to be more precise, that of the fiction
of its truth. How does a truth of being enter the fction of its place?
2) That of the subject, which for Beckett is essentially a question of
identity. By means of which processes can a subject hope to identif itself?
3) That of 'what happens' [ce qui se passe] and of 'what takes place'

.. ...A............ . . .. .. .. ... . .. .
A' a| 8ad | ou On oec/en
I , , ' IllIi advient] . How is the event as a supplement to immobile being to be
| 0u| i h|?For Beckett, this problem is closely related to that of the capacities
, " l allguage. Is it possible to name what happens or what takes place, inasmuch
I I` i | lakes place?
4) That of the existence ofthe Two, or of the virtuality of the Other.
Thi s i s the question that ultimately ties together all of Beckett's work. Is an
,
.
l'iietive Two possible, a Two that would be in excess of solipsism? We might
. i | u say that this is the question of love.
. The Grey Bl ack as the Pl ace of Bei n g
Since the originary axiomatic is that of wandering, immobility and the
vulcC, can we, on the basis of this triplet, grasp any truth whatsoever [une
l:1lcquelconque] regarding what is, inasmuch as it is? The operator of truth,
however, is never indifferent [quelconque] . For Beckett, who is an artist, this
(lpcrator is a set-up of fictions [un dispositi de fctions] , so that the question
hlcomes one of place. Is there a place of being, that can be presented in the
i' ietionalising set-up [le dispositi fctionnant] in such a way that the very
hLi g of this place of being becomes transmissible?
Ifwe consider the entirety of Beckett's work, we find that there exists
ill fact a kind of interweaving of two ontological localisations, which indeed
seem to be opposed to one another.
The frst localisation is a closure: arranging a closed space, so that the
set of features of the place of being may be enumerated and named with
precision. The aim is that 'what is seen' be coextensive with ' what is said' ,
I I nder the sign of the closed. This is obviously the case for the room in which
l UCcharacters of Endgame are confined; it also holds for the bedroom where
Malone dies (or does not die), or for Mr. Knott's house in Watt. It is also true
O!the cylindrical arena of The Lost Ones. These are some instances of closure,
O!which many other examples could be given. In the text entitled Fizzle J
/Closed place}, Beckett writes the following:8
Closed place. All needed to be known for say is known
(CSP, p. 1 99; GSP, p. 236).9
This is exactly the set-up of fction with regard to the question of the
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place of being, when this set-up is that of closure: a strict reversibility of
vision and diction in the register of knowledge. This requires an especially
ascetic type oflocalisation.
But there is also a completely diferent set-up: an open, geographical
space, a space of transit which includes a variety of trajectories. We encounter
it, for example, in the countryside -planes, hills and forests - where Molloy
undertakes the search for his mother, and Moran his search for Molloy. Or in
the city and the streets of The Expelled, and, even, tough it tends towards a
uniform abstraction, in the expanse of black mud on which the larvae of
essential humanity crawl i How It Is. Or in the beautifl Scottish or Irish
mounds, covered with flowers, where the old couple of Enough wander around
in happiness.
Both in the spaces of wandering and in the closed places, Beckett tends
to suppress all descriptive oramentation. This results in a filtered image of
the earth and sk: a place of wandering, for sure, but a place that is itself akin
to a motionless simplicity. In the text called Lessness, we find the ultimate
purifcation of the place of crossing, or ofthe possible space of all movement:
Grey sky no cloud no sound no stir earth ash grey sand. Little body same
gey as the earth sky ruins only upright. Ash grey all sides earth sky as one
all sides endlessness (eSp, p. 1 53; GSP, pp. 197-1 98).10
At the end of its fctive purifcation, we could call the place of being
(or the set-up that bears witness to the question of being in the form of the
place) a ' grey black' [noir gris] . This might sufce.
What is the grey black? It is a black such that no light can be inferred to
contast with it, an 'uncontrasted' black. This black is suficiently grey for no
light to be opposed to it as its Other. In an abstract sense, the place of being is
fictionalised as a black that is grey enough to be anti-dialectical, separated
fom all contradiction with light. The grey black is a black that must be grasped
in its own arrangement ar
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d which does not form a pair with anything else.
In this grey black that localises the thought of being, there operates a
progressive fsion of closure and of open (or errant) space. Little by little,
Beckett's poetics will fse the closed and the open into the grey black, making
it impossible to know whether this grey black is destined for movement or
immobility. This is one of the conquests of his prose. The fgure that goes
and the one remaining at rest will become superimposed at the place of being.

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A' a| 8ad | ou On oec/en
| | | i sl I plrimposition is achieved in How It Is, where the jouey and fixity
i lwumajor figures of generi
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humanity. However, these two figures are in
/// 'OUlplace, whereas earlier, wandering and closure remained disjoined
I I I l' i aphors oflocalisation, split between Molloy, the novel ofthe jourey, and
1/u/utitDies, which is the place of saying fixed at its point of death.
This final and unique place, the anti-dialectical grey black, cannot fall
I I l 1 dn t hc regime of clear and distinct ideas. The question of being, grasped
I I I l i s IOl:alisation, does not allow itselfto be distinguished or separated by an
I t kal articulation. In Molloy, we fnd this peremptory anti-Cartesian utterance:
l | himso, yes, I think that all that is false may more readily be reduced, to
Ilotions clear and distinct, distinct fom all other notions
( l , p. 82; TN, p. 82),u
I [ere the Cartesian criterion of evidence is reversed, and we can see
why: if the grey black localises being, reaching the truth of being requires
lhat onc think the in-separate, the in-distinct. By contrast, what separates and
dl st inguishes - what separates dark fom light, for example - constitutes the
p| utcnfnon-being and of falsehood.
The localisation by the grey black ultimately entails that the being of
i wi ng cannot be said as an isolatable singularity, but only as void. When the
l i t l i Onthat fuses the darkness of wandering and the darkness of immobility
( Iperatcs, we notice that what this place presents as the form of being can
ui i | ybe named ' the nothing' , or 'the void', and has no other name.
This maxim, which fom the localisation of being in the grey black
' I I Ti vl:s at the void as the name of what is located, is basically established as
('art yas Malone Dies. Malone's voice begins by waring us that we are dealig
wi t h a terrible phrase, one of those little phrases that 'pollute the whole of
:;pcl:ch' . This phrase is: 'Nothing is more real than nothing' (T, p. 1 93; J,p.
I '2) . '
This cardinal statement about being pollutes the entirety of language
wi t h its inconceivable truth. Many variants will follow, but the most
accomplished is to be found in Worstward Ho. In this text, we find the
l i) I I ()wing:
All save void. No. Void too. Unworsenable void. Never less. Never more.
Never since first said never unsaid never worse said never not gnawing to

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be gone (W,p. 42; NO, p. 1 1 3)Y
This is the ultimate point that the fctionalisation of the place of being
allows us to attest: being as void ' inexists' for language, subtracted as it is
from every degree. But it is precisely being' s subtraction fom language that
arranges it between its frst two categories, movement and rest, and the third
one, speech [la parle] or logos.
That being qua being is subtracted fom language is something that
Beckett says in a great many ways, but perhaps, above all, by means of the
always possible equivalence between dit and mal dit, said and missaid. This
equivalence does not amount to an opposition between well saying and ill
saying. Rather, it presents the missaid as the essence of language; it states
that being inexists in language and that consequently, as Molloy says: ' all
language was an excess of language' (T, p. 1 1 6; J,p. 1 1 6).
1
4
The main efect of this conviction is to split being and existence asunder.
Existence is that of which it is possible to speak, whereas the being of existence
remains subtracted fom the network of meanings, and ' inexists' for language.
Even though it is only in the later works that this split between being
and existence with respect to language unfolds according to its te fctional
operator (the grey black), it dates far back in Beckett's work. In First Love,
fom 1 945, we already fnd the following:
But I have always spoken, no doubt always shall, of things that never
existed, or that existed if you insist, no doubt always will, but not with the
existence I ascribe to them (eSp, p. 10; GSP, p. 35).1
5
This delicate separation between the thing that does not exist and the
same thing which - inasmuch as it is seized by speech - always exists with
an other kind of existence brings us back to the oscillation of the Heraclitean
doggerel: the ' speak on' must operate at the place of being, the place of the
grey black, which maintains an undecidable distinction between existence
and the being of existence.
The clearest statement about this question is perhaps to be found in
Watt. Following an ontological tradition that Beckett takes up in his own
way, we can call being ' Presence' inasmuch as it ' inexists' for language.
More generally, we can call ' Presence' that aspect of being which remains
unpresented in the existent. If being presents itself at the grey black place

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\\' I wle exi stence ' indistinguishes' itself, we can stipulate that this Presence is
I i t ' i l her an illusion (the sceptical thesis) nor a truthful and sayable
I ! '
1
l I prehension (thedogmatic thesis), but rather a certainty without concept.
l l c i s what Beckett has to say in this regard:
Solshall merely state, without enquiring how it came, or how it went, that
| | my opinion it was not an illusion, as long as it lasted, that presence of
what did not exist, that presence without, that presence within, that presence
between, though I'll be buggered if I can understand how it could have
been anything else (W, p. 43;W US, p. 45).16
This text tells us three things. Firstly, that presence, which is a gift of
I wi l lg [donation d 'etre] fom what is not in a position to exist, is itself not an
I 1 I I I si on. Secondly, that it is distributed both within and without, but that its
prl' i l:rred place is no doubt rather the ' between' , the interval. And, thirdly,
| hal i t is impossible to say more about it than that it is a subtraction from
l ' \i sl ence, and, consequently, that presence entails no meaning whatsoever.
l\i des, this impossibility is also a prohibition, as the vocabulary of castration
I I I Beckett's original French crudely suggestsP
It is thus obvious why there cannot be any clear and distinct idea of
presence. Such an idea could not exist because what remains of it for us is
pl | lc|y a proper name: 'void' or 'nothing' . This name is the beam leau] in
|l i c| | eraclitean balance. Beneath its absence of sense, it effectively proposes
l veritable being which is not an illusion, but it also proposes a non-being,
i i |cc it refers to the inexistence of being, which is precisely its unsayable
" ,i ll.

If there were only the fctional set-up of the grey black, whose virtues
we |ave exhausted, we would be forced to agree that we are very close to the

vmious negative theologies, a point that is ofen made about Beckett. But
|I l erc is something that comes before this localisation of being, something
l0ulcannot be reduced to the being of the inexistent, and which is reflection
as slIch, the cogito. Because the one for whom there is the grey black and the
I I l 1 sayable presence does not stop reflecting and articulating both the
locu| isation and its impasse.
In a certain sense, the movement that goes from the void to the cogito,
despite the anti-Cartesian statements that I quoted above (concering the
cri tcrion of evidence), is itself very Cartesian. Indeed, we know that Beckett
was raised on Descartes. The reference to the cogito is explicit in many texts,

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and it is set out in an entirely rational manner - albeit with an ironic grasp of
this rationality - in the outline of Film.
Film is indeed a film, a film whose only character is played by Buster
Keaton. It concers a man -an object L,says Beckett -who flees because he
is pursued by an eye, named E. The fl is the story of the pursuit of Lby E,
and it is not until the end that one is meant to grasp the identity of the pursuer
and the pursued, of the eye and the man. When Beckett published the script,
he introduced it with a text called Esse est percipi, where we can read the
following:
All extraneous perception suppressed, animal, human, divine, self
perception maintains in being.
Search of non-being in flight fom extraneous perception breaking down
in inescapability of self-perception
(CDW, p. 323; SP, p. 1 63).18
This is the argument of the cogito, save for the ironic nuance which
derives from the fact that the search for truth is replaced by the search for
non-being, and, moreover, that by an inversion of values, 'the inescapability
of self-perception' -which for Descartes is one of the first victories of certainty
- appears here as a failure. The failure of what, exactly? Of the extension to
the All [Ie Tout] - subject included - of the general form of being, which is
the void. The cogito undermines this extension. There is an existent whose
being cannot inexist: the subject of the cogito.
We are now appproaching our second question, afer the one concering
the place of being: namely, the question of the subject as it is caught up in the
closure of the cogito, which is also the question of enunciation [I 'enonciation],
tortured by the imperative of the enouncement [I 'enonce].
1
9
3 . On t he Sol i psi sti c Subj ect as Tortu re
The fctional set-up that deals with the closure of the cogito is the one
that structures the best-known part of Beckett's work. This is the set-up of
the motionless voice -a voice put under house arrest by a body [qu 'un corps
assigne d residence] . This body is mutilated and held captive, reduced to
being no more than the fixed localisation of the voice. It is in chains, tied to
a hospital bed, or stuck in a jar that advertises a restaurant opposite the
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, d' I I I I ', hkrhouse. This ' I' is doubly closed: in the fxity of the body and in the
1 ,, ' I : ; l sl l'llee of a voice with neither answer nor echo, it endlessly persists in
I I V | I I ) ' 1 0 find the path of its own identification.
What does it mean for this repetitious voice of the cogito to identif

i | | l Y|means -with te help of a vast array of enouncements, fables, fictional

1 I I I I Iai l vLsand concepts - producing the pure and silent point of enunciation
, I : ; t i ch. Of course, this pure point of enunciation, this ' I' , is always antecedent
: i presupposed since it is that which makes both the voice and the
" l I l l l l l leements possible. It is the voice's place of being and as such is itself
: l l I hl ractcd fom all naming. The relentless aim of the solipsistic voice - or
lh voi ce of the cogito - is to attain this originary silence, whose being is
(l ) l I sl i tuted by its enunciation, and which is the SUbjective condition of all
1 1 l0UIlCements. In order to identif oneself, it is necessary to enter this silence
l hu| supports each and every word. This will be the hope of the 'hero' of The
l il/I/amable:
j. + . J there were moments I thought that would be my reward for having
spoken so long ad so valiantly, to enter living into silence [ . . . j
(T, p. 400; 1,p. 396).20
This enty into silence, holding death at a distance ('living'), has been
described perfectly by Maurice Blanchot as an ' endless recapitulation'
I ns.Iassement] of writing which simultaneously effectuates its point of
l'llunciation and wants to capture or signif it.
Beckett soon fnds out, of course, that this point of identifcation -the
l | ent being of all speech -is inaccessible to any enouncement whatsoever. H
would be too simple to believe that this inaccessibility is the result of a formal
paradox: te necessity that the ontological condition of all naming be itself
I I llnameable. The figure of the impossible, or the unnameable, is trickier than
lhutj it fses together two determinations that Beckett's prose consigns to an
i l lsistence witout hope.
The first determination is that the conditions of this operation - the
conditions of the cogito considered through the sole resort of its capture by a
l ixed voice - are, in a very precise sense, unbearable, charged as they are
with anxiety and mortal exhaustion.
Under the second determination it becomes evident, upon closer
i nspection, that the cogito is a situation far more complex than simple self-
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reflection. Indeed, the cogito involves not two but three tellls. The schema
of Film the eye and the object - is insuficient.
As for the conditions of the cogito, or of a thinking of thinking [une
pensee de la pensee], they are terribly restrictive. This is because speech is
never relentlessly repetitive or mobile enough and, at the same time, it is
never insistent or immobile enough. It would be necessary to find a vocal
regime that could simultaneously reach the apex of vehemence and of the
vociferating multiple and, in its restraint, be the almost-nothing, on the edge
of breathing. The voice cannot maintain this tenuous equilibrium, and what
escapes it is the unnameable, which could be said to be located exactly at the
point of caesura between the two opposing regimes.
This is because in order to reach this point an inner violence is necessary,
a superegoic perseverence capable of literally submitting the subject of the
cogito to the question, to torture. The cogito's confession of silence would
need to be extorted fom it. Beckett underscores the fact that if the `1think'
wishes to mark its own thinking-being - if thought wishes to grasp itself as
the thinking of thinking - the reign of terror will commence. This resonates
with the famous letter in which Mallallle, in a paroxysm of anxiety and
crisis, declares: 'My thought has thought itself, and I am perfectly dead' .21
Beckett, on his part, points to the suffering rather than to death itself In the
words of the hero of The Unnamable:
I only think, if that is the name for this vertiginous panic as of horets
smoked out of their nest, once a certain degree of teror has been exceeded
(T, p. 353; 1,p. 350).
22
The 'I think' presupposes teror, which alone compels the voice to over
extend itself towards itself, in order to fold back, as much as it is able to,
towards its own point of enunciation. Like all terror, this one is also given as
an imperative without concept, and it imposes an obstinacy that gives no
quarter and allows no escape. This imperative, indifferent to all possibility
this terroristic commandment to sustain the unsustainable - concludes The
Unnamable:
[ . . . ] you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on (T, p. 41 8; TN, p. 414).23
Since what is needed is precisely that which is impossible, the
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I I I l l I l l l l I at i ol l Othe voice's obstinacy is also that of an unbearable torture.
1 1 1 I 1 I 1 1 I , hol i l the Unnamable, tears stream down the face of the speaker.
; l I ch heroism on the part of the cogito designates an impasse. Following
1 I 1 1 I 1 1 I . ! I : l t I cy upon The Unnamable we have Texts for Nothing, which occupy
1 1 1 1 1 i l yI he place of dying, where the temptation to abandon the imperative
I I I IVt l l l l l g to rest from the torture of the cogito - imposes itself This is the
I I I I I I I I ! ' I I I when the relation between the 'you must go on' and the `can't go
"I I ' l `> tense that the writer is no longer sure he can sustain it.
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! " l I gaged in the terrifing fictional set-ups of the solipsistic subject. The
I l I i l l l l discovery that these texts bear witness to is that the cogito, besides its
1 1 I 1 1 I H' l I t i ng and unbearable conditions, is ultimately without finality, because
I t ki l l il i eation is impossible. The injunction that the ' I' addresses to itself
! | utii i t ng the naming ofits own founding silence is object-less: in effect,
I I I l ' ( ' ogito is not a refection, a Two (the couple of enouncement and
" l l l I l I ciation), rather, it sketches out a three-fold confguration. There are three
1 1 I : : I : l l lces ofthe 'I' that cannot be reduced to the One except under conditions
I I I l ol al exhaustion, of the dissipation of all subjectivity.
The crucial text in this regard is the twelfh 'text for nothing' , one of
I I I\' densest and most purely theoretical texts written by Beckett. Here is a
p: l:,sagc that undertakes the analytical decomposition of the cogito:
j+ . . ] one who speaks saying, without ceasing to speak, Who's speaking?,
and one who hears, mute, uncomprehending, far fom all [ . . . ] . And this
other now [ . . . ] with his babble of homeless mes and untenanted hims [ . . . ] .
There's a pretty three in one, and what a one, what a no one
(eSp, p. 1 1 2; GSP, p. 1 50).24
How is this inferal trio distributed?
1) First, there is the ' one who speaks' [Qui parle], the supposedly
1l"l lexive subject of enunciation, or the one capable of also asking 'Who's
speaking?' [Qui parle], of enouncing the question concering itself It is this
sl i bject whom the hero of The Unnamable seeks to identif beneath the terror.
2) Then there i s the subj ect of passivity, who hears without
understanding, who is 'far away' in the sense of being the underside, the
obscure matter of the one who is speaking. This is the passive being of the
subject of enunciation.
3) Finally, there is the subject who functions as the support of the
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question of identification, the one who, through enunciation and passivity,
makes the question of what he is insist, and who, in order to do so, submits
himself to tortue.
The subject is thus tom between the subject of enunciation, the subject
of passivity, and the questioning subject. The third of these subjects is
ultimately the one for whom the relation between the other two is at issue ,
the relation, that is, between enunciation and passivity.
Enunciation, passive reception, question: this is the 'pretty three' of
Beckett's subject. And, if we wish to join them together, to count all three of
them as One, we find only the void of being, a nothing that is worth nothing.
Why is it worth nothing? Because the void of being does not itself claim to
be the question of its own being. In the case of the subject, instead, we have
this terrifing rambling of the question which, were it to issue into the void
pure and simple, would t the torture of identification into bitter bufoonery.
Every question implies a scale of values (what is the answer worth?), and if,
in the end, we fnd only what was there before ever question -that is, being
as the grey black - then the value of the answer is zero.
Of course, one might think that the only solution is to abandon all
questions. Would rest, serenity and the end of the tormenting question of
identity not reside i a pure and simple coincidence with the place of being,
with the unquestionable grey black? Why wish for the silence of the point of
enunciation rather than for the silence as it is, as it has always been, in the
anti-dialectical identity of being? Can the subject not rejoin the place fom
which all questions are absent, can it not desert and deconsecrate te dead
end of its own identity?
Well, the answer is no, it cannot do this. The question, because it is one
of the instances ofthe subjective triplet, insists without appeal. Beckett, inIll
Seen II Said, expressly says that it is impossible to reach a place, or a time,
where the question has been abolished:
Was it ever over and done with questions? Dea te whole brood no sooner
hatched. Long before. In the egg. Long before. Over and done with
answering. With not being able. With not being able not to want to kow.
With not being able. No. Never. A dream. Question answered
(ISIS, p. 37; NO, p. 70).25
The idea of disarticulating the subjective trio by suppressing the
questioning instance cannot be put into practice. One cannot rejoin the
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i l I I I 1 1 I ' 1 I 1 0' iai peace of the grey black; there never was a time or a place when
1 1 1 1 ' J l llsl ions were ' dead the whole brood no sooner hatched'.
We are completely trapped in the impasse. The cogito is literally
I I I I I ! l I ublL_ but it is also inevitable. The solipsism that is given over to the
1 11 1 1 l 1';S of identification is interminable and pointless, it can no longer sustain
\1 1 1 1 l 1 g, but neither can the place of being welcome us. This is why Beckett's
l I :, i'rom this period are textsfor nothing. With extraordinary lucidity, they
I l ' i l l i S of the nothingness of the attempt in progress. They come to te
l I ' nl i sal ion, not that there is nothing (Beckett will never be a nihilist), but that
\\' 1 i | | I I g has nothing more to show for itself. These texts tell us the trth of a
i i l i l i al ion, that of Beckett at the end of te ffies: what he has written up to
| | i o| oi nt can 't go on. It is impossible to go on alterating, without any
I I ll'di ation whatsoever, between the neutrality of the grey black of being and
I I I l ' endless torture of the solipsistic cogito. Writing can no longer sustain
I I :wl r by means of this alteration.
And yet, Beckett did go on. Unless we imagine that it was a matter of
I I si mple obsession, or of a slavish obedience to an imperative whose vacuity
l i ilacitly ackowledged, we must ask ourselves through what this continuation
l 1 L to pass. I am convinced that it happened through a real artistic and
I I l t el l ectual transformation, and more precisely through a change in the
,"entation of thought.
Z
. The Tra nsformati on i n Beckett's work
after 19U
It is not true that Beckett's enterprise develops in a linear fashion on
| hc basis of its initial parameters. U is also utterly wrong to maintain, as
much critical opinion would have it, that his work drove itself ever deeper
i nto ' despair' , ' nihilism' , or the defeat of meaning.
Beckett treats a set of prblems in the medium of prose; his work is in
no way the expression of a spontaneous metaphysics. When these problems
tum out to be caught in a prosodic set-up that either does not or no longer
allows them to be solved, Beckett displaces, transforms and even destroys
, this set-up and its corresponding fictions.
This is, without a doubt, what happens at the end of the fifties, after the
Texts for Nothing. We can take How It Is -ultimately a little known book -as
the mark of a major transformation in the way that Beckett fictionalises his
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thinking. This text breaks with the confrontation that opposed the suffering
cogito to the grey black of being. It attempts to ground itself in completely
different categories: the category of ' what-comes-to-pass' [ce-qui-se-passe]
-present fom the start but now recast -and, above all, the category of alterity,
of the encounter and the figure ofthe Other, which fissures and displaces the
solipsistic interent of the cogito.
In order to remain adequate to the categories of thought, the construction
of the texts also undergoes profound changes. The canonical form taken by
the fictions of the ' early' Beckett alterates - as we have seen - between
trajectories (or wanderings) and fixities (or constrained monologues). This
form is progressively replaced by what I would like to call the fgural poem
o/the subject ' postures. Beckett's prose is no longer able to retain its usual
'novelistic' fnctions (description and narration) - not even when these are
reduced to their bare bones (the grey black that describes only being, the
pure wandering that narrates only itself. It is this abdication of the fictive
fnctions of prose that leads me to speak of the poem. With regard to the
subject, what is at stake in this poetics is no longer the question of its identity,
an efort which the monologue of The Unnamable had subjected to its own
brand of torture. Rather, Beckett's concer will tum to the occurrences of the
subject, to its possible positions, or to the enumeration of its figures. Instead
of the useless and unending fictive reflection of the self, the subject will be
pinpointed according to the variety of its dispositions vis-a-vis its encounters
- in the face of 'what-comes-to-pass ' , in the face of everything that
supplements being with the instantaneous surprise of an Other.
In order to track the discontinuity ofthe subject's figures - as opposed
to the obstinate repetition of the Same as it falls prey to its own speech -
Beckett's prose becomes segmented, adopting the paragraph as its musical
unit. The subject's capture within thought will take place in a thematic network:
repetitions ofthe same statements in slowly shifing contexts, reprises, circles,
recurrences, etc.
This evolution is typical, I think, of what I am trying to present here
under the name of ' the writing of the generic' . Since what is at stake is a
generic truth of Humanity, the narrative model - even when reduced to the
pure feature of its trajectory - is not enough, and neither is the solipsistic
' interal' monologue, not even when it produces fictions and fables. Neither
the technique of Molloy nor that of Malone Dies -both of which remain very
close to Kafka's textual procedures - sufice to submit the prose to what is
indiscerible in a generic truth??
I
A' a | 8ad| ou On oec/en
I n order to grasp the discontinuous interweavings [intrications
/ i'III/aires ] of the subject (or of what is dispersed within the subject) the
I I l ol lologue/dialogue/story triad must be deposed. At the same time, we cannot
wak of a poem in the strict sense, since the operations of a poem, which are
al ways afrmative, do not involve fctionalisation. Instead, I would say that
|hcprose -segmented into paragraphs -will come to be govered by a latent
j: m.This poem holds together what is given in the texts, but it is not itself
i | vcn.The thematic recurrences appear on the surface of the text, characterised
hy their slow motion. Beneath the surface, however, this movement is
IqlIlated or unified by an inapparent poetic matrix.
The distance between the latent poem and the surface ofthe text varies.
l u example, the poem is almost entirely exposed inLessness, whereas it is
( kcply buried in Imagination Dead Imagine. Yet in all these texts there is a
|| | idof subversion of prose and of its fictional destiny by the poem, without
| | i ctext itself actually entering the realm of poetry. It is this subversion without
l rnsgression that Beckett was to refne afer 1 960 with a great many
hcsitations, of course - as the only regime of prose adequate to the generic
intention.
From a more abstract point of view, Beckett's evolution goes from a
progr e of the One - obstinate trajectory or interminable soliloquy - to
I hcpregnant theme of the Two, which opens out onto infinity. This opening
orthe multiple will give rise to combinations and hypotheses reminiscent of
cosmology. These combinations and hypotheses are captured in their literal
objectivity; they are given, not as suppositions, but as situations. Finally, we
have the passage fom a set-up of fictions, whose stories are perhaps intended
1 0 be allegorical, to a semi-poetic set-up that puts situations into place. These
situations will allow us to enumerate the possib
l
e fortunes or misfortunes of
I he subject.
As far as the question of the Other is concered, this new project
oscillates between realisations of failure and flashes of victory. We could say
I hat in Happy Days, Enough or JSeen HSaid, it is the positive inflection
Ihat predominates, under the signifier of a 'happiness' that cannot be abolished
by the writing's ironic tone. In Company, by contrast, which ends with the
word 'alone', there is a final deconstruction of that which - in the sublimity
ofthe night -will have been but the fiction of a Two. However, this oscillation
itself constitutes a principle of openness. The second half of Beckett's work
in effect marks an opening onto chance, indifferently sustaining both success
and failure, the encounter and the non-encounter, alterity and solitude. Chance
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contributes in part to curing Beckett of the secret schema of predestination,
evident in the work between Watt and How It Is.
Of course, in the earliest of Beckett's works we can already find traces
of this break with the schema of predestination, of this opening up to the
chance possibility that what exists is not all there is [qu 'il n yait pas seulement
ce qu 'il y a]. These traces are linked to the muffled exposition of the schema
itself I am thinking, for instance, of the moment when Molloy declares: ' one
is what one is, partly at least' (T, p. 54; J,p. 54).18 This 'partly' concedes a
point to the non-identity of the self, which is where the risk of a possible
feedom lies. This concession prepares the judgment of Enough: ' Stony ground
but not entirely' (CSP, p. 1 40; GSP, p. 1 87).2
9
There is here a breach of being,
a subtraction fom the indifferent ingratitude of the grey black. Or, to borrow
a concept fom Lacan, there is the not-all, both in that coincidence of self
with self that speech exhausts itself in situating, and in the earth's stony
ingratitude.29
What is this breach in the totality of being and self? What is to be
found in this breach that is simultaneously the not-all of the subject and the
grace of a supplement to the monotony of being? This is the question of the
event, of 'what-comes-to-pass' . It is no longer a matter of asking the question
'What of being such as it is?' , or ' Can a subject who is prey to language
rejoin its silent identity?' Instead, one asks: 'Does something happen?' And,
more precisely: 'Is there a name for the surging up, for an incalculable advent
that de-totalises being and tears the subject away fom the predestination of
its own identity?'
b . Event, Mea n i n g , Na mi n g
The interrogation concering both what comes to pass and the possibility
of a thinking of the event as it arises motivates some of Beckett's earliest
texts. It is central to Watt, which dates fom the forties. But, to a considerable
extent, it was obliterated by the works that brought Beckett fame. In addition
to Waiting for Godot, this means essentially the trilogy of Molloy, Malone
Dies, and The Unnamable. What common opinion retained fom these works
was precisely that in the end nothing happened, nothing but the wait for an
event. Godot will not come; Godot is nothing but the promise of his coming.
lnthis sense, the role of the event is akin to that of woman in Claudel: a
promise that cannot be kept.
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A' a| 8ad| ou On oec/ett
| i i Watt, on the other hand, we encounter the crucial problem of what
1 1 11 l i no calls ' incidents', which are themselves quite real.
| |tll provides the allegorical arrangement of a structural place: the
h"I I : ; I ' o|Mr. Knott.31 This place is both imemorial and invariable, it is
\ "1 1 1 , ), All and as Law:
j = = J nothing could be added to M. Knott's establishment, and fom it
1
I (llhing taken away, but that as it was now, so it had been in the beginning,
ui idso it would remain to the end, in all essential respects, any significant
presence, at any time, and here all presence was signifcant, even though
||was impossible to say of what, proving that presence at all times [ . . . ]
( W, p. 1 29; W US, p. 1 3 1).32
Mr. Knott's house binds presence and meaning so closely that no breach
I I I i t s being is thinkable, whether by supplement or by subtraction. All that
( Il le can do is to refect the Law of invariance that govers the place of being.
I l ow does the house fnction over time? Where is Mr. Knott, at any given
I I I Ol llent? In the garden, or on the frst floor? These are questions that relate
t o pure knowledge, to the science of place; they are the rationalisations of
:;( l i llcthing like a 'waiting for Mr. Knott' .
But besides the law of place and its uncertain science there is the
problem of incidents. This is what will arouse Watt's passion as a thinker.
Speaking of these incidents, Beckett will say - in a formula of major
l i llportance - that they are ' of great formal brilliance and indeterminable
purport' (W, p. 71 ; W US, p. 74).33 What are these incidents? Among the
1 I 10st remarkable ones, let us cite the visit of a piano tuner and his son, or the
pulting out of Mr. Knott's dish for the dog in font of the door, a dog whose
origin is itself an ' impenetable' question.
What provokes thought is the contradiction between, on the one hand,
I he formal brilliance of the incident (its isolation, its status as exception),
and, on the other, the opaqueness of its content. Watt takes great pains in
' formulating hypotheses about this content. It is here that his thought is really
awakened. What is at issue is not a cogito under the torturing compulsion of
lhe voice, but rather calculations and suppositions designed to raise the content
ofthe incidents up to the level of their formal brilliance.
In Watt, however, there is a limit to this investigation, a limit that Beckett
will not cross until much later: the hypotheses about the incidents remain
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captive to a problematic of meaning. We are still within the confines of an

attempt of the hermeneutic type, i which one is supposed to bring the incident,
by means of a well-conducted interpretation, into agreement with the
established universe of meanings. Here is the passage that lays out the
hierarchy of possibilities that are open to Watt as the interreter, or hermeneut,
of the incidents:
[ . . . ] the meaning attributed to this particular type of incident, by Watt, in
his relations, was now the initial meaning that had been lost and then
recovered, and now a meaning quite distinct fom the initial meaning, and
now a meaning evolved, after a delay of varying length, and with greater
or less pains, from the initial absence of meaning
(W p. 76; W US, p. 79).34
The hermeneut has three possibilities: if he supposes that there is a
meaning to the incident he can retrieve it, or else propose an entirely different
one. If instead he supposes that there is no meaning, he can generate one. Of
course, only this third hypothesis, which posits that the incident is entirely
devoid of meaning and that it is therefore really separate from the closed
universe of sense (Mr. Knott's house), awakens thought in a lasting manner
(, afer a delay of varying length'), and demands its labour (' with greater or
less pains ') . However, if this is all there is, if the interreter is the giver of
sense, then we remain prisoners of meaning as law and imperative. The
interreter creates nothing but an agreement between the incident and that
from which he separated himself at the beginning - the established universe
of meanings, Mr. Knott's house. In Watt there certainly is a chance that
something may happen, but what-comes-to-pass - once it is captured and
reduced by the hermeneut - does not preserve its character as a supplement
or a breach.
Beginning with the play Endgame, Beckett dissociates what-comes
to-pass from any allegiance - even an invented one - to meanings. He
postulates that the existence of an event does not entail that we are subjected
to the imperative of discovering its meaning:
HAMM: What's happening?
CLOY: Something is taking its course.
[Pause.]
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|' l ON: Mean something! You and I, mean something! [Brie/laugh. ] A
| l iul`sa good one!
( '[)W, pp. 1 07-1 08; E, pp. 32-33)35
Ultimately, Beckett replaces his initial hermeneutics -which attempts
l . pi n the event to the network of meanings - with an entirely different
! .:u|i on, that of naming. Confonted with a chance supplementation of being,
l Ial i l i ng does not seek any meaning at all, but instead proposes to draw an
I l i vented name out of the very void of what takes place. Interpretation is
|0Ocby supplanted by a poetics of naming that has no other purpose than to
}t\ l hcincident, to preserve within language a tace ofthe incident's separation.
The poetics of naming is central to H Seen H Said, starting with the
\ | y title ofthe text. Indeed, what does 'ill seen' mean? 'Ill seen' means that
what happens is necessarily outside the laws of visibility of the place of being.
W| |ultruly happens cannot be properly seen [bien vu] (including in the moral
n-cof the term), because the well-seen [bien-vu] is always framed by the
j |cy black of being, and thus cannot possess the capacity for isolation and
: : urprise that belongs to the event-incident. And what does 'ill said' mean?
I I I C well-said is precisely the order of established meanings. But if we do
I l i anage to produce the name of what happens inasmuch as it happens - the
l I amc ofthe ill seen -then this name cannot remain prisoner of the meanings
| hul are attached to the monotony of the place. It thus belongs to the register
l the ill said. 'Ill seen ill said' designates the possible agreement between
l 0ul which is subtracted fom the visible (the 'ill seen'), and that which is
';l I hlracted fom meaning (the 'ill said'). We are therefore dealing with the
agrcement between an event, on the one hand, and the poetics of its name, on
t hcother,
Here is a decisive passage concering this point:
During the inspection a sudden sound. Startling without consequence for
the gaze the mind awake. How explain it? And without going so far how
say it? Far behind the eye the quest begins. What time the event recedes.
When suddenly to the rescue it comes again. Forthwith the uncommon
common noun collapsion. Reinforced a little later if not enfeebled by the
infrequent slumberous. A slumberous collapsion. Two. Then far from the
still agonizing eye a gleam of hope. By the grace of these modest beginnings
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(ISIS, p. 55; NO, p. 83).36
The text, in the end, speaks about itself. ' The inspection' accords with
visibility; it is the well-seen, which is moreover presented here as a tortue.
During the torment of the submission to the law of place, in the classical
abruptness of the supplementation by an event, there is a noise. This noise is
out-of-place [hors-lieu], isolated in its formal clarity, in-visible, ill seen?7
The entire problem is to invent a name for it. In passing, Beckett rejects the
hypothesis - which might appear as more ambitious but actually exhibits a
lesser feedom - of an explanation that would 'well say' about the ill seen.
The name of the noise-event is a poetic invention. This is what Beckett
signals by the paradoxical alliance of ' collapsion' and 'slumberous' , one
'uncommon' and the other ' infrequent' . This naming emerges fom the void
of language, like an ill saying adequate to the ill seen of the noise.
Even more important is the fact that once ' slumberous collapsion' is
uttered - as what names the suddenness of the noise as a poetic wager on the
ill seen - then and only then is there ' a gleam of hope' .
What kind of hope are we dealing with here? The hope of a truth. A
truth that will be interolated into the grey black, a truth dependent on the
naming of an event which will itself be eclipsed. The moment of grace, the
' grace of these modest beginnings' . There exists no other beginning for a
truth than the one that accords a poetic name - a name without meaning -to
a separable supplement which, however obscure, however ill seen it is said
to be, is nevertheless, once subtracted from the grey black of being, 'of great
formal brilliance' .
What is thus opened up is the domain of truth. In its separable origin,
this is the domain of alterity. The naming guards a trace of an Other-than
being, which is also an Other-than-self.
This is the source of the subject's dis-closure, whereby it incurs the
risk of the Other, of its figures and occurences. It does so under the sign of
the hope opened up by ontological alterity - the breach in being which is
crystallised both by the suddenness of the event and by the brilliance of the
ill seen.
b . Fi g ures of the Su bj ect a n d Formul as of
Sexuat i on
The fabulation of the fgures of the subject will persistently occupy
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I \' ,L( ' I I i n his texts afer 1 960. The most signifcant set-ups [montages] in
I I I I ' , Il'Spcct are the very ' stucturalist' one of The Lost Ones, published in
| ' /,:i|idthe one of How It Is.
| ti both cases, fction lays out an abstract place that does not imply any
| +|' i hcdfigure ofthe sensible. The place is no longer that of the forests, or
l l l it Ilowers of wandering, or of the closure of a room in an asylum. The
' , p: I ( ' l i s homogeneous and regulated, subjected to strict parameters that one
| ic>could serve as the object of an exact science. Such coded places evoke
, : jiIckct cosmology, but they also recall Dante 's Infero. Their bareness allows
. i | l al l ention to focus upon the fgural dispositions of the subject.
| n The Lost Ones, the place in question is a giant rubber cylinder in
w| i | ththe variations oflight, sound, and temperatue are regulated by rigorous
| aw. These laws are empirically observable and yet conceptually unknown.
J| i i isa simple cosmos, purifed and reduced to a complex of closure and
I " ! ',a l i ty. Within it, a ' little people' busies itself with obeying a single
1 l l l pcrative: to look for teir lost ones.38 This obstinate imperative is no longer
1 1 t : 1 1 of identifcation, as in The Unnamable. It is no longer a question of
: : pcaking one's self or of rejoining oneself at the pure point of silence. The
| | i | perative is to look for the other, or, to be more precise, it is up to each one
I n l ook for its other. Here is the very beginning ofthe tale: ' Abode where lost
i >ndics roam each searching for its lost one' (eSp, p. 1 59; GSP, p. 202).9
The lost one is the one who, by being your lost one, singularises you,
lulsyou away from the anonymous status of those who have being only to
l' . cextent that they are lost among the people of searchers. To find one's lost
nl lC [etre ' depeuplt'] would be to come to oneself [advenir d soil in the
\I lcounter with one's other.
The quest for the other is both constant and varied. People run around
lvcrywhere in the cylinder - for example climbing the ladders to see if the
lost one is in one of the niches installed at various heights. All ofthis amounts
1 0 a very complicated exercise that Beckett describes in all of its painstaking
mi nutiae. In the end we can nevertheless distinguish four figures of the quest,
and therefore four fgures of the subject, four possible positions for ' each
one' who searches for its lost one.
Roughly speaking, there are two criteria for setting up this typology of
ligures.
The first one contrasts those who search and those who have given up
on the search; those who still live in accordance with the single imperative
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and those who have given up on this imperative -which is the same as giving
up on one's desire, since there exists no other desire than that of fnding one's
lost one. Beckett calls these defeated searchers the vanquished. To be
vanquished, let us note, is never to be vanquished by the other, but rather
entails that one has renounced the other.
The second criterion has its origin i the Platonic categories of movement
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and rest, whose importance for Beckett's thought I have already indicated.
There are searchers who circulate without stopping, there are others who
sometimes stop, and then there are those who stop ofen - and even some
who no longer move at all.
We thus end up with four types of subject:
1 ) The searchers who circulate nonstop, whom we might call the
'nomads' , and who are the ' initial' living beings - the infants, for example.
The infants never stop circulating, on their mothers' backs to be sure, but
without ever coming to a halt. The mothers also belong to this category; they
cannot be immobile, not even for an instant.
2) The searchers who sometimes stop, who 'rest' .
3) The searchers who are definitively motionless, or immobile for a
very long time, but who -and this is very important -continue to search with
their eyes for their lost one. Nothing in them moves, except the eyes,
ceaselessly turing in all directions.
4) The non-searchers, the vanquished.
Those who are immobile, either constantly or for a long time, are called
the sedentary. By combining the criteria of the imperative (to search) and of
movement, we can fndamentally distinguish two ' extremal' positions: the
absolute nomadic living beings, on the one hand, and the vanquished, on the
other. Between these two fgures lie partial and total sedentarity.
The principle underlying this distribution of figures is the following:
since the law of desire is the search for the other, this search can never be
interrupted, except in that approximation of death constituted by irreversibility.
The moment when one gives up on the imperative is a point of no retur. The
one who stops circulating becomes sedentary, thereby entering into the fgure
of the vanquished.
This is if we view things fom the side of life, fom the side of the
imperative ofthe lost one. But, fom the other point of view, that of sedentarity,
there exist a variety of possibilities - one can circulate between partial and
total immobility. There is even the possibility of the following miracle, which
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1 0 . 1 1 hOl l rs all of Beckett's paradoxical optimism: the ret (which is rare,
: l 1 1 ll !| lLver takes place, but there are cases . . . ) of a vanquished one to the
l " 1 1 : 1 or the search. Here the set-up involves a certain torsion: giving up on
| | | l i l l perative is irreversible, but the result of (or the punishment for) this
. I , k: l l , which is apathetic immobility, i s not irreversible. Or again:
I l l l ' vlTsibility is a law of choice, a law of the moment; it does not gover a
| i | O!affairs. Grasped in all its consequences and figures, and not in its
I ' l l l` moment, irreversibility is not irreversible.
The subject's maxims are therefore as follows: to give up is irreversible,
1 , "1 cillpossibilities exist even where nothing attests to them, in the midst of
|I l l ' l igures of sedentarity. Beckett says as much in an extraordinarily succinct
1
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I H' l ween an imperative and the domain of possibilities in which it is exercised:
. . . J in the cylinder what little is possible is not so it is merely no longer so
and in the least less the all of nothing if this notion is maintained
(eSp, p. 1 67; GSP, pp. 21 1 -21 2).40
The slightest failure is total (because less
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provisionally no longer possible).
The ethics of the cylinder knows no eteral damnation, but neither
ducs it know any compromise regarding the imperative of the Other. What
distributes this ethics into its two sides is a figure of the subject.
In How It Is, the description of the subject's figues takes place in another
rictional montage, bringing us closer to the crucial problem of the Two.
Of course, Beckett maintains that there are four main figures. There
lL always four figures, we cannot escape this number, the problem is knowing
which of them are nameable.
A passing remark: you are probably acquainted with Lacan's thesis
about what can be said of truth. For Lacan, a truth can never be entirely said,
| l can only be half-said.40 When it comes to the truth of subjective figures,
|he proportion that Beckett proposes is somewhat diferent. Of the four figures,
Only three can be named, so that in this case speech can reach three quarters
Othe truth:
[ . . . J the voice being so ordered I quote that of our total life it states only
three quarters (HI!, p. 142; HI! US, p. 130)4
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These are the four fgural postures of the subject in How It Is:
1) To wander in the dark with a sack.
2) To encounter someone in the active position, pouncing on them in
the dark. This is the so-called 'tormentor's' position.
'
3) To be abandoned, immobile in the dark, by the one encountered.
4) To be encountered by someone in a passive position (someone
pounces on you while you are immobile in the dark). This is the position of
the so-called 'victim' . It is this fourth position that the voice is not able to
say, thus leading to the axiom of the three quarters concering the relationship
between truth and speech.
These are the generic fgures which cover everything that can happen
to a member of humanity. It is very important to note that these figures are
egalitarian ones. In this set-up there is no paicular hierarchy, nothing to
indicate that this or that one among the four figures is to be desired, preferred,
or distributed differently than the others. The words 'tormentor' and 'victim'
should not mislead us in this regard. Besides, Beckett is carefl to war us
that there is something exaggerated, something falsely pathetic in these
conventional denominations. Moreover, we will see that the positions of the
victim and the tormentor designate everything that can exist by way of
happiness in life. In sum, these figures are only the generic avatars of existence;
they are equivalent to one anoter, and this profound equality offate authorises
the following remarkable statement: 'in any case we have our being injustice
I have never heard anything to the contrary' (HII, p. 135; HII US, p. 1 24).43
Of course, the justice evoked here, as a judgment about collective being,
does not refer to any kind of finality. It concers only the intrinsic ontological
equality of the figures of the subject.
Within this typology, we can nevertheless group the fgures of solitude,
on the one hand, and the figures of the Two, on the other.
The fgures of the Two are the tormentor and the victim. These postures
are the consequence of a chance encounter in the dark, and are tied to one
another by the extorsion of speech, by the violent demand of a story. This is
' life in stoic love' (HII, p. 69; HII US, p. 62).45
The two figures of solitude are: to wander in the dark with one's sack
and to be immobile because one has been abandoned.
The sack is very important. Indeed, it provides the best proof that I am
aware of for the existence of God: every traveller fnds his or her sack more
or less filled with tins of food, and to explain this fact God is the simplest
hypothesis; all the other hypotheses, which Beckett tries to list, are extremely

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|.u|us note that, as figures of solitude, the jourey and immobility are
|0 results of a separation. The joumey is that of a victim who abandons her
| n| uici iloI,whilst immobility in the dark applies to the abandoned tormentor.
| | i .dear tat these figures are sexuated, but in a latent manner. Beckett does
1 , , ,1 pronounce the words 'man' and 'woman' , precisely because they refer
1 1 1 1 1 00 comfortably to a structural and permanent Two. Depending as it does
l I l | hc chance of the encounter, the Two of victim and tormentor, of their
| 1 I I II Ieys and immobilities, is not the realisation of any pre-existing duality.
I n fact, the fgures of solitude are sexuated in accordance with two
j ' ('al existential theorems, whose evidence is plotted out by How It Is:
- frst theorem: only a woman travels;
second theorem: whoever is immobile in the dark is a man.
I will let you refect upon these theorems. What we should note
I I l 1 l l 1ediately is that this doctrine of the sexes, which states that wandering
/ }L a woman and that ifthere is a mortal immobile in the dark he must be
l i l l ian -this schema of sexuation, in brief-is in no sense either empirical or
hi ol ogical. The sexes are distributed as a result, on the basis of an encounter
i i i which the active position - called 'the tormentor's' - and the passive one
tul Od 'the victim's' - are bound together through ' stoic love' . The sexes
bciipcnwhen a mortal crawling in the dark encounters another mortal crawling
i i : the dark, like everyone else, with his or her sack fll of tins of food. Of
(' ourse, there are always fewer and fewer tins about, but one day another sack
w| l l be found - as long as we don't stop crawling, God wilIling.
Active and passive positions, however, are not the last word on
scxuation. In order to shed more light upon the matter, we must examine
Beckett's 'terminal' thought on its own terms. This is the thought that
eSlablishes the power of the Two as truth.
7 . Love a nd i ts N umeri ca l i ty : One, Two, Infi ni ty
Whilst Beckett's fables are subject to a number of variations, one feature
remains unchanged: love begins in a pure encounter, which is neither destined
uoIpredestined, except by the chance crossing of two trajectories. Prior to
lhi s meeting, only solitude obtains. No Two, and in particula no sexual duality,
exists before the encounter. Sexual diference is unthinkable except fom the
point of view ofthe encounter, as it unfolds within the process oflove. There
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is no originary or prior difference that conditions or orientates this encounter.

The encounter is the originary power ofthe Two, and therefore oflove itself
This power, which within its own domain is not preceded by anything, is
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practically without measure. In particular, it is incommensurable with the
power of feeling and with the sexual and desiring power of the body. It is in
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the encounter:
And to meet [ . . . ] in my sense exceeds the power of feeling, however tender,
and of bodily motions, however expert (M, p. 1 24; MUS, p. 222).44
Beckett never reduces love to the amalgam of sentimentality and
sexuality endorsed by common opinion. Love as a matter of truth (and not of ,
opinion) depends upon a pure event: an encounter whose strength radically
exceeds both sentimentality and sexuality.
The encounter is the founding instance ofthe Two as such. In the fgure
oflove - such as it originates in the encounter -the Two arises. This includes
the Two of the sexes or of the sexualized figures. In no way does love tum a
pre-existing Two into a One; this is the romantic version oflove that Beckett
never ceases to deride. Love is never either fsion or effsion. Rather, it is the
often painstaking condition required for the Two to exist as Two. An example
is provided in Malone Dies by the fictitious encounter that Malone engineers
between Macmann and his guardian, Moll. The love that is admirably
recounted here, like the love ofthe aging or the dying, takes on an extraordinary
lyrical intensity. Malone comments on the truth-effects ofthis love as follows:
But on the long road to this what flutterings, alarms and bashfl fumblings,
of which only this, that they gave Macmann some insight into the meaning
ofthe expression, Two is company (T, p. 261 ; J,p. 260).46
The Two, which is inaugurated by the encounter and whose truth results
fom love, does not remain closed in upon itself Rather, it is a passage, a
pivotal point, the first numericality. This Two constitutes a passage, or
authorises the pass, from the One of solipsism (which is the frst datum) to
the infinity of beings and of experience. The Two oflove is a hazardous and
chance-laden mediation for alterity in general. It elicits a ruptue or a severance
of the cogito's One; by virtue of this very fact, however, it can hardly stand
on its own, opening instead onto the limitless multiple of Being. We might
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J . . : ; I Y I hat the Two of love elicits the advent of the sensible. The truth of
| | . l wt : gives rise to a sensible inflection ofthe world, where before only the
, ' I . V hl ack of being had taken place. Now, the sensible and the infinite are
I I hl l l i cal , because the infinity of the world is, together with the One of the
r | Ilr lhe other coherent thesis. Between these two presentational positions,
1 1 11 Two of love fnctions both as break and as a constitution.
( )ne of the axioms of How It Is is that the One and the Infinite are the
1 \\ 1 ' coherent ontological theses. The hero, crawling in the dark, asserts the
1 "l l owi ng:
i nother words in simple words I quote on either I am alone and no frther
problem or else we are innumerable and no further problem either
( l 1 lI, p. 1 35; HII US, p. 1 24f7
The Two of love deploys the sensible version of this abstract axiom,
whi thjointly validates the thesis of the One and the thesis of the Infinite.
| l I ve offers beauty, nuance, colou. It presents what one might call the other
I I I ':eLond nocture - not the grey black of being, but the rustling night, the
1 1 1 1 ', 1 1 1 ofleaves and plants, of stars and water. Under the very strict conditions
j :cu by the encounter and the ensuing toil, the Two of love operates the
: . I i ssi on of the dark into the grey black of being, on the one hand, and the
I I I Ii | itely varied darkness of the sensible world, on the other.
This explains why in Beckett's prose one often chances upon these
: ; wl den poems where, under the sign of the inaugural fgure of the Two,
' ; I l i l i cthing unfolds within the night of presentation. This something is the
I l l I dtiple as such. Love is, above all, an authorisation granted to the multiple,
I I l ade under the ever-present threat of the grey black in which the original
| i | cundergoes the torture of its own identification.
I would now like to quote three such poems that are latent within the
plse, so that another Beckett may be heard - a Beckett who gives voice to
I I Ie gif and the happiness of being.
The first poem is taken fom Krapp SLast Tape, at the moment in which
I he hero of the play, a man nearing his end and launched into interminable
al l empts at anamnesis (he listens to recordings of his own voice at different
.'; ( agcs of his life), retrieves the crucial moment when the Two oflove had re
\)pcned the multiple:
-upper lake, with the punt, bathed off the bank, then pushed out into the
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stream and drifed. She lay stretched out on the foorboards with her hands
under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze,
water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked how she
came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was
hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her eyes.
[Pause.] I asked her to look at me and afer a few moments [Pause.]
*
afer a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I
bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. [Pause. Low. ]
Let me in. [Pause.] We drifed in among the flags and stuck. The way they
went down, sighing, before the stem! [Pause. ] I lay down across her with
my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving.
But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side
to side. [Pause.]
Past midnight. Never knew
(CDW, p. 221 ; SP, p. 61 )48
As you can see, this is the poem ofthe opening of the waters, the multiple
of the absolute moment, when love, even if it is in the statement of its own
end, brings forth the infnity of the sensible world.
The second quote comes fromEnough, a short text entirely devoted to
love. This text establishes precise connections between love and infnite
lowledge. The two walking lovers, broken in two, in a world of hills in
bloom, are never closer to one another than when they discuss mathematics
or astronomy:
His talk was seldom of geodesy. But we must have covered several times
the equivalent of the terrestrial equator. At an average speed of roughly
three miles per day and night. We took flight in arithmetic. What mental
calculations bent double hand in hand! Whole terary numbers we raised
in this way to the third power sometimes in downpours of rain. Graving
themselves in his memory as best they could the ensuing cubes
accumulated. In view ofthe converse operation at a later stage. When time
would have done its work (CSP, p. 1 41 ; GSP, p. 1 88).49
Here is another very beautifl passage, once again fromEnough, when
the figure of the beloved man becomes this instance of lowledge through
which the sky is presented in its proper order:
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l IU a gradient Of one in one his head swept the ground. To what this taste
was due I cannot say. To love of the earth and the fowers' thousand scents
: l I1d hues. Or to cruder imperatives of an anatomical order. He never raised
|0cquestion. The crest once reached alas the going down again.
l norder fom time to time to enjoy the sky he resorted to a little round
Illirror. Having misted it with his breath and polished it on his calf he
looked in it for the constellations. I have it! he exclaimed referring to the
Lyre or the Swan. And ofen he added that the sky seemed much the same
(CSP, p. 142; GSP, p. 1 90).50
l i vcis when we can say that we have the sky, and that the sky has nothing.51
l | i then that the multiple of Constellations is held in the opening of the
Two. 52
The last poem is taken fom Company, and it is doubtless the one most
| tIScly bound to the metaphor of a division of the dark and of the advent of
| | it second nocte:
You are on your back at the foot of an aspen. In its trembling shade. She at
right angles propped on her elbows head between her hands. Your eyes
opened and closed have looked in hers looking in yours. In your dark you
look in them again. Still. You feel on your face the fringe of her long black
hair stirring in the still air. Within the tent of hair your faces are hidden
from view. She murmurs, Listen to the leaves. Eyes in each other's eyes
you listen to the leaves. In their trembling shade
(C, pp. 66-67; NO, p. 35).53
All of these quotes show the Two of love as the passage lae] from
I he One of solipsism to the infinite multiplicity of the world, and as the
noctural fssure of the grey black of being.
But there is also a conspiring of the Two - an insistence that takes the
ligure of fdelity. This fdelity organises four fnctions in Beckett, which are
a l so four fgures of the subject within love. It is my conviction (for which I
Munable here to adduce proof) that these fnctions have a general value, in
I he sense that they are the organising fnctions of any generic process. They
rel ate to the duration of love, of course, but also to scientific accumulation,
artistic innovation, and political tenacity.
The frst of these fnctions is wandering [l 'errance] or the jourey,
with or without the benefit of a sack: a jourey in the dark, which presents
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the infnite chance of the faithfl jourey of love; the endless crossing of a
world henceforth exposed to the effects of the encounter. This fnction of
wandering, whose abstract variant we encountered in How It Is, is also
exhibited in the incessant walking of the lovers of Enough among the hills
and flowers. It establishes the duration of the Two and grounds time under
the injunction of chance.
The second fnction is exactly the opposite, that is, immobility, which
watches over, guards or maintains the fxed point of the frst naming, the
naming of the event-encounter. We saw that this naming pins the ' incident'
to its lack of meaning, and permanently fxes that which is superumerary
into a name. This is the senseless ' I love you' , ' We're in love' , or whatever
might come in its stead, and which in each of its occurrences is always
pronounced for the frst time. This immobility is that ofthe second nocture,
of the small craft caught in the flags, of gazes absorbed by the eyes of the
other.
The third fnction is that of the imperative: always to go on, even in
separation; to decree that separation itself is a mode of continuity. The
imperative of the Two relays that of the soliloquy (You must go on . . . I'll go
on), but it subtracts the element of pointless torture from it, thereby imposing
the strict law of happiness, whether one is a victim or a tormentor.
The fourth fnction is that of the story, which, from the standpoint of
the Two, offers up the latent infnity of the world and recounts its unlikely
unfolding, inscribing, step by step - like an archive that accompanies
wandering - everything that one may discover in what Beckett calls ' the
blessed days of blue' (eSp, p. 1 53; GSP, p. 1 97).54
Love (but also any other generic procedure, albeit in the regime that is
its own) weaves within its singular duration these four fnctions: wandering,
immobility, the imperative, and the story.
Beckett constructs the Idea of the sexes, of the two sexes, by combining
these four functions, under the assumption that the event of love has taken
place. He thus establishes the masculine and feminine polarities of the Two
independently of any empirical or biological determination of the sexes.
The fnctions combined within the masculine polarity are those of
immobility and the imperative. To be a 'man' is to remain motionless in love
by retaining the founding name and by prescribing the law of continuation.
Yet, because the narrative fction is missing, this prescriptive immobility
remains mute. In the case oflove, a ' man' is the name's silent custodian. And
because the fnction of wandering is missing, to be a man within love is also
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i , I , . I Hlthing that bears witness to this love, but only to retain, motionless in
I I " d: 1 I1, love's powerful abstract conviction.
Thc feminine polarity combines wandering and narrative. It does not
| l | t . rd with the fxity of the name, but with the infnity of its unfolding in the
\\ l I l l d, the narrative of its unending glory. It does not stick to the sole
1 ' 1 ',<;ni ption without proof, but organises the constant inquiry, the verifcation
I I I : 1 capacity. To be a ' woman' , in the context of love, is to move about in
i l | l' ordance with a custody of meaning, rather than of names. This custody
I I l 1 pl i es the errant chance of inquiries, as well as the perpetual depositing of
1 1
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Love exists as the determination of this polarity, supporting the four
I l I l Ict i ons and providing them with a singular distribution. This is why love
i l l ol l e calls for the observation that there is indeed ' man' (immobility of the
I I l 1 perative, the custody of the name) and ' woman' (wandering of a truth,
t ( ) l Isequences of the name within speech). Without love, nothing would bear
wi l i l ess to the Two of the sexes. Instead there would be One, and One again,
hi l i not Two. There would not be man and woman.
These reflections open onto an important doctrine that concers all
1 ',l' l leric procedures, which is that of their numericalit.
In love, there is first the One of solipsism, which is the confontation
or duel between the cogito and the grey black of being in the infinite
I l'capitulation of speech. Next comes the Two, which arises in the event of an
" I ICllUnter and in the incalculable poem of its designation by a name. Lastly,
I here is the Infinity of the sensible world that the Two traverses and unfolds,
where, little by little, it deciphers a truth about the Two itself. This numericality
| onO,two, infinity) is specific to the procedure oflove. We could demonstrate
|hat the other truth procedures - science, art, and politics - have different
I l li mericalities, and that each numericality singularises the tpe of procedure
i I I question, all the while illuminating how truths belong to totally
I lderogeneous registers.
The numericality of love - one, two, infnity - is the setting for what
|kckett quite rightly calls happiness. Happiness also singularises love as a
l ruth procedure, for happiness can only exist in love. Such is the reward
proper to this type oftruth. In art there is pleasure, in science joy, in politics
enthusiasm, but in love there is happiness.
Joy, pleasure, enthusiasm, and happiness all concer the advent, within
I he world, of the void of being, as it is gathered within a subject. In the case
of happiness this void is an interval; it is captured in the between [l 'entre-
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Deux], in that which constitutes the effective character of the Two. This is its
separation, that is, the difference of the sexes as such. Happiness is not in the
least associated with the One, with the myth of fsion. Rather, it is the
subjective indicator of a truth of diference, of sexual difference, a truth that
love alone makes efective.
At this point, at the very heart of happiness, once more we come up
against sexuation, which is both the site and the stakes of happiness. In
happiness, ' man' is the blind custodian of separation, of the between. The
heroine of Enough will say: ' We were severed if that is what he desired'
(eSp, p. 1 41 ; GSP, p. 1 88). 55 In fact, the masculine polarity supports a desire
for scission. This is not at all a longing to retur to solipsism, but rather the
desire for the manifestation of the Two in the divided between. There is a
Two only ifthere is this between where the void is located as the ontological
principle [rincipe d'etre] of the Two. The desire of 'man' is assigned to or
by this void. We might say that man desires the nothing of the Two, whereas
the feminine polarity desires nothing but the Two, that is, the infinite tenacity
whereby the Two endures as such. This instance of the 'woman' is
magnificently proclaimed at the very end of Enough. It is there that a woman
argues for persistence, against the nothing of the Two, against the void that
affects the Two from within and which is symbolised by the man's leaving in
order to die. This woman is the one who insists on the ' nothing but the Two' ,
even if it is only in its simple mnemonic outline, within the constantly
reworked narative of wandering:
This notion of calm comes fom him. Without him I would not have had it.
Now I'll wipe out everything but the fowers. No more rain. No more
mounds. Nothing but the two of us dragging through the fowers. Enough
my oid breasts feel his old hand (eSp, p. 144; GSP, p. 1 92).56
Happiness is indistinguishably ' man' and 'woman' ; it is, at one and the
same time, a separating void and the conjunction that reveals this void. As
happiness, as the outline of happiness, it is the nothing of the Two and the
nothing but the Two. Such is its inseparable sexuation: imobility and
wandering, imperative and story.
This happiness is basically all that takes place between the beginning
and the end of H Seen H Said. The entire beginning revolves around the
word 'misfortune' , while the end leans towards the word ' happiness' . If at
the outset we have the reign of the visible and the rigidity of seeing in the
14
A' a | 8ad| ou On oec/en
j ' l t' \ nocture (alimbo between life and death), at the end there arises a kind
"I l ra nsparent void, which is laid out in the second nocte. What more is
l| i cc to do than to listen to what is happening?
What follows is the opening passage - in my view one of the most
I walltiful texts in the French language - which captures the brilliance of
|i i i s fortune:
From where she lies she sees Venus rise. On. From where she lies when
the skies are clear she sees Venus rise followed by the sun. Then she rails
at the source of all life. On. At evening when the skies are clear she savours
its star's revenge. At the other window. Rigid upright on her old chair she
watches for the radiant one. Her old deal spindlebacked kitchen chair. It
emerges from out the last rays and sinking ever brighter is engulfed in its
turn. On. She sits on erect and rigid in the deepening gloom. Such
helplessness to move she cannot help. Heading on foot for a particular
point ofen she feezes on the way. Unable till long after to move on not
knowing whither or for what purpose. Down on her knees especially she
finds it hard not to remain so forever. Hand resting on hand on some
convenient support. Such as the foot of her bed. And on them her head.
, There then she sits as though ted to stone face to the night. Save for the
white of her hair and faintly bluish white of face and hands all is black.
For an eye having no need oflight to see. All this in the present as had she
the misfortune to be still of this world (ISIS, pp. 7-8; NO, pp. 49-50).57
And now the end, where the instant of happiness is conquered in the
vcry brief and trying duration of a visitation of the void:58
Decision no sooner reached or rather long afer than what is the wrong
word? For the last time at last for to end yet again what the wrong word?
Than revoked. No but slowly dispelled a little very little like the wisps of
day when the curtain closes. Of itself by slow millimetres or drawn by a
phantom hand. Farewell to farewell. Then in that perfect dark foreknell
darling sound pip for end begun. First last moment. Grant only enoug
remain to devour all. Moment by glutton moment. Sky earth the whole kit
and boodle. Not another crumb of carrion lef. Lick chops and basta. No.
One moment more. One last. Grace to breathe that void. Know happiness
(ISIS, p. 59; NO, p. 86).59
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This is also what I would like to call the writing of the generic: to
present in art the passage from the misfortune oflife and of the visible to the
happiness of a truthfl arousal of the void. This requires the measureless
power of the encounter, the wager of a name, as well as the combination of
wandering and fixity, of imperative and story. All of this must in Im be
traced out within the division of the night - only then, under these rare
conditions, will we be able to repeat with Beckett: ' Stony ground but not
entirely' [Terre ingrate mais pas totalement] .
Translated by Bruno Bosteels
Revised by Nina Power and Alberto Toscano
1
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1 . A ' You n g Creti n'
I discovered the work of Beckett in the mid-fifties. It was a real
encounter, a subjective blow of sorts that left an indelible mark. So that forty
years later, I can say, with Rimbaud: ' I' m there, I' m always there' r suis,
j'y suis to ujours ]. This is the principal task of youth: to encounter the
incalculable, and thereby to convince oneself, against the disillusioned, that

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the thesis ' nothing is, nothing is valuable' is both false and oppressive.
But youth is also that fragment of existence when one easily imagines
oneself to be quite singular, when really what one is thinking or doing is
what will later be retained as the typical trait of a generation. Being young is
a source of power, a time of decisive encounters, but these are strained by
their all too easy capture by repetition and imitation. Thought only subtracts
itself fom the spirit of the age by means of a constant and delicate labour. It
is easy to want to change the world - in youth this seems the least that one
could do. It is more difcult to notice the fact that this very wish could end
up as the material for the forms of peretuation of this very world. This is
why all youth, as stirring as its promise may be, is always also the youth of a
'young cretin'. Bearing this in mind, in later years, keeps us fom nostalgia.
When I discovered Beckett, some years afer the beginning of his French
oeuvre (that is, around 1 956), I was a complete and total Sartrean, though I
was possessed by a question whose importance I thought I had personally
discovered to have been underestimated by Sartre. I had yet to realise that it
was already, and was going to be for a long while, the abiding obsession of
my generation and of the ones to follow: the question of language. From
such a makeshift observatory, I could only see in Beckett what everybody
el se did. A writer of the absurd, of despair, of empty skies, of
icommunicability and of eteral solitude - in sum, an existentialist. But
also a ' modem' writer, in that the destiny of writing, the relationship between
the endless recapitulation of speech and the original silence - the
simultaneously sublime and derisory fnction of words -was entirely captured
by the prose at a distant remove fom any realist or representational intention.
In such ' modem' writing, fiction is both the appearance of a story and the
reality of a reflection on the work of the writer, on its misery and its grandeur.
I used to delight myself with the most sinister aphorisms -youth having
a fatal tendency to believe that ' our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest
thought' . Into sundry notebooks I copied things like:
And when it comes to neglecting fndamentals, I think I have nothing to
lear, and indeed I confse them with accidentals (T, p. 80; 1,p. 80).61
I should have concentated my attention on the irony that charges this
nihilistic verdict with a bizare energy. All the same, when I delighted in
reading (fom Malone Dies):
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No matter, any old remains of flesh and spirit do, there is no sense in
stalking people. So long as it is what is called a living being you can't go
wrong, you have the guilty one (T, p. 260; 1p. 259).62
l di dn' t pay enough attention to the denial that this afrmative, almost violent,
. | y| cbrings to the commonplace (and sub-Kafaesque) thesis of universal
t ' I i l pability.
In my eyes all of this remained the literary allegory of a conclusive
:;I atement pronounced by Sartre, the famous ' man is a useless passion'. It
didn't have the same flavour as the maxims on language, which I used in
( l rder to support my conviction that the decisive philosophical task, which I
considered my own, was to complete the Sartean theory of feedom by means
\ I |a carefl investigation into the opacities of the signifier. This is why The
{ fnnamable was my favourite book. For several months (in youth, this is, to
speak like Beckett, a 'vast time'), I lived in the company of the striking mixture
o| hatred and saving familiarity that the ' speaker' of this novel lavishes upon
hi s linguistic instrument.
It's a poor trick that consists in ramming a set of words down your gullet
on the principle that you can't bring them up without being branded as
belonging to their breed. But I'll fix their gibberish for them. I never
understood a word of it in any case, not a word of the stories it spews, like
gobbets in a vomit (T, p. 327; 1,pp. 324-325).63
I should have liked to go silent first, there were moments I thought that
would be my reward for having spoken so long and so valiantly, to enter
living into silence, so as to be able to enjoy it, no, I don't know why, so as
to feel myself silent [ . . . J (T, p. 400; 1,p. 396).64
Without doubt I should have pondered this 'valiance' inherent to all
speech, as well as what exactly is designated by these ' stories' spewed forth
by the breed. Above all, it would have demonstrated more lucidity on my
part to have understood that for Beckett Te Unnamable was really an impasse,
one that would take him ten years to get out of. But the (ultimately inconsistent)
alliance between nihilism and the imperative of language, between vital
existentialism and the metaphysics ofthe word, between Sartre and Blanchot,
rather suited the young cretin that I was at the time.
Basically, my stupidity lay in unquestioningly upholding the caricature
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which was then - and still is - widespread: a pitiless awareness of the
nothingness of sense, extended by the resources of art to cover the nothingness
of writing, a nothingness that would be materialised, as it were, by means of
increasingly tight and increasingly dense prose pieces that abandoned all
narrative principle. The caricature of a Beckett meditating upon death and
finitude, the dereliction of sick bodies, the waiting in vain for the divine and
the derision of any enterrise directed towards others. A Beckett convinced
that beyond the obstinacy of words there is nothing but darkness and void.
It took me many years to rid myself of this stereotype and at last to take
Beckett at his word. No, what Beckett offers to thought through his art, theate,
prose, poetry, cinema, radio, television, and criticism, is not this gloomy
corporeal immersion into an abandoned existence, into hopeless .
relinquishment. Neither is it the contrary, as some have tried to argue: farce,
derision, a concrete favour, a ' thin Rabelais' . Neither existentialism nor a
modem baroque. The lesson of Beckett is a lesson in measure, exactitude and
courage. That is what I would like to establish in these few pages.
And since it was on reading The Unnamable that my forty-year passion
for this author was bor, rather than in the statements on language that
enchanted my youth, I would like to hold onto this aphorism which still
astounds me today, when the 'unnameable' speaker, through his tears and in
the certainty that he will never give up, declares:
I alone am man and all the rest divine CT, p.302; TN, p.300).65
. Bea uty
The work of Beckett, which is ofen presented as a block or as a linear
movement - becoming increasingly nihilistic in content and increasingly
concise in fOlm - is really a complex trajectory employing a great variety of
literary means.
One can certainly discer in Beckett a central oscillation between
philosophical abstraction (an abstraction that is entirely purified in Worstard
Ho) and the strophic poem. The latter describes a kind of picture through the
incessant repetition of the same groups of words, and through minute variations
which, little by little, displace the meaning ofthe text (a technique pushed to
its extreme in Lessness).
We can also identif two major periods within Beckett's work. After
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l I I \'d ing of impasse and impotence. He comes out of this impasse with
l' I | ' l/l( 1 959- 1 960), a text that introduces a clean rupture in the themes as
" | | ' in the conduct of the prose.
The efect of this oscillation and this caesura is that no single literary
" . 1 1 1(' can command the comprehension of Beckett's enterprise. The novel
1 1 11 1 1 1 i s still perceptible in Molloy, but in The Unnamable it is exhausted,
' 1 l l I l I gh i t is not possible to say that the poem prevails - even if the cadence,
l i l t ' di sposition of the paragraphs and the intrinsic value of the visions indicate
I I l al t he text is govered by what could be defined as a 'latent poem'.
In truth, the scraps of fiction or spectacle that Beckett employs attempt
| i \pose some critical questions (in Kant's sense) to the test of beauty. These
ql l estions are very few in number. To Kant's famous ' What can I know?
What should I do? What may I hope?' , comes the threefold response from
"" Is/or Nothing: ' Where would I go, if I could go? Who would I be if I
. nt | l dbe? What would I say, if! had a voice?' After 1 960, one can add: ' Wo
i I l l, if the other exists?' The work of Beckett is nothing but the treatment of
I hesc four questions within the flesh of language. We could say that we are
deal i ng with an enterprise of meditative thought - half-conquered by the
picu- which attempts to seize in beauty the non-prescriptible fragments of
t xi stence.
We should also refrain from the belief that Beckett sinks into an
I I l t crogation that is sufcient unto itself, solving none of the problems that it
0usposed. On the contrary, the work of the prose is intended to isolate and
al low to emerge the few points with respect to which thinking can become
a nirmative. In a manner that is almost aggressive, all of Beckett's genius
I l:nds towards affrmation. He is no stranger to the maxim, which always
caries with it a principle of relentlessness and advancement.
Let us take just one maxim amongst many others, a conclusion: ' Stony
ground but not entirely. Ah! One really should speak of the stoniness, of
t |Oingratitude ofthe Earth! But only as a last resort, so that the 'not entirely'
may come to shine within the prose, this prose that we know is destined to
' ring clear' and to keep courage alive within us.
Like many other writers since Flaubert, Beckett ofen remarked that
only music mattered to him, that he was an inventor of rhythms and
punctuations. When asked - in one of those periodic inquiries about the
' mystery of the author' in which every artist is invited to take up a pose and
fced the centu an ersatz of spirit - why he wrote, he telegraphed back:
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' That's all I' m good for' [Bon qu 'd 9a] . Not completely, Beckett, not
completely! That's all, but not completely! There was the complicated
relationship with Joyce, who, all things considered, was Beckett's immediate
master. Against the Nazis, on French territory, there was the immediate and
very dangerous commitment to the resistance. There was the long marriage
with Suzanne, which, without engaging in vulgar 'biographism', we can
clearly see as a central reference for all the couples who traverse Beckett's
work. There was the wish to work in the theatre, not only as an author, but
also as a punctilious and demanding director. There was the constant
preoccupation with the use of new techniques: radio (Beckett is a master of
the radio play), cinema, television. There were the relations with painters,
and the activity of literary criticism (on Proust and Joyce). And many other
people, many other things.
I have never deemed it necessary to take entirely seriously the
declarations of artists regarding their absolute vocation, the imperial ordeal
of phrases and the mysticism of the page. All the same, it is true that to find
a writer of this calibre so little exposed to the world, so little compromised,
one would need to look far and wide. Beckett tuly was a constant and attentive
servant of beauty, which is why, at a distance from himself (at a distance
from nature, from a 'natural' language, and at a distance fom the mother,
fom the mother-tongue), he called upon the services of a secondary and
leart idiom, a ' foreign' language: French. Little by little, this language
conferred upon him an unheard of timbre. In particular, this took place by a
sort of intimate rupture which isolates words in order to rectif their precision
within the phrase, adding epithets or repentances. Thus we read, in H Seen
H Said:
Was it ever over and done with questions? Dead the whole brood no sooner
hatched. Long before. In the egg. Long before. Over and done with
answering. With not being able. With not being able not to want to know.
With not being able. No. Never. A dream. Question answered
(ISIS, p. 37; NO, p. 70).67
But it also occurred by means of sudden lyrical expansions, in which
the calculus of sound appeases the tension of the spirit, filling the air with the
nocture of reminiscence. From Company:
You are on your back at the foot of an aspen. In its trembling shade. She at
4z
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right angles propped on her elbows head between her hands. Your eyes
opened and closed have looked in hers looking in yours. In your dark you
look in them again. Still. You feel on your face the finge of her long
black hair stirring in the still air. Within the tent of hair your faces are
hidden fom view. She murmurs, Listen to the leaves. Eyes in each other's
eyes you listen to the leaves. In their tembling shade
(e, pp. 66-67; NO, p. 35).68
And also by means of a declarative tone that establishes the splendour
i | the universe and the apparent misery of its immobile witess as a spectacle
I hat is unveiled through prose, as in H Seen H Said:
From where she lies she sees Venus rise. On. From where she lies when
the skies are clear she sees Venus rise followed by the sun. Then she rails
at the source of all life. On. At evening when the skies are clear she savours
its star's revenge. At the other window. Rigid upright on her old chair she
watches for the radiant one (ISIS, p. 7; NO, p. 49).
6
9
And also by way of falls and halts in the action that indicate, in the
prose of Enough, a tenderess which until that point had been restrained,
whilst showing in the rhythm that the business of life will not have the last
word:
Now I'll wipe out everything but the flowers. No more rain. No more
mounds. Nothing but the two of us dragging through the flowers. Enough
my oid breasts feel his old hand (eSp, p. 144; GSP, p. 1 92).10
And also by the jokes (here fom Rough for Theatre II, which annul
any lofiness in the tone of the prose:
Work, family, third fatherland, cunt, finances, and nature, heart and
conscience, health, housing conditions, God and man, so many disasters
(eDW, p. 238; SP, p. 78).7
1
And finally - against the grain of the brevities and caesurae that
elsewhere dominate - by means of length, that exteme flexibility which
permits the withdrawal of punctuations, when Beckett wants all the data of a
41

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situation or of a problem to be enveloped in a unified prosodic movement -
something that he attempts in How It Is:
in other words in simple words I quote on either I am alone and no fher
problem or else we are innumerable and no frther problem either
(HIl, p. 1 35; HII US, p. 1 24).72
Rectifcation, or the work on the isolation of terms. Expansion, or the
poetic incision of memory. Declaration, or the fction of emergence of prose.
Declension, or the tender cadence of disaster. Interruption, or the maxims of
comedy. Elongation, or the phrased embodiment of variants. These are, in
my opinion, the principal operations through which Beckett's writing attempts,
at one and the same time, to speak unrepentantly of the stony ingratitude of
the Earth, and to isolate, according to its proper density, that which exceeds
it.
This is why we must begin with the beauty in the prose. It is this beauty
that tells us what it is that Beckett wishes to save. This is because the destiny
of beauty, and in particular of the beauty that Beckett aims at, is to separate.
To separate appearance, which it both restores and obliterates, from the
universal core of experience. It is indispensable to take Beckett at his word:
the word of beauty. In this separating fnction, the word declares what we
must disregard in order to face up to what may be of worth.
3 . Ascesi s as Method
In his own way, Beckett rediscovers an inspiration belonging to
Descartes and Husserl: if you wish to conduct a serious enquiry into 'thinking
humanity' [l 'humanite pensante] , it is first of all necessary to suspend
everything that is either inessential or doubtfl; it is necessary to reduce
humanity to its indestctible fnctions. The destitution of Beckett's characters
- their poverty, their illnesses, their strange fxity, or indeed their wandering
without any perceptible fnality, in other words, everything that has so ofen
been taen as an allegory of the infinite miseries of the human condition - is
nothing other than the protocol of an experience which deserves comparison
with the doubt by means of which Descartes reduced the subject to the vacuity
of its pure enunciation, or Husserl's epoch!, which reduces the evidence of
the world to that of the intentional fluxes of consciousness.
44
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I n the frst part of his French oeuvre, Beckett's methodical ascesis
1
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. I . l al es three fnctions: movement and rest (to go and to stall, or to collapse,
1 . 1 1 1 , l i e down); being (what there is, the places, the appearances, as well as
1 1 1 [' vacillation of any identity whatsoever); language (the imperative of saying,
1 1 1 [' i mpossibility of silence). A' character' is never anything but the assemblage
: l a jouey, an identity, and a cruel chatter. Fiction, which is always presented
l ' mbitrary, as an aleatory montage, tends to set out the loss of everything
which is not reducible to these three fnctions and to demonstrate that these
I I l l 1ctions are what cannot be abolished.

,
Such is the case with movement: not only must wandering be detached,
! t l i l e by little, from all apparent sense, but since it is a matter of presenting
|he essence of movement -the movement in movement -Beckett's advance
wi l l bring with it the destruction of all the means, outside supports, and
perceptible surfaces of mobility. The ' character' (Molloy, or Moran) will
I l l i siay his bicycle, injure himself, no longer know where he is, and even lose
good part of his body. Innumerable in Beckett's prose are the blind, te
l ame, the paralytic, the old who have lost their walking sticks, the helpless
and the impotent, and, in the end, those bodies that are reduced, little by
li l tie, to a head, a mouth, a skull with two holes to ill see and an oozing of
words for ill saying. In this dispossession, the 'character' reaches a pure
moment in which movement becomes externally indiscernible from
i mmobility. This is because movement is no longer anything but its own
ideal mobility, testifed only by a minute tension, a sort of diferential of
which we could say - so exhausted is the prose - that it is brought back to a
point of movement.
, Immobility would thereby fnd its complete metaphor in the corse:
' dying' is the conversion of all possible movement into permanent rest. But
here again, the irreducibility of the fnctions means that 'dying' is never
death. In Malone Dies, one sees how movement and language ultimately
infect both being and immobility, so that the point of immobility is constantly
deferred; it does not allow itself to be constructed otherwise than as the
unattainable limit of an increasingly diminishing network of movements,
memories and words. Beckett's poetics is thus constituted by a progressive
alleviation of constraints, a demolition of that which delays the moment of
immobility. If movement is undone, so as to be no more than a difference of
rest, rest itself is presented as the integral of movement and language, as a
strange mix of the deceleration of prose and the acceleration of its dispersal .
When Beckett wishes to concentrate his attention on one of thc
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fnctions, he makes sure that the others are blocked. It thus that the ' speaker'
of The Unnamable, trapped in a jar at the entance to a restaurant, is rendered
immobile, and the subject matter of his gigantic monologue is nothing more
than the imperative to speak. This is not a tragic image. In fact, if we consider
what requires thinking in the beauty of prose, we will say that this ' character' ,
whose proper name is efaced or undecided and who is utterly destitute, has
actually succeeded in losing all the secondary oraments, all the dubious
possessions that would have diverted him fom what it is his destiny to
experiment, and which concers generic humanity, whose essential fnctions
are: going, being and saying.
One can never emphasise enough the degree to which the confsion
between this methodical ascesis -staged with a tender and voluble humour
and some sort of tragic pathos of the destitution and the misery of man has
distracted our contemporaries fom any deep understanding of the writings
of Beckett.
Beckett says, in How It Is:
the dejections no they are me but I love them the old half-emptied tins let
limply fall no something else the mud engulfs all me alone it carries my
four stone five stone it yields a little under that then no more I don't flee I
am banished (HII, p. 43; HII US, p. 39)3
We cannot understand te text if we immediately see it as a concentation
camp [concentrationnaire] allegory of the dirty and diseased human animal.
On the contrary - admitting that we are indeed animals lodged upon an earth
which is insignifcant and brimming over with excrement - it is a matter of
establishing that which subsists in the register of the question, of thought, of
the creative capacity (in this case, the will to movement, as opposed to flight).
Thus reduced to a few fnctions, humanity is only more admirable, more
energetic, more immortal.
From the sixties onwards, a fourth fnction takes on a more and more
determining role: that of te Other, of the companion, of the exteral voice. It
is not by chance tat the three parts of How It Is relate to the three moments
that are named by the following syntagms: 'before Pim', 'with Pim' and ' afer
Pim' ; or that a later text is called Company. The 'with the other' is decisive.
But here too, it is necessary to isolate the essential nature of this 'with the
other' by means of a montage that eradicates all psychology, all evidence,
and all empirical exteriority. The Other is itself a kot tying together the
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In How It Is, the Other is assigned to movement and to rest: sometimes,
t i i Ihe black night - where, like everyone else, it crawls with its sack - the
| ) I her encounters an immobile entity; sometimes it is encountered in m, in
l i s i mmobility, by the reptations of a subject. This accounts for the derived
f Ul lctions of activity (the one who falls on the other: the tOlmentor) and of
passivity (the one on whom the other falls: the victim). The existence of the
| ) 1 her is not in doubt, but its construction and identity refer back to an evasive
ci rcularity; it is possible to occupy successively the position of the tormentor,
l|unthat of the victim, and nothing besides these positions can serve to specit
a i tcrity.
In Company, the problem is inverted, since this time the Other is
assigned to the third fnction, language. It presents itself as a voice reaching
()ut to someone in the dark. The singularity of this voice is not in doubt; it
relates childhood stories of a rare poetic intensity. But since no real movement
ii|cororeal encounter bears witness to it, its existence remains suspended: it
could be the case that there is nothing but ' [t]he fable of one fabling of one
with you in the dark' (C, 89; NO, 46).
Just as movement, purified by a methodical literary ascesis, is a
di fference of the immobile, and the immobility of being, or death, is never
anything but the inaccessible limit of movement and of language, so the
other, reduced to its primitive fnctions, is caught in the following touiquet:
i | he exists, he is like me, he is indiscerible from me. And if he is clearly
i dentifiable, his existence is uncertain.
In all these cases we can see that the ascesis -metaphorically enacted
as loss, destitution, povert, a relentlessness based on almost nothing - leads
to a conceptual economy of an ancient or Platonic type. If we disregard (and
Beckett's prose is the movement of this disregard, of this abandon) what is
inessential, what distracts us (in Pascal's sense), we see that generic humanity
can be reduced to the complex of movement, of rest (of dying), of language
(as imperative without respite) and of the paradoxes of the Same and the
Other. We are very close to what Plato, in The Sophist, names as the five
supreme genera: Being, Sameness, Movement, Rest, and Other. If Plato the
philosopher uses these to determine the general conditions for all thinking,
then Beckett the writer intends, through the ascetic movement of prose, to
present in fiction the atemporal determinants of humanity.
This humanity, which has been called 'larval' or 'clownish' , and which
in Worstward Ho in fact comprises nothing but skulls oozing words, must be
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thought of as constituting a sort of purified axiomatic, allowing us to go
straight to the only questions that matter. And, first of all, to the question that
makes writing itself possible, the one that is able to ground the fact that there
is a reason to write [qu 'il ait lieu d' ecrire] : what is the link between language
and being? Of course, it is a fact that we are constrained to speak, but of what
does speech speak? Of what can it speak?
. Bei ng a n d La nguage
If it is indeed necessary to speak, this is not simply because we are
prey to language. It is also, and above all because as soon as it is named that
which is and of which we are obliged to speak escapes towards its own non
being. This means that the work of naming must always be taken up again.
On this point, Beckett is a disciple of Heraclitus: being is nothing other than
its own becoming-nothingness. This is what is summed up in one of the
mirlitonnades from Poemes:
flux cause flux causes
que toute chose that every thing

tout en etant while being

toute chose every thing
done celle-ld hence that one
meme celle-ld even that one
tout en etant while being
n 'est pas is not
parlons-en speak on74
On this basis, how can the imperative to speak, which govers in
particular the imperative of the writer - and above all of the one who is 'good
for' nothing else -attue itself with being? Have we some hope that language
could stop the fux and confer upon a thing (that one /even that one) at least
a relative stability? And if not, what good is the imperative that we should
speak on?
For the artist - who differs fom the philosopher in this regard - the
operator of thought is the fiction within prose. That being ceases to flee in
order to convert itself into nothingness entails that language must determine
the place of being within a fiction, that it must assign being to its place.
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==.........

i tl ' l' kett devotes many of his inventions to the following task: to name the
|u | i unal place of being.
There are two places of being in Beckett's frst fctions, according to
. 1 1 1 opposition that we could refer to as Bergsonian, to the extent that it
d l sl i nguishes the closed and the open.
The closed place forbids flight - it blocks the always menacing identity
i | heing and nothingness -because the set of its components is denumerable
; 1 1 1 1 1 the components themselves can be named exactly. The aim of the fictions
i |closure is that the seen be coextensive with the said. Beckett fixes this
I I hjective in a short text, Fizzle J. Closed Space:
Closed place. All needed to be known for say is known
(CSP, p. 1 99; GSP, p. 236).7
5
This same tendency is exemplified by the room where the two
prtagonists of Endgame are enclosed, by the room where Malone dies (or
rat her moves indefnitely towards his death), and by the house of Mr. Knott
I I I Watt, as well as by the cylinder where the entities of The Lost Ones bustle
ahout. In all these cases, the set-up of the fction [Ie dispositij de fction]
('stablishes a strict control upon place, constructing a universe suficiently
ti l l ite so that when the prose wishes to seize being its escape can be temporarily
hl ocked.
The open place instead exposes the aleatory character of paths; it extends
|he dissipation and tries to maintain itself as close as possible to the flight of
appearances. What is in question is a wholly other equality between language
and being: the flexibility of the frst matches the versatility of the second.
This equality tries to anticipate the metamorphoses. This is the case with the
I rish countryside -plane, hills, gloomy forests - where Molloy looks for his
mother, and where Moran looks for Molloy. We also find it in the town and
|he labyrinth of streets of The Expelled, and it is even present in the corridor
o| black mud where the torturers and the victims of How It Is crawl, since, as
wOwill later lea, this corridor is infinite. In these open places the arangement
u!the fiction seeks to capture in language the ' conversion times' of being
into nothingness.
T
herefore, it is not by controlling its elements that prose
adheres to being, but rather because it flees as fast - or even faster - than
being.
Little by little, nevertheless, Beckett will fuse together these two
prosodic figures of the place of being. Whether it is a question ofthe closed
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space or of wandering, the suppression of any descriptive particularity ends
up with a unifor image of the earth and the sky, in which any movement is
equivalent to a transparent immobility. The text Sans (for which Beckett
created the word ' lessness' in English) -a pure description that slowly repeats
or modifes its components - represents in my view the successfl realisation
of Beckett's poetic efort to assign being a place:
Grey sky no cloud no sound no stir earth ash grey sand. Little body same
grey as the earth sky ruins only upright. Ash grey all sides earth sky as one
all sides endlessness (CSP, g. 1 53; GSP, pp. 1 97-1 98).76
In this kind of passage, it is a question for Beckett of fixing the scene
of being, of determining its lighting, which -precisely because we are 'before'
the taking place of something - must be grasped in the neutrality of that
which is neither the night nor the light. Which is the most appropriate colour
for the empty place that constitutes the ground [fond] of all existence? Beckett
replies: dark grey, or light black, or black marked by an uncertain colour.
This metaphor designates being in its localisation, which is empty of any
event. Ofen Beckett typifies this with the names gloom, hallight, or dim.
77
Thus in The Lost Ones:
What frst impresses in this gloom is the sensation of yellow it imparts not
to say of sulphur in view of the associations (CSP, p. 1 69; GSP, p. 21 3).78
In Worstward Ho, the question ofthe prosodic constuction of the place
of being, of what there is prior to all knowledge, or rather of the minimum of
knowledge to which language can cling, is explicit, and it takes the name of
'dim' :
Dim light source mown. Know minimum. Know nothing no. Too much
to hope. At most mere minimum (WH, p. 9; NO, g. 91 ).79
Beckett notes with great precision that this 'mere minimum' is the being
of an empty place awaiting bodies, language, and events:
Void cannot go. Save dim go. Then all go (WH, p. 1 8; NO, g. 97).80
At the end of this fictive simplifcation, one could call the place of
b
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1 1 1 1 1 11 '" u|dim, a 'grey-black' . A black grey enough so that it will not enter
1 1 1 1 " (, ( lI1tradiction with the light; a black which is not the opposite of anything,
fi l l i l nl i -dialectical black. It is here that the closed and the open become
I I I , hsl i nguishable, and that voyage and fixity become the reversible metaphors
t I l l al aspect of being which is exposed to language.
Of course, the grey-black itself does not let itself be spoken of in a
i ar and distinct manner. This is why literary writing is required here. It is
| | ssary to reverse the Cartesian equivalence between the true and the clear
i l l i d di stinct. Thus inMoho.
lthink so, yes, I think that all that is false may more readily be reduced, to
notions clear and distinct, distinct fom all other notions
(T, p. 82; TN, p. 82).81
I l l he grey-black, which does not separate the dark and the light, is the place
"Iheing, then artistic prose is required, since it alone carries a possible thought
ul I he in-separable, of the indistinct. Prose alone can reach the exact point
where being, far fom letting itself be thought in a dialectical opposition to
l Ioll-being, stands towards it in a relation of unclear equivalence. This is the
poi nt where, as Malone says (not without waring us that one could thus
' pollute the whole of speech' ): 'Nothing is more real than nothing (T, p.
|' !, J, p. 1 92).
It is far fom being the case that employing the resources of the latent
pucmallows Beckett to surount all te obstacles before him. This is because
lIlCre is not just the place; or, as Mallarme said, it is not true that 'nothing will
l ake place but the place' [rien n 'aura lieu que Ie lieu]. In effect, all fction, as
\l evoted as it may be to establishing the place of being - in closure, openness
or the grey-black- presupposes or connects to a subject. This subject in m
excludes itself fom the place simply by the act of naming it, whilst at the
same time holding itself at a distance fom this name. The one for whom
I here is the grey-black does not cease to refect and recommence the poetic
work oflocalisation. In so doing, the subject advenes as an incomprehensible
supplement of being; it is bore by a prose whose entire energy, inasmuch as
i t seeks to make the real and the nothing equivalent, is expended in tying to
Icave no room for any supplement whatsoever.
Whence the torture of the cogito.
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b . The Sol i ta ry Subject
Let us then suppose that the subj ect, in its link to language, is the thought
of thought, or the thought of that which thinks itself in speech. In what then
consists the efort of fiction to seize, to reduce, to stop this haunting exception
to the pure grey-black of being? Writing, this place of experimentation, will
" ,
annul the other primitive fnctions of humanity: movement and the relation
to an other. Everything will be reduced to the voice. Stuck in a jar, or pinned
to a hospital bed, the body - captive, mutilated, dying - is nothing more than
the vanishing support of a word. How can such a repetitious and interminable
speech identify or reflect itself? As Blanchot, analysing Beckett, has rightly
said, it can only do so by returing to the silence that can be supposed at the
origin of all speech. The role of the voice is to track down -by way of a great
deal offables, narrative fictions, and concepts -the pure point of enunciation,
the fact that what is said belongs to a singular faculty of saying. This faculty
is not itself said; it exhausts itself in what is said but nevertheless always
remains on this side of things, as a silence which is indefinitely productive of
'
the din of words.
To seize and annul itself the voice must enter into its own silence, it
must produce its own silence. This is the fndamental hope of the ' hero' of
The Unnamable:
[ . . . ] perhaps it's a dream, all a dream, that would surprise me, I'll wake, in
the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again,
dream ofa silence, a dream silence [ . . . ] (T, p. 41 8; TN, p. 414).
82
But the desired self-annulment reveals itself to be inaccessible.
First of all, because the necessary conditions for obtaining this
awakening of language to its first silence submit the subject of the voice to
an intolerable torture.
Sometimes this voice is exacerbated: it proliferates, invents a thousand
fables, whimpers and takes flight. But this mobility is insuficient for the
intended aim: to destroy language by excess and saturation, to obtain silence
through the violence inflicted on words.
Sometimes, on the contrary, the voice exhausts itself: it stammers,
repeats itself, inventing nothing. But this sterility is still not enough if, from
a tired and wor out language, an original silence is to suddenly emerge.
This oscillation between, on the one hand, an excess so violent that it
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, k: : l roys not language but the subject and, on the other, a lack which in vain
" p( )ses the subject to the throes of ' dying' , places the subject ofthe Beckettian
! ! ilin a state of genuine terror. In the words of the hero of The Unnamable:
l only think, if that is the name for this vertiginous panic as of horets
smoked out oftheir nest, once a certain degree ofterror has been exceeded
( T, p. 353; TN, p. 350).83
But the objective is also inaccessible, since reflection, such as it is
l i\ posited in the voice, does not possess the simple structure that one may at
| | il imagine (one who speaks and - the same - one who thinks speech so
1 1 1 : 1 1 it may tum into silence).
In the Texts for Nothing, which coincided with a serious crisis in
kckett's work - so that the title must be taken, as always, to the letter (these
| ` I s are written for nothing, nothing results fom the artist's thought) -Beckett
: : l i ows that the subject is not double (the thought and the thought ofthought),
l | i | t riple, and that it is is absolutely impossible to try and reduce this triplicity
| | hc unicity of silence is impossible. In Texts for Nothing, we find the
|"I l owing decomposition of the cogito into three:
[ . . . ] one who speaks saying, without ceasing to speak, Who's speaking?,
and one who hears, mute, uncomprehending, far from all [ . . . J . And this
other now [ . . . ] with his babble of homeless mes and untenanted hims [ . . . ]
There's a pretty three in one, and what a one, what a no one
(eSp, p. 1 1 2; GSP, p. 1 50).
8
4
Let us note careflly the components of this 'pretty three in one' .
First of all, there is the subject who speaks, the subject of saying, who
i equally supposed to be capable of asking 'who speaks?' at the same time
i he speaks. Let us call this the subject of enunciation.
Then there is te passive subj ect, who hears without understanding,
whO is ' distant' because he constitutes the obscure matter of the one who
,peaks, the support or the idiot body of all thinking subjectivity. Let us call
I hi s the subject of passivity.
Finally, there is the subject who asks himself what the other two are,
I he subj ect who wants to identify the ' ego' of speech, the subject who wants
1 0 know what is at stake in the being of the subject, and who, in order to
: l t t ain this knowledge, subjects himself to tortue. Let us call this the subject
1
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of the question.
' Question' can be taken here in its judicial sense, as when we speak of
a suspect being questioned. For what is in fact this tortre of thought? As
we've already said, the dim -the grey-black that localises being -is ultimately
nothing but an empty scene. To fll it, it is necessary to t towards this
irreducible region of existence constituted by speech - the third universal
fnction of humanity, along with movement and immobility. But what is the
being of speech, if it is not the speaking subject? It is therefore necessary that
the subject literally twist itself towards its own enunciation. This time, it is
the expression 'writhing in pain' that must be interreted literally. Once one
perceives that the identity of the subject is triple, and not just double, the
subject appears as tom.
The 'true' subject, the one who should be led back to silence, and who
would reveal for us what there is in the grey-black of being, is the unity of
the three. But Beckett tells us that this unity is worth nothing. Why then?
Afer all, the fact that it is 'nothing' does not constitute a failing, because, as
we have seen with regard to the grey-black of being, 'nothing is more real
than nothing. ' True, but the whole problem is that unlike the dim, which is in
fact indiscerible fom nothing (because being and nothingness are one and
the same thing), the subject results from a question. Now, every question
imposes values, and demands that one is able to ask oneself: what is an answer
worth? If in the end, after an exhausting labour of speech, the only answer
one fnds is the one that precedes every question (the nothing, the grey-black),
the torture of the subject's identification will have amounted to nothing but a
bitter charade. If, when you count as one the subject of enunciation, the subject
of passivity and the subject of a question, the question itself is dissolved in
the retur to the indifference of being, then you have counted badly.85
That means you must begin again. You must recommence even though
you have just realised that all this work is impossible. The only result of the
torture is the desolate and desert-like injunction that one must subject oneself
to torture again. Such is, afer all, the conclusion of The Unnamable:
[ . . .J you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on (T, g.41 8; 1g 414).
86
The cogito of the pure voice is unbearable (stricto sensu: in witing, it
can be bore by no one), but it is also inevitable. Having come to this point,
it looks like we have reached an impasse. At the time of the Texts for Nothing,
this was indeed Beckett's own feeling. It was a question of knowing if one
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i i l t l go on, and the response was negative. How could one continue to
. i l l ate - helplessly and without result - between the grey-black of being
i i i d|acinfnite torture ofthe solipsistic cogito? Which new fictions could be
| i ( I,cndered within such an oscillation? Once being was named and experience
WUShad ofthe impasse of that subject which constitutes an exception within
I wi ng, where - if not in the pure impossibility of rejoining its constitutive
' : i lcilce - does the writer's word find its nourishment?
It was necessary to have done with the alteration of neutral being and
vai n reflection so that Beckett could escape the crisis, so that he could break
w| l hCartesian terrorism. To do this, it was necessary to find some third terms,
I wither reducible to the place of being nor identical to the repetitions of the
voice. It was important that the subject open itself up to an alterity and cease
I tei ngfolded upon itself in an interminable and torturous speech. Whence,
heginning with How It Is (composed between 1 959 and 1 960), the growing
I mportance of the event (which adds itself to the grey black of being) and of
l hcvoice of the other (which interrupts solipsism).
. The Event and i ts Name
Little by little - and not without hesitations and regrets - the work of
Beckett will open itself up to chance, to accidents, to sudden modifications
o|the given, and thereby to the idea of happiness. The last words ofIll Seen
lllSaid are indeed: 'Kow happiness'.
This is why I am entirely opposed to the widely held view according to
which Beckett moved towards a nihilistic destitution, towards a radical opacity
of significations. We have already remarked above how the destitution of the
scenes and the voices, as well as of the prose, is a method directed against
mere distraction [divertissement], and whose ever more prevalent support is
the poeticisation of language. The opacity results from the fact that Beckett
substitutes the question 'how are we to name what happens?' for the question
'what is the meaning of what is?' But the resources of happiness are
considerably greater when we tum towards the event than when we search in
vain for the sense of being.
Contrary to the popular opinion, I think that Beckett's trajectory is one
that begins with a blind belief in predestination and is then directed towards
the examination of the possible conditions, be they aleatory or minimal, of a
kind of feedom.
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Of course, as we shall see, the interrogation regarding the event is centr l

to Watt, the writing of which dates from 1 942- 1 943. But the immense success
of Waitingfor Godot, after the impasse to which the trilogy (Molloy, Malone
Dies and The Unnamable) had led, has served to hide this initial impetus. Of
all these works, all that people retain is the idea that in them nothing ever
happens. Molloy will not fnd his mother. Moran will not find Molloy. Malone
stretches ad irinitum the fables that populate his agony, but death never
comes. The Unnamable has no other maxim than to go on forever. And Godot,
of course, can only be awaited, being nothing but the constantly reiterated
promise of his coming. It is in this element devoid of emergence and novelty
that prose oscillates between grasping indiferent being and the torture of a
reflection without efect.
In Watt, the place of being is absolutely closed; it validates a strict
principle of identity. This place is complete, self-sufcient, and eteral:
[ . . . J nothing could be added to Mr. Knott's establishment, and from it
nothing taken away, but that as it was now, so it had been in the beginning,
and so it would remain to the end, in all essential respects [ . . . J
(W, p. 1 29; W US, p. 1 3 1 ).87
It could therefore be believed that we are here in the midst of a typically
predestined universe. Knowledge lacks any kind of freedom; it consists of
questions relative to the laws of the place. It is a question of attempting,
forever in vain, to understand the impenetrable designs of Mr. Knott. Where
is he right now? In the garden? On the first floor? What is he preparing? Who
does he love? Struggling with obscure laws -here lies the Kafkian dimension
of this book - thought is irritated and fatigued.
What saves thought is that which fnctions ' outside the law' , what
adds itself to the situation - which is nevertheless declared closed and
incapable of addition - as symbolised by Mr. Knott's house. Watt calls these
paradoxical supplements ' incidents' . For example, the fact that, according to
the perceptible laws of the House, the origin of the dog for which Mr. Knott
leaves out his dish is entirely incomprehensible. As Watt declares, with regard
to these incidents, they are 'of great formal brilliance and indeterminable
purort' (W, p. 71 ; W US, p. 74).88
At this juncture, thought awakens to something completely different
than the vain grasp of its own predestination - not to mention the torture
elicited by the imperative of the word. By means of hypotheses and variations,

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of incidents to the height of their ' formal brilliance' . This formal '
:
| . |o I l i dl lcc designates the unique and circumscribed character, the evental
| +. | l v, lhe pure and delectable ' emergence' , of the incidents in question.
Si nce it is a question of the event, Beckett must take a frther step.
1 1
1 1 : ; i -the step that takes us from a will to find a meaning for the event (a
dl ' ; ,otJ ruging path, precisely because the event is what is subtracted from any
I I I '. I I I I C of meaning), to the entirely different desire of giving the event a
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| n Watt, we still possess only the first fgure of the event, so that the
i i v| is not entirely detached from a religious symbolism (I call 'religion'
l | dcsire to give meaning to everything that happens). Watt is an interpreter,
| l I ll 'rmeneut. Even the hypothesis of meaninglessness is the prisoner of a
l i | | ibomwill to give meaning, and even more of a will to lin this meaning
| . i | i original meaning, a meaning lost and then found again (this is the
1 I I l ' I uctable tendency of what I call 'religion' : meaning is always already there,
| | | l man has lost it):
i t_
[ . . . J the meaning attributed to this particular type of incident, by Watt, in
his relations, was now the initial meaning that had been lost and then
recovered, and now a meaning quite distinct fom the initial meaning, and
now a meaning evolved, after a delay of varying length, and with greater
or less pains, from the initial absence of meaning.
(W p. 76; W US, p. 79).89
I I I Watt, thought is therefore granted the following opportunity: that the event
exists. But, once awoken by incidents, the movement of thought turs back
l o the origin and the repetition of meaning. The predestining pull of Mr.
Knott's house is the strongest element of them all. The question remains that
olinking incidents back to the supposed core of all signifcation.
Almost at the other extreme of Beckett's trajectory - inIll Seen III Said
u in Worstward Ho - we encounter once again the central fnction of the
cvent, but here thought's awakening operates in a thoroughly diferent manner.
|t is no longer a question of the play of sense and nonsense, of meaning and
meaninglessness.
Already in Endgame ( 1 952), Cloy mocks Hamm's idea, according to
which if ' Something is taking its course' (CDW, p. 1 07; E, p. 32)0 one must
conclude that there is meaning:

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Mean something! You and I, mean something! [Brie/laugh.] Athat's a

good one! (CDW, p. 108; E, p. 33)91
What does 'ill seen ill said' mean?
The event cannot but be 'ill seen' , since it precisely constitutes an
exception to the ordinary laws of visibility. The 'well seen' takes us back to
the indiference of the place, to the grey-black of being. The formal brilliance
of the incident, of 'what happens' , thwarts both seeing and 'well seeing' by
way of the surrise that it imposes.
But the event is also 'ill said', since well saying is nothing other than
the reiteration of established significations. Even under the pretext of meaning,
it is not a question of reducing the formal novelty of the event to the
signifcations carried by ordinary language. To the 'ill seen' of the event
there must correspond a verbal invention, an unknown act of naming. In
terms of the usual laws oflanguage, this will necessarily manifest itself as an
' ill said' .
'Ill seen ill said' designates the possible agreement between that which,
as pure emergence [surgissement], is in exception of the laws of the visible
(or of presentation) and that which, by poetically inventing a new name for
this emergence, is in exception of the laws of saying (or of representation).92
Everything depends on the harmony between an event and the poetic
emergence of its name.
Let us read the following passage fom Seen Said:
During the inspection a sudden sound. Startling without consequence for
the gaze the mind awae. How explain it? And without going so far how
say it? Far behind the eye the quest begins. What time the event recedes.
When suddenly to the rescue it comes again. Forthwith the uncommon
common noun collapsion. Reinforced a little later if not enfeebled by the
infequent slumberous. A slumberous collapsion. Two. Then far fom the
still agonizing eye a gleam of hope. By the grace of these modest beginnings
(ISIS, p. 55; NO, p. 83).93
We must careflly note the stages whereby Beckett fxes within prose
the movement of the 'ill seen ill said' .
1 ) The situation that serves as the starting point is the ' inspection' ,
understood as the normal role of seeing, and of well seeing; the ' inspection'
s
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\hausts itself(as Beckett says, the eye is ' still agonizing') in the consideration
o| what there is, of the neutral abode of being.
2) Reduced to a simple trait by the method of ascesis, the event is a
I i ( l i se, constituting an exception (' sudden') to the monotonous and repetitious
1 I 1 spection.
3) ' The mind awakens' . This confirms that thought is only diual and
vl j ', i l ant under the effect of an event.
4) At first, the question that constitutes the awakening of thought is
PI l:occupied with explaining ('How explain itT). This is the dominant figure
l l l Watt. But the subject renounces explanation at once, in favour of a
(' ( ll llpletely different question, the question of the name: 'How say itT
5) This name is doubly invented, doubly subtracted fom the ordinary
l aws oflanguage. It is constructed from the noun ' collapsion' of which it is
l Ioled that it is 'uncommon' and of the adjective ' slumberous' which is
i I I frequent' and moreover does not agree with the noun. In sum, this name is
a poetic composition (an ill said), a surprise within language attuned to the
: al l'prise - to the ' sudden' of the event (an ill seen).
6) This attunement produces a 'gleam of hope' . It is opposed to the
l orture of inspection. And though it is certainly nothing more than a
rommencement, a modest beginning, it is a commencement that comes to
I he thought that it awakens like an act of grace.
What is this beginning? What is this hope? What power is harboured
hy the precarious agreement between the emergence ofthe new and the poetic
i l l vention of a name? Let us not hesitate to say that we are dealing with the
hope of a truth.
Meaning, the torture of meaning, is the vain and interminable agreement
hdween what there is, on the one hand, and ordinary language, on the other
between 'well seeing' and 'well saying' . The agreement is such that it is
1 I0t even possible to decide if it is commanded by language or prescribed by
heing. Frankly, this is the tiresome torture of all empiricist philosophies.
A truth begins with the organisation of an agreement between, on the
one hand, a separable event ' shining with formal clarity' and, on the other,
I he invention in language of a name that from now on retains this event, even
i | - inevitably the event ' recedes' and finally disappears. The name will
guarantee within language that the event is sheltered.
But if some truths exist, then happiness is not out of the question. It is
si mply necessary to expose these truths to the test of the Other. One must
experiment if at least one truth can be shared. Like in Enough, when the two
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old lovers, despite everything, share some mathematical certainties with each
'
other:
We took fight in arithmetic. What mental calculations bent double hand
in hand! (eSp, p. 1 41 ; GSP, p. 1 88)94
The poem of improbable names makes it possible to imagine an amorOUH
.
mathematics.
7 . Others
Even though Molloy, Malone and the Unnamable seek out and encounter
other supposed subjects, they move towards their own solitde. The tone of
The Unnamable could even be described as starkly solipsistic. Without doubt
it is in Beckett's theatre, with the couples of Vladimir and Estragon (Waiting
for Godot) or Hamm and Clov (Endgame), that something which will not
cease to be at the heart of Beckett's fictions comes to the fore: the couple, the
Two, the voice of the other, and lastly, love. Both to defer and to beckon
death through distance, Malone recounts all the elements that this love
contains:
[ . . . J what flutterings, alarms and bashfl fmblings, of which only this,
that they gave Macmann some insight into the meaning of the expression,
Two is company (T, p. 261 ; TN, p. 260).95
Nevertheless, being-two is inscribed into the many, into the bizarre
mUltiplicity of human animals. Always carefl to bring the proliferation of
details back to a few crucial traits, Beckett devotes some of his texts to
arranging, on a background [ond of anonymous being, the bustle of plural
humanity, so as to classif its postues and inventory its fnctions. These
texts are human comedies in which the diversity of social and SUbjective
figures is replaced by an enumeration of all the essential possibilities that
existence could ever contain, an enumeration which is declared to be
exhaustive. But they are also divine comedies, because the will to produce
the complete inventory of actions and situations (always, of course, under
the rule of the methodical ascesis) presupposes the existence of a fxed place
far from any empirical reality, a sort of 'no-man's land' between life and
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!! 1 1 1 1 " \I' pi ural humanity, that prose establish an eterity of sorts, a separate
1 11 1 " ' 1 . I I my where the animals in question are atemporally observed. It is
1 1 1 1 1 li | i all cthat these laboratories clearly resemble Dante's settings. As we
|l l I\Y , I kckett undertook painstaking studies of The Infero, and of the fifth
, 1 1 1 1 " I I I particular.
I I I The Lost Ones (1 967-70) the place is a huge rubber cylinder whose
| . \' i OI parameters are subj ect to laws (light, temperature, sound, etc.) which
I1l I i . st rict and contingent as the laws of physical science.96 The ' little people'
l | | . | | I l i habit the place have no other aim than to look for their lost one. This is
| H vny start of the fable:
ibode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one.
( 'SP, p. 1 59; GSP, p. 202).9
7
What is the ' lost one' ? It is each one's own other, the one who
" I I I I ', ul arises a given inhabitant, who wrenches the inhabitant away from
i l l I ! lyMity. To find one's lost one is to come to oneself; to no longer be a
r , l l l I pl c element of the small group of searchers. It is thus that Beckett
' ; l l l l I Iounts the painfl antinomies of the cogito: one's identity does not depend
i | pui ithe verbal confrontation with oneself, but upon the discovery of one's
i | | i ct
On this simple basis, and through the meticulous description of the
' I l' i ssitudes ofthe search (one must run around in the cylinder, climb ladders,
" ,pl ore the niches situated at different heights, etc.), Beckett succeeds in
" , I racting a few criteria for the classification of plural humanity.
The most important among these criteria distinguishes searching humans
l0mthose who have renounced the search. The latter have given up on their
dcsi re, since in the cylinder no other desire exists than that of fnding one's
l ost one (i.e. no desire other than - in the words of Nietzsche, whom the
VI)Lmg Beckett knew well - 'to become what one is '). These broken searchers
iiccalled the vanquished. Note that to be vanquished is never to be vanquished
lythe other. On the contrary, here to be vanquished is to renounce the other.
The second criterion brings us back to the primitive categories of
l I Iovement and rest. Some of the searchers ambulate ceaselessly, some stop
and others no longer move.
Beckett recapitulates as follows the human groups that can be described
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and enumerated with the help of these two criteria:
Seen from a certain angle these bodies are of four kinds. Firstly those
perpetually in motion. Secondly those who sometimes pause. Thirdly those
who short of being driven off never stir fom the coign they have won and
when driven off pounce on the frst fee one that offers and feeze again.
[ . . . J Fourtly tose who do not search or non-searchers sitting for the
most part against the wall [ . . . J (CSP, p. 1 61 ; GSP, pp. 204-205).98
The absolute nomadic living beings (first category) and the vanquished
(fourth category) are extreme fgures of human desire. Between the two we
fnd those that Beckett names the ' sedentary' (the second and third fgures).
Notwithstanding these distinctions, all of Beckett' s paradoxical
optimism is concentrated in one point: it can happen - very rarely, almost
never, but not quite never - that a vanquished searcher rets to the arena of
the search. This is what we could call the Beckettian conception of feedom.
Of course we can be vanquished, that is, defeated in the desire that constitutes
us. But even then, all possibilities still exist, including the possibility that
this defeat, irreversible in its essence (for how could the one whose desire is
dead even desire for his desire to retur?), may become miraculously
reversible.
Every sedentary figure is a possible nomad. Even the one who gives up
on his desire can suddenly desire to desire (we are then dealing, in a strong
sense, with an event). There is no eteral damnation, and hell - for one who
dwells within it - can be revealed as nothing but a purgatory.
This indestructibility of possibles, which takes place precisely at the
point at which one has renounced them, is affirmed by Beckett in an
extraordinarily dense passage. This passage is a perfect example of what
above I called the 'elongation' of the phrase, the non-punctuated style that
unifies all the ramifications of the idea:
[ . . . J in the cylinder what little is possible is not so it is merely no longer so
and in the least less the all of nothing if this notion is maintained
(CSP, p. 1 67; GSP, pp. 21 1 -21 2).99
This statement is elucidated as follows. On the one hand, every lapse
in the desire to search for one' s other is absolute. For though this desire
diminishes (' the least less ' ), it is also as if it had annulled itself (in the least
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"" 1 1 1 1 1 i vely and properly speaking impossible, but only temporarily 'no longer'
| bl c. That means that the choice of renunciation destroys everything,
| | . . | |l I e possibilit that inheres in choice remains mysteriously indestructible,
^ figure of plural humanity is always suspended between the
i l l t 'versibility of choice and te maintenance-which is to say the reversibility
\ l possibles,
In How It Is - without doubt the greatest of Beckett's prose works,
+ | l ig with Enough and Seen H Said-the distribution ofthe figures obeys
Il lI i ficrent principle.
The human animals crawl along through a sort of black mud, each one
t i l : I gging a sack of food. This imperative to tavel harbours four possiqilities:
1) To continue crawling alone in the dark.
2)To encounter someone in an active position, pouncing upon them in
| | i dark. This is the figure that Beckett calls the ' tormentor' , Note that the
pri l l cipal activity ofthe tormentor is to extort from his victim -if needs be by
pl al lting in his arse the sharened top of a tin can -stories, fables fom another
1 1 1l:, memories. This proves that the tormentor also wants to find his lost one,
| t 0cwrested away from solitude and subtracted from the darkness of infinite
nawling by the one he encounters.
3) To be abandoned by the one encountered. At this point, all that
1 l' l l Iains is to make oneself immobile in the dark.
4) Being encountered by someone, this time in a passive position: he
pounces on you while you are immobile in the dark, and it is you who will
I l ave to give him his due of fables. This is the position that Beckett calls the
' vi ctim' .
The enumeration of the generic figures of humanity operates once again
0ycombining the movement/rest couple and the self/other couple. One can
lravel alone and one can be immobile alone; one can be either a torentor or
a victim.
These figues are sustained by a rigorous principle of equality: none is
sli perior to the others. The use of the words 'tormentor' and 'victim' must not
Icad us astray. It does not imply any sort of pathos or ethics - besides the
ethics of prose, that is. And even the latter, as Beckett wars, could easily be
exaggerated, since words always 'ring' too much for them to maintain the
:l l1onymity and the equality of the figures that the human animal can take. I t
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is this equality of the fgures that justifies this very profound statement:
[ . . . ] in any case we have our being injustice I have never heard anything to
the contrary (RII, p. 1 35; RII US, p. 1 24)100
The justice mentioned here is entirely unrelated to any kind of norm or
finality. It concers the ontological equalit of the fgures taken by the generic
human subject.
Speaking of the moments in which one is either tormentor or victim -
and thereby concered with the extortion of a word or a story - Beckett
declares that they relate to ' life in stoic love' . This establishes a double link
that makes ' love' into the true name of a subject's encounter of its other or
lost one and connects this encounter to the tender fables of the past.
Having traversed - thanks to the fictional set-up of the encounter with
an other -the terrorising limits ofthe solipsistic cogito, we discover both the
potentiality of love and the resources of nostalgia.
8 . Love
The event in which love originates is the encounter. From the thirties
onwards - in Murphy - Beckett emphasises that the power of the encounter
is such that nothing, either in feeling or in the desiring body, can measure up
to it:
And to meet [ . . . ] in my sense exceeds the power of feeling, however tender,
and of bodily motions, however expert (M, p. 1 24; MUS, p. 222).101
If the question ofthe existence and difference ofthe other is so charged, it is
because the very possibility of the encounter is played out within it. It is with
regard to this point that Beckett constructs set-ups of literary experience in
order to evaluate the negative hypothesis (as in Company, whose last word is
' alone' ) or to hold the positive hypothesis (as inEnough and HappyDays, in
which the fgure of the couple is indisputable and gives rise to a strange and
powerfl form of happiness).
The encounter brings forth the Two; it factues solipsistic seclusion.
Is this primordial Two sexuated? We are not speaking here of the numerous
and mostly carivalesque sexual scenes that can be found in Beckett's stories,
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I I I whi ch the dilapidation of the elderly is regarded with tenderess and

l i pnscnted with j oy. Rather, we are trying to see if love and the encounter
j u \tdcus with sexuated figures.
I t has often been claimed that Beckett's ' couples' are in fact asexual or
l l l Lclline and that there is something interchangeable - or homo-sexual - in
l l i positions of the partners. I think this is entirely mistaken. Of course,
I kckctt generally does not start out from the empirical evidence that divides
1 I I I I I1an animals into men and women. The methodical ascesis forbids him
1 1 1 11 11 doing so; often, he makes carefl use ofthe pronouns and articles so as
1 1 1 .1 10 permit a decision regarding the sex of the speaker or ' character' . But
| | i ceffect of the encounter truly does fx two absolutely dissimilar positions.
( I I I C can therefore say that for Beckett the sexes do not pre-exist the amorous
I lcounter, being instead its result,
What does this dissimilarity consist in? We have seen that in How It Is,
. i l Icra human animal has pounced upon another, there is the figure of the
| 'Imentor and that ofthe victim. Let us agree to call the frst 'masculine' and
|l I L second ' feminine' (though it is true that Beckett refains fom uttering
|Hcse words). We must insist that this distinction is entirely unrelated to any
,' ; l I pposed ' identity' of the subjects. For all that, under the condition of an
el lcounter in which ' she' would pounce on an other, a victim could become a
l ur mentor. But from within a given amorous situation (let us call ' love' what
proceeds fom an encounter) there necessarily are these two fgures.
However, these figures are far from being reducible to the opposition
hetween the active and the passive. Here we must keep the complexity of
l lcckett's construction frmly in mind.
For example, afer an indeterminate time, it is the victim who goes
away, leaving the tormentor ' immobile in the dark' . Therefore, we must
I I ll derstand that whoever is travelling with his or her sack is on the side ofthe
' Ieminine' , or at least coming from the feminine. Conversely, someone who
i s abandoned immobile in the dark is on the side of the 'masculine' , or at
l east can be said to stagnate in this position. We can therefore oppose the
l I 10bility that defnes the feminine to a tendency within the male to morose
i mmobility.
Likewise, it is certain that the figure of the tormentor is that of the
commandment, of the imperative. But what is the content of this fgure? It is
1 0 be found in the extraction fom the victim of stories and reminiscences,
scraps of everything that may touch on what Beckett magnificently names
'the blessed days of blue' (CSP, p. 1 53; GSP, p. 1 97).
1
02
We are therefore
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justified in saying that if on the masculine side we rediscover the (half-joyous
and half-torturous) imperative to ' go on', it is on the female side that the
power of the story, the archives of wandering, and the memory of beauty are
set out.
Ultimately, every encounter prescribes four main fctions: the force
of wandering, the pain of immobility, the enjoyment [ouissance] of the
imperative, and the invention of the story.
It is on the basis of these four fnctions that the encounter determines
the emergence of sexuated positions. The combination of the imperative and
immobility will be called ' masculine' ; the combination of wandering and the
story will be called ' feminine' .
In Enough, we fnd an even deeper determination of the duality of the
sexes, as elicited by love. Here, the masculine position is specified by a
constant desire for separation. The heroine (I don't exactly call the one who
holds the inseparable position a 'woman') says:
We were severed if that is what he desired (CSP, p. 1 41 ; GSP, p. 1 88).103
In Happy Days, it is evidently Willie who keeps himself aloof, invisible
and absent, whilst it is Winnie who proclaims the eterity -day after day -of
the couple, and declares its legitimacy.
In effect, the masculine position fosters the desire for a break. It is not
a question of returing to solipsism, but rather of the Two being experienced
and re-experienced [eprouve re-prouve] in the between [entre-Deux] , in what
distinguishes the two terms of the couple. Masculine desire is affected here -
infected by the void that separates the sexuated positions in the very unity of
the amorous process. The 'man' desires the nothing of the Two, whilst the
'woman' -the wandering guardian and narrator of original unity, of the pure
point of the encounter - desires nothing but the Two, that is, the infinite
tenacity of a lasting Two.
She is 'the lasting desire to last' ,104 whilst the masculine is the peretual
temptation to inquire about the exact location of the void that passes between
One and One.
But the most admirable part of the text is the examination of the relation
between love and knowledge [connaissance], between the happiness oflove
and the joy of knowledge. We have already cited the passage where the couple
sustain each other in their walk by means of vast arithmetical reflections.

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| | | | l igure of free knowledge [savoir], of the encyclopaedia - in which the

, I.. Y emerges upon the mirror of thought - is ' masculine' , and as such it is
| vtd by the woman. Thus we read in Enough:
I n order fom time to time to enjoy the sky he resorted to a little round
mirror. Having misted it with his breath and polished it on his calf he
looked in it for the constellations. I have it! he exclaimed referring to the
Lyre or the Swan. And often he added that the sky seemed much the same
(CSP, p. 1 42; GSP, p. 1 90).105
Love is this interval in which a sort of inquiry about the world is pursued
| i nfnity. Because in love knowledge [savoir] is experienced and transmitted
I clween two irreducible poles of experience, it is subtracted from the tedium
ulobjectivity and charged with desire. Knowledge is the most intimate and
1 1 1()st vital thing that we possess. In love, we are not seized by what the world
i it is not the world that holds us captive. On the contrary, love is the
paradoxical circulation - between 'man' and 'woman' - of a wondrous
knowledge that makes the universe ours.
Love then is when we can say that we have the sky, and that the sky has
l Iothing. 106
9. Nosta l g i a
Because Beckett wrote a brilliant essay on Proust in 1 93 1 , it has often
heen deemed possible to conclude that there is some analogy between the
two writers in what concers the treatment of memory. This conviction is
reinforced when one notes that in Beckett the emergence ofthe past presents
itself in blocks, episodes of prosodic isolation, and that childhood is privileged
with regard both to places (Ireland) and to characters (Mother and Father).
I believe that this analogy is misleading. This is because the fnction
of involuntary memory, which in Proust is bound up with a metaphysics of
time, in Beckett - besides the fact that one should instead speak of a
'voluntarism of remembrance' - constitutes an experimentation of alterity.
It follows that the fragments of childhood - or the amorous memories
, are always signalled by an abrupt change in the tone of the prose (a calm
beauty made up of rhythmic fluidity, assonance, and an elemental certainty:
the night, the stars, the water, the meadows . . . ), and never reflect what the

|
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presented situation (the place of being) could harbour in terms of truth Ol`
eterity. We are dealing with another world, with the hypothesis whereby the
grey-black of being is juxtaposed, in an improbable and distance place, to a
colourful and sentimental universe. The narration of this universe puts
solipsism to the test and forces literature to refect upon the theme of pure
difference (or of the 'other life').
It is essential to note that we are dealing here not with an experience of
consciousness but with a story that is materially distributed at a distance
fom the subject. What this story proposes can touch upon three distinct
dimensions of the universe of nostalgia: the existence of a 'voice' that would
come to the subject fom outside; what a real encounter allows one to hear,
by way of fables and tender beauties, from the mouth of an other; a
stratification ofthe subject itself, whose origin is by no means to be found in
childhood or youth, which instead constitutes the subject's interior aIterity.
This interior aIterity refers to fact that an existence has no unity, that it is
composed of heterogeneous sediments; it thus lends greater consistency to
the thesis concering the impossibility of a cogito that would be capable of
counting the subject as One.
These three uses of nostalgia are systematically set out, one at a time,
in three of Beckett's works.
Krapp SLast Tape ( 1 959) presents a ' character' - Krapp - who listens
to various stories and reflections recorded onto magnetic tapes. The voice
that reaches us is thus in general a 'Strng voice, rather pompous, clearly
Krapp Sat a much earlier time' (CDW, p. 21 7; SP, p. 57).107 Krapp listens to
fragments from these old tapes, comments upon them and records these
commentaries. Thus the distance between these fictionalised fragments of
the past and his real situation is staged: Krapp is an old man who eats nothing
but bananas and - in line with the favourite occupation of the inhabitants of
the grey-black of being - it is beyond doubt that he must die interminably.
Whether they are gestural or practical, Krapp's commentaries are for
the most part not very afable. This is especially the case when the tape's
prose appears to rise to the level of philosophical formulation, like in the
following:
- unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with
the light ofthe understanding and the fire - (CDW, p. 220; SP, p. 60).
1
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I ' hen 'Krapp curses louder, switches of' (CDW, p. 220; SP, p.
6
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1
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I | . 1 l wcquickly realise that he is looking for a fagment of what this voice is
l | l i i ij him. This is a voice that only appears to be his, being that of this
, " I I I that he was, and thereby proving to him the ireducible multiplicity of
l I I \ qo [Ie Moil This is a sublime fagment, composed of both perceptible
1 1 1 1 1 1 verbal elements that are completely foreign to Krapp's real situation.
l ' I ( ' l l lents such that no passage can be conceived between them and Krapp.

Several pieces of this fragment, indeed several variations, will be

pl l.:;ented in the play, but throughout the fagment remains intact, saved by
I I I l' tape (i.e. by the prose, fnctioning here like a kind of billiard cushio,
I
II ( ) viding an indirect or diagonal safety); it authorises Kapp to evaluate m
. i j uthat is attributed to a scission in being rather than to temporality -what
I : : l hi s ' other life' bore by each and every one. Krapp will end up letting
1 I I 1 I lseif go, listening to the fagment in complete absorption and nostalgia:
-upper lake, with the punt, bathed of the bank, then pushed out into the
stream and drifted. She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands
under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze,
water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how
she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again how I thought
it was hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her
eyes. [Pause.] I asked her to look at me and afer a few moments - [Pause.]
afer a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare.
I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. [Pause. Low.]
Let me in. [Pause.] We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they
went down, sighing, before the stem! [Pause.] I lay down across her with
my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving.
But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side
to side (CDW, p. 221 ; SP, p. 61),o
At first, Krapp struggles to annul nostalgia by recourse to pure distance:
Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago,
hard to believe I was ever as bad as that. Thank God that's all done with
anyway (CDW, p. 222; SP, p. 62).
1 1 1
But the remainder of the play shows that the insistence of the fagment
is not damaged by this abstact protest. The other life radiates beneath thc
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insult. Certainly, Krapp is brought back to the classical couple of silence and
the void (this is the end of the play: 'Krapp motionless staring before him.
The tape runs on in silence', CDW, p. 223; SP, p. 63).
1 1
2
No true link is
established between nostalgia and the course of things. Memory is not a saving
fnction. But, once it is captured in a story, memory is simply what attests to
the immanent power of the Other.
In How It Is, this power of the story derives fom a real Other - Pim,
the 'victim' - who gives the 'hero' his own life, whether real or invented it
does not matter:
that life then said to have been his invented remembered a little of each no
knowing that thing above he gave it to me I made it mine what I fancied
skies especially and the paths he crept along how they changed with the
sky and where you were going on the Atlantic in the evening on the ocean
going to the isles or coming back the mood of the moment less important
the creatues encountered hardly any always the same I picked my fancy
good moments nothing lef (HII, p. 80; HII US, p. 72)1 13
This time the story is a transmission of existence, the possibility of
fabulating one's own life using the most intense fragments of the other's life
as material. Nostalgia abides, because for those who crawl in the dark these
fragments remain inaccessible, they are ' above' , like stigmata of light. But
the possibility of demanding the story, of extorting it fom the one with whom
'it was good moments good for me we're talking of me for him too we're
talking of him too happy too' (RII, p. 57; RII US p. 5 1 )
1
I4 guarantees for
prose its fnction as a measure. This measure concers the gap between the
other life and the real, between the dark and the light, and thus inscribes
within being itself the possibility of difference:
I nothing only say this say that your life above YOUR LIFE pause my life
ABOVE long pause above ITHE in the LIGHT pause light his life above
in the light almost an octosyllable come to think of it a coincidence
(HU, p. 79; HU US p. 72)1 l
4
In Company, the construction of the text is carried out on the basis of
seventeen 'memorial' sequences, all of which are connected to the initial
supposition, which is that 'A voice comes to one in the dark' (C, p. 7; NO, p.

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These are limpid stories, whose biographical dimension is underlined
. i | l i rst in a parodic way, as in the paragraph that starts: 'You first saw the
I I I , ht i nthe room you most likely were conceived in' (C, p. 1 5; NO, p. 7).
1 1
7
l i l l i e by little, however, the nostalgic tonality takes hold of the prose.
I ', TSliaded by the latent poem, this tonality will attempt to overcome the danger
I hat fabulation may tum out to be nothing but a fictional rearrangement of
, ; ( ) I i t ude. And it is still this tonality that here demands we imagine an eteral
1 1 1 ht:
A strand. Evening. Light dying. Soon none left to die. No. No such thing
then as no light. Died on to dawn and never died. You stand with your
back to the wash. No sound but its. Ever fainter as it slowly ebbs. Till it
slowly fows again. You lean on a long staff Your hands rest on the knob
and on them your head. Were your eyes to open they would frst see far
below in the last rays the skirt of your greatcoat and the uppers of your
boots emerging from the sand. Then and it alone till it vanishes the shadow
ofthe staff on the sand. Vanishes from your sight. Moonless starless night.
Were your eyes to open dark would lighten (C, pp. 75-76; NO, pp. 39-
40). 1 1 8
Nostalgia gives rise in the prose to fagments of beauty, and, even if
I he certainty always rets that the other life is separated, lost, a light from
el sewhere, the force of nostalgia lies in giving us the power to suppose that
one day (before, afterward, time is of no importance here) the eye will open
and, under its ast
o
nished gaze, in the nuances of the grey-black of being,
something will lighten.
I U. Theatre
Theatre, and especially Waiting for Godot, is the source of Beckett's
fame. Today Godot is a classic, along with Endgame and Happy Days.
Nevertheless, we cannot say that the exact nature of Beckett's theatre has
been rendered entirely clear. Nor can this be said of the relation (or non
relation) between the theatre and the movement of that prose which it
constantly accompanied - given that a play like Catastrophe, for examplc,
can be considered a late work ( 1 982).
Of course, the major themes of Beckett's work can, without exception,
be found in the theatre.
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The assignation of the place of being, as in this characteristic passage
from Footalls:
Faint, though by no means invisible, in a certain light. [Pause.] Given the
right light. [Pause.] Grey rather than white, a pale shade of grey
(CDW, p. 402; SP, p. 242)y9
The estimations of the importance oflanguage, as in Happy Days:
Words fail, there are times when even they fail. [Turing a little towards
WILLIE.] Is that not so, Willie? [Pause. Turing a little further. ] Is not
that so, Willie, that even words fail, at times? [Pause. Back frnt,] What is
one to do then, until they come again? (CDW, p. 1 47; HD, p. 24)1
2
0
The torture of the cogito, prey to the uncontrolled imperative of saying,
a perfect example of which is Lucky's long monologue in Waitingfor Godot
(this is especially the case if we recall that Lucky only begins to speak when
Pozzo, pulling him by his leash, commands him: ' Think, pig! ' ,
1
21
CDW, p.
41 ; WG, p. 28):
[ O o . ] the beard the fames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on
on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite ofthe tennis
the labours abandoned lef unfinished graver still abode of stones in a
word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in
Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard [Melee,
fnal vociferations] tennis . . . the stones . . . so calm . . . Cunard . . . unfinished . . .
(CDW, p. 43; WG, p. 47)122
. .
The event is also central. It sets the famework for Waitingfor Godot,
U which two distinct visions are opposed to one another.
.
On the one hand, that ofPozzo, for whom time does not exist, meaning
hat ife can be dissolved in an incessantly repeated and incessantly self
identical pure point:
Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable!
When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day like any other
day, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf,
one day we were bor, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second,
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A a| 8ad| ou On oec/ett
===
| that not enough for you? [Calmer.] They give birth astride of a grave,
the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more
(CDW, p. 83; WG, p. 1 03). 123
( ) 1 1 the other, that of Vladimir, who will never give up on the hypothesis of
( ,odot's arrival (the caesura of time and the constitution of a meaning), so
| hul the duty of humanity is to hold onto an uncertain, but imperative,
I l ljunction:
What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this,
that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one
thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come [ . . . ] Or for night to
fall. [Pause.] We have kept our appointment, and that's an end to that. We
are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can
boast as much? (CDW, p. 74; WG, p. 91 )124
Obviously, the question of others is incessantly brandished on stage,
whether under the effect of an encounter (meeting Pozzo and Lucky, Vladimir
and Estragon speak to them in order to evade being ' alone once more, in the
midst of nothingness,' 12s CDW, p. 75; WG, p. 52); or because the apparent
ligure of the monologue, like in Happy Days, presupposes an interlocutor,
someone whom the voice reaches and who might respond (, Oh he's coming
to speak to me today, oh this is going to be another happy day! '), or because,
as in Play in which the characters (two women and a man) are stuck up to
their necks in urs - it is only a question of their links, which become the
eteral material of these stereotypical stories that they ceaselessly lavish upon
us; stories that are borrowed, even in their style, fom the repertoire of gutter
talk:
M: She was not convinced. I might have known. I smell her of you, she
kept saying. There was no answer to this. So I took her in my arms and
swore I could not live without her. I meant it, what is more. Yes, I am sure
I did. She did not repulse me.
WI : Judge then of my astonishment when one fine morng, as I was
sitting stricken in the moring room, he slunk in, fell on his knees before
me, buried his face in my lap and . . . confessed
(CDW, p. 309; SP, p. 149).12
6
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A' a| 8ad | ou On oec/et'

We have shown how nostalgia, which gives rise to calm blocks of

beauty within the prose, haunts Krapp SLast Tape. But even a text as harsh
and impenetrable as Endgame can sometimes open up to the metaphor of
the inventions of childhood:
Then babble, babble, words, like the solitary child who turs himself into
children, two, three, so as to be together, and whisper together, in the dark
(CDW, p. 1 26; E, p. 70).
12
7
As for love, conceived as what a 'tormentor' and a 'victim' are capable
of, it is the subject of most ofthe plays, and it must be noted that the couple,
or the pair, forms its basic unit. Willie and Winnie in Happy Days, Hamm
and Clov (fanked by Nagg and Nell) in Endgame, Vladimir and Estragon
(flanked by Pozzo and Lucky) in Waitingfor Godot. . . Even Krapp forms a
duo with his magnetic tape, pairing up with his own past.
What's more, this is where the singularity of Beckett's theatre can
perhaps be seen to reside. There is theatre only so long as there is dialogue,
discord and discussion between two characters, and Beckett's ascetic method
restricts theate to the possible efects of the Two. The display of the unlimited
resources of the couple - even when it is aged, monotonous and almost
despicable - and the verbal capture of all the consequences of duality are
Beckett's fndamental theatrical operations. If these duettists have ofen been
compared to clowns, it is precisely because in the circus one already ignores
situations or intrigues, exposition or denouement; what matters is the
production of a powerflly physical inventory ofthe extreme figures of duality
(symbolised by the juxtaposition of Auguste and the white clown). This
physical immediacy is very evident in Beckett's theatre, in which the stage
directions that describe the postures and gestures of the characters occupy
as much, if not more, space than the text itself. Besides, let us not forget that
Beckett was always tempted by mime, as testified by Acts Wthout Words
( 1 957).
From this point of view, Beckett is indisputably the only serious writer
of the last century to belong to a major tradition within comic theatre:
contrasted duos, anachronistic costumes (falsely 'posh' outfts, bowler hats,
etc.), sequences of skits rather than the development of an intrigue, trivialities,
insults and scatology, parodies oflofty language (in particular philosophical
language) indiferent to any verisimilitude, and above all the relentlessness
~. '-~-~~~~~~....~

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A| a| 8ad | ou On oec/en
1 1 I : l l l i tested by the characters in persevering in their being, in maintaining -
1 1 1 I 1 1t: hell or high water -a principle of desire, a vital power that circumstances
. I TI I l to render illegitimate or impossible at each and every instant.
The handicap is not a pathetic metaphor for the human condition. Comic
I I l l'alre swarms with libidinous blind figures, with impotent old men
I l t t:ntlessly following their passions, with battered but triumphant maid-slaves,
\V i l h imbecilic youths, with crippled megalomaniacs . . . It is in this
' - ; l I"Ilivalesque heritage that we must situate Winnie, buried up to her neck
al l d singing the praises ofthe happy day; Hamm - blind, paralytic and mean
hi tterly playing out his uncertain part to the very end without faltering; or
|l i cduo of Vladimir and Estragon, amused and revived by a mere nothing,
l"! nnally capable as they are of keeping the ' appointment' .
Beckett must be played with the most intense humour, taking advantage
l the enduring variety of inherited theatrical types. It is only then that the
| it | Odestination of the comical emerges: neither a symbol nor a metaphysics

I I I disguise, and even less a derision, but rather a powerfl love for human
( )bstinacy, for tireless desire, for humanity reduced to its stubborn ess and
malice. Beckett's characters are these anonymous figures of human toil which
|hc comedy renders at once interchangeable and irreplaceable. This is indeed
l hcmeaning of Vladimir's exalted tirade:
It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are
needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all
mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears!
But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we
like it or not (CDW, p. 74; WG, p. 90).
128
On the stage, embodied by couples acting out all the postures of visible
humanity, two by two, for the laughter of all, we have this 'here and now'
which gathers us together and authorises thought to grasp that anyone is the
cqual of anyone else [n 'importe qui est / 'egal de n 'importe qUI].
Doubtless, we will never know 'who' Godot is, but it is enough that he
is the emblem of everyone's obstinate desire for something to happen.
However, when Pozzo asks: ' Who are you?' , one easily understands - in the
lineage of Aristophanes and Plautus, of Moliere and Goldoni, but also of
Chaplin -why Vladimir will respond in the following way (which, as Beckctt
notes in the directions, provokes a silence):
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We are men (CDW, p. 76; WG, p.

.
I I . Beauty, Agai n
Despair, you say? I am reminded of this Ilagnific4lt pass age from
Malone Dies, in which prose attains cadences that recal the writings of
Bossuet:
The horror-wor eyes linger abject on al l they have beseech. *Oso long, |1
a last prayer, the true prayer at last, the one that asks for noth
i1gAnd it |s
then a little breath of flfillment revives the dead longings a 1
is bor in the silent world, reproaching you affectionately
despaired too late (T, p. 278; TN, p. 277)
. 1 30
m havH_
But if it is best to despair at the right moment, is it I t because what
grants our wishes relieves us for an instant fom the tiring co cem of prayer?
Never to ask for anything, this is Beckett' s foremost demar.
The beaut of
his prose comes from this motivation, that we not ask an
/t
hing
IOI the
prose itself other than to remain as close as possible to that Thich, in the last
analysis, makes up each and every existence: on the one and, the ell pty
stage of being, the half-light where everything is played out" but which itself
does not play a role; and, on the other, the events that sudde1 a 1jpopulate the
stage ofbeing, like stars in anonymous places, hol es ID the pstant canvas of
the theatre of the world.
3 the iO11ortal
, both as the
existence and
The enduring patience of life and prose only exists 1
arousal of what fixes in beauty the possibility of an en
interruption of the half-light and as the conjoined finalities L

saymg.
These patiences are not in themselves deserving of our . ;;: :ontempt Like
in How It Is, there is always ' the blue there was then the VD)1 dust' (I11, p.
78; HII US, p. 70),131 but there is also:
[ . . . ] the j ouey the couple the abandon when the whole tale
tonentor you are said to have had then lost the joutC Ou
stold the
said to
have made the victim you are said to have had then lost the x ages the
e
.. ____ ....__ _@ __ _ __ ___

| B| H BC| 0J|f:.|7
ackthe little fables of above l|||l: :`:ra little blue inleu||.n:
( 1 1 1 1 , p. 140; HII US, p. 128)132

| | |!
without
I ut when it is seized by be
a
uty 1lacceptable matena | a I e
.
.
h d
d s

1 1 1 , - ; l I l ing (andwhywouldhfehave ameamng. ls lt suc a go sen ,

Lt f I

. h' h the we
aess,
, l l . li l lS dsuper-existence compalatletot a U ga aXles, Uw |.
. . '
b
.
th
O ore T"
a
l I ' pt'l i tion and obstmacy of hfe, d\sappe9l, ecommg no mg
.
the
|
' | | | of light in the dim of being. At the end of the methodical ascesls,
| . 1 1 ( )wing happens, which e
n
tirely compaIable to Ihcemergence of
the
( ; I ' at Bear at the end of Mallaps ?"]de des:
Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden ||l1iN
o move and su11:+:|||^"
least. Three pins. One pinhole. lr 1|1ldim. Vasts a1i|k.:.+ '
boundless void (WH, pp. 46-47; \U,[ 1 1 6).133
For Beckett, like for Mallae, llll4l0that nutLig wlll take p
lac
e
| d ' h
[the dlnI. N
o
|l l | the place' . Existence is nuIdlsso ve V t e anonymlty o
. ' A d ' h " t !ved to
the
I l l ore does it coincide with sohpslsm. n nelt er IS | ens a
d
rcl ationship with others and tu imprescriptible laws be they the supp
ose
| !ws of desire or of love. Love, which s Malone says, is to be 'regarded as a
ki nd of lethal glue' (T, p. 264; 1p. --'

Art'
s
It happens that something happens. That somethg hp
p
ens'o"

.
'
h h truth proc
eeds,
to
ission is to shelter these pots of exceptIOn rom w 1U
.
make them shine and retain Qep stellal in the reconstitutedfabnc
o
f
o
u
patience.
sort
This is a painstaking task. The element of beauty isnecessary,
as a
O\difse light within words, a subterraean lighting that lhave nam
ed t

llied |:.::||

l atent poem of prose. A rhythm, a ew lale 0u ours, a 0ur |

the images the slow construction lV9l0fashioned so as to allow
o
n
e
t
o

l h
.
h h tfis hole tt h
see - in a far-away point - the pmho e t at saves us. t roug
and courage come to us.
. e to
Beckett flflled his task. He set out the poem ulthe tireless d
es
l
r
lHID.
. * .
, bo
also
Without doubt this is because
h
e was lIke Moran mMo/o),
w
.
needed the element of beauty. Beauty, "hu0 Kantian defnition Mor
an
IS
Vell aware of, as the following ltHlamusingly tesIiLCs.
F or it was only by transferring ||l"latosphere, hv|.|||`'

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We are men (CDW, p. 76; WG, p. 54).

129
I I . Beauty, Aga i n
Despair, you say? I am reminded of this magnificent passage from
Malone Dies, in which prose attains cadences that recall the writings of
Bossuet:
The horror-wor eyes linger abject on all they have beseeched so long, in
a last prayer, the true prayer at last, the one that asks for nothing. And it is
then a little breath of flfillment revives the dead longings and a murmur
is bor in the silent world, reproaching you afectionately with having
despaired too late (T, p. 278; TN, p. 277).
1
30
But if it is best to despair at the right moment, is it not because what
grants our wishes relieves us for an instant fom the tiring concer of prayer?
Never to ask for anything, this is Beckett's foremost demand. The beauty of
his prose comes from this motivation, that we not ask anything from the
prose itself other than to remain as close as possible to that which, in the last
analysis, makes up each and every existence: on the one hand, the empty
stage of being, the half-light where everything is played out, but which itself
does not play a role; and, on the other, the events that suddenly populate the
stage of being, like stars in anonymous places, holes in the distant canvas of
the theatre of the world.
The enduring patience of life and prose only exists for the immortal
arousal of what fxes in beauty the possibility of an end, both as the
interruption of the half-light and as the conjoined fnalities of existence and
sayIng.
These patiences are not in themselves deserving of our contempt. Like
in How It Is, there is always ' the blue there was then the white dust' (HII, p.
78; HII US, p. 70),
1
3
1
but there is also:
[ . . . ] the jouey the couple the abandon when the whole tale is told the
tormentor you are said to have had then lost the jouey you are said to
have made the victim you are said to have had then lost the images the
e

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ackthe little fables of above little scenes a little blue inferal homes.
( l | l!,p. 140; HII US, p. 128Y32
But when it is seized by beauty this acceptable material of a life without
I I wal l ing (and why would life have a meaning? Is it such a godsend, meaning?)
1 1 1 1 : 1 i l1h a super-existence comparable to tat of galaxies, in which the weakness,
H' pdi tion and obstinacy of life, disappears, becoming nothing more than a
pi i | i l of light in the dim of being. At the end of the methodical ascesis, the
I l l i l owing happens, which is entirely comparable to the emergence of the
( I reat Bear at the end of Mallar6' s Coup de des:
Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All
least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of
boundless void (WH, pp. 46-47; NO, p. 1 1 6).133
For Beckett, like for Mallare, it is false that 'nothing will take place
hut the place' . Existence is not dissolved in the anonymity of the dim. No
I I lre does it coincide with solipsism. And neither is it enslaved to the
rci ationship with others and to imprescriptible laws - be they the supposed
l aws of desire or oflove. Love, which as Malone says, is to be 'regarded as a
ki nd oflethal glue' (T, p. 264; J,p. 262).134
It happens that something happens. That something happens to us. Art's
I l li ssion is to shelter these points of exception from which truth proceeds, to
I llake them shine and retain them - stellar - in the reconstituted fabric of our
patience.
This is a painstaking task. The element of beauty is necessary, as a sort
of diffse light within words, a subterranean lighting that I have named the
l atent poem of prose. A rhythm, a few rare colours, a controlled necessity in
t he images, the slow construction ofa world fashioned so as to allow one to
see - in a far-away point - the pinhole that saves us: through this hole truth
and courage come to us.
Beckett flflled his task. He set out the poem of the tireless desire to
t hink.
.
Without doubt this is because he was like Moran inMolloy, who also
needed the element of beauty. Beauty, whose Kantian definition Moran is
well aware of, as the following remark amusingly testifies:
For it was only by transferring it to this atmosphere, how shall I say, of

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finality without end, why not, that I could venture to consider the work I
had on hand [Ie travail uexecuter] (T, p. 1 12; 1,p. 1 1 1 ).
1
35
Beckett, for us who hardly dare to, took this work into consideration.
The slow and sudden execution of the Beautifl.
Translated by Nina Power
Revised by Alberto Toscano
Cri ti ca l Bi bl i ogra phy to 'Ti rel ess Des i re'
BATAILLE, Georges, 'Le silence de Molloy' , Critique 58 ( 1 951 ) [' Molloy's
Silence' , in Samuel Beckett ' Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable,
ed. by Harold Bloom (London: Chelsea House Publishers, 1 988), pp.
1 3-2 1 ] .
BECKETT, Samuel Cahiers de I 'Here (Paris: Livre de poche, 1 976).
BLANCHOT, Maurice, 'OU maintenant? Qui maintenantT , NR.F. 1 0 ( 1 953),
reprinted in Le Livre dvenir (Gallimard) [Te Book to Come, trans. by
Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002)].
F
DELEUZE, Gilles, 'L'Epuise' , introduction to Quad (Paris: Minuit, 1 992)
[' The Exhausted' , inEssays Critical and Clinical, tans. by Daniel Smith
(London: Verso, 1 997), pp. 1 52- 1 74].
MAURIAC, Claude, L 'Alitterature Contemporaine (Paris: Albin Michel,
1 969) [The New Literature, trans. by Samuel I. Stone (New York:
George Braziller, 1 959), pp. 75-90] .
MAYOUX, Jean-Jacques, ' Samuel Beckett et l'univers parodique' ,Les Lettres
nouvelles 6 ( 1 960), reprinted in Vvants piliers (Julliard, 1 960) [' Samuel
Beckett and Universal Parody' , in Samuel Beckett: A Collection of
Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1 965), pp. 77-
91 ].
SIMON, Alfed, Samuel Beckett (Paris: Belfond, 1 983).
s
1

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~~

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Being, Existence, Thought:

Prose und ConceP
[ c
a) The Between - Lang uages a n d the Shorthand of
Bei ng
,
Samuel Beckett wrote Worstward Ho in 1 982 and published it in 1 983.

'


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,
,
| I is together with Stirrings Still, a testamental text. Beckett did not translate
it ino French so that Worstward Ho expresses the real ofthe English language
as Samuel B.ckett's mother-tongue. To my knowledge, all of his texts tten
in French were tanslated by Beckett himself into English.137 There are mstad
some texts written in English tat he did not translate into French, and WhICh,
for this exceptional artist of the French language, are aki
.
n o te remnants of
something more originary within English. Nevertheless, It IS Said that Samuel
Beckett considered this text 'untranslatable' . We can therefore say that

,
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Worstward Ho is tied to the English language in such a singular manner that
its linguistic migration proves particularly arduous.
Since in this essay we will study the French version of the text, WC
cannot consider it in terms of its literal poetics. The French text we are dealing
with, which is altogether remarkable, is not exactly by Samuel Beckett. h
belongs in part to Edith Fouier, the translator. We cannot immediately
approach the signification of this text by way of its letter, for it really is a
translation.
I 3b
In Beckett's case, the problem of translation is complex, since he himself
was situated at the interval of two languages. The question of knowing which
text translates which is an almost undecidable one. Nevertheless, Beckett
always called the passage fom one language to another a 'translation' , even
if, upon closer inspection, there are significant differences between the French
and English 'variants' , diferences bearing not only on the poetics oflanguage,
but on its philosophical tone. There is a kind of humorous pragmatism in the
English text that is not exactly present in the French, and there is a conceptual
sincerity to the French text which is sofened and sometimes, in my view,
just a bit watered down in the English. In Worstward Ho, we have an absolutely
English text, with no French variant, on the one hand, and a translation in the
usual sense, on the other
.
Hence the obligation of fnding support for our
argument in the meaning rather than the letter.
A second diffculty derives fom the fact that this text is -in an absolutely
conscious fashion -a recapitulatory text, that is, one takes stock of the whole
of Samuel Beckett's intellectual enterprise. To study it thoroughly it would
be necessary to show how it is woven out of a dense network of allusions to
prior texts, as well as of returs to their theoretical hypotheses to be re
examined, possibly contradicted or modified, and refined - and, moreover,
that it fnctions as a sort of filter through which the multiplicity of Beckett's
writings is made to pass, thereby reducing Beckett's work to its fndamental
hypothetical system .
.
Having said this, if we compound these two diffculties, it is entirely
pOSSIble to take Worstward Ho as a short philosophical treatise, as a treatment
in shorthand of the question of being. Unlike the earlier texts, it is not govered
by a sort oflatent poem. It is not a text that penetrates into the singularity and
power of comparison that belong to language - like Seen Said, for
example. It maintains a very deliberate and abstract dryness, which is ofset,
especially in the English original, by an extreme attention to rhythm. We
could thus say that as a text it tends to ofer up the rhythm of thought rather
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| l . i i . | S confguration, whilst, for Seen Said, the opposite is true. This is
l . wc can approach Worstward Ho conceptually without thereby betraying
| ' | i |cc it allows us to put together a table of contents for the entirety of
I I " let L's work, it is entirely apposite to treat this text as if it were, above all,
I! I wl work of thought or a shorthand of the question of being. What we will
I "", ' i l l this operation - what called the ' rhythm' - is the figure of scansion
( I I , ,' l i nguistic segments are generally extremely brief: just a few words), that
1 ' 0 . I hc stenographic figure belonging to the text and which, in English, is
| | | | |t hcdby a knd of pulsation within the language which is altogether unique.
b) Sayi ng, Bei ng, Thou g ht
Cap au pire (an admirable French translation for the title ofWorstward
/ )presents us with an extremely dense plot, organised - like in all the later
I lL:ckett - into paragraphs. A first reading shows us that this plot develops
umcental conceptual themes into their respective questions (I will explain
I I I moment what must be understood by ' question').
The frst theme is the imperative of saying. This is a very old Beckettian
I hcme, the most recognisable but in certain regards also the most unrecognised
ulhis themes. The imperative of saying is the prescription of the ' again' ,
I I nderstood as the incipit of the written text, and determining it as a
continuation. In Beckett, to commence is always to 'continue' . Nothing
commences which is not already under the prescription of the again or of re
commencing, under the supposition of a commencement that itself never
commenced. We can thus say that the text is circumscribed by the imperative
ul saying. It begins by:
On. Say on. Be said on. Somehow on (. 7; p. 89).139
And ends by:
Said nohow on (. 47; p. 1 1 6).140
Therefore, we can also sU arise Worstard Ho by the passage from
'Be said on' to ' Said nohow on' . The text presents the possibility ofthe 'nohow
on' as a fndamental alteration ofthe ' on' . The negation ('nohow') attests to
the fact that there is no more 'on'. But in truth, given the 'be said' , the
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'nohow on' is a variant ofthe 'on' and remains constrained by the imperativl
.
of saying.
The second theme - the immediate and mandatory correlate of the firsl
throughout Beckett's work - is that of pure being, of the 'there is' as such.
The imperative of saying is immediately correlated to tat about which there
is something to say, in other words, the 'there is' itself Besides the fact that
there is the imperative of saying, there is the ' there is' .
The 'there is' , or pure being, has two names and not just one: the void
and the dim. This is a problem of considerable importance. Let us note at
once that with respect to these two names - void and dim - we discer, or at
least appear to discer, a subordination: the void is subordinated to the dimin
the exercise of disappearance, which constitutes the essential testing ground
[plan d'epreuve] of Worstward Ho. The maxim is the following:
Void cannot go [Disparition du vide ne se peut] . Save dim go. Then all go
(. 1 8; p. 97). 1
4
1
Once it is obliged to prove itself through the crucial ordeal of
disappearance, the void has no autonomy. It is dependent on the disappearance
of the all, which is, as such, the disappearance ofthe dim. If the 'all go' - i.e
the ' there is' thought as nothingness - is named by the dim, the void is
necessarily a subordinate nomination. Ifwe accept that the 'there is' is what
is there in the ordeal of its own nothingness, the fact that disappearance is
subordinated to the disappearance of te dim makes ' dim' into the eminent
name of being.
The third theme is what could be referred to as ' the inscribed in being' .
This is a question of what is proposed fom the standpoint of being [du point
de l'etre], or again, a question about what appears in the dim. The inscribed
is what the dim as dim arranges within the order of appearance.
Insofar as 'dim' is the eminent name of being, the inscribed is what
appears in the dim. But one can also say that it is what is given in an interval
of the void. This is because things will be pronounced upon according to the
two possible names of the 'there is' . On the one hand, there is what appears
in the dim, what the dim allows to appear as a shade - as a shade in the dim
[I 'ombre dans la penombre] . On the other, there is what makes the void appear
as an interval, in the gap of what appears, and consequently as a corption of
the void - if the void is determined as being nothing but difference or
separation. This explains how Beckett could name the universe, that is, the
sz

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, 1 I I I I dy of what appears, as follows: a void infested by shades. This manner
1 1 1 ; l l l i l void has of being infested by shades means that it is reduced to being
I I I I ' fi gure of an interval amongst the shades. But let us not forget that this
1 I I I nvai amongst the shades is ultimately nothing but the dim, what rets
I I : : I ( ) the dim as the archi-original exposition of being.
We can also say that the inscribed in being -the shades -is what allows
1 1 , ; ,. 1 1 " to be counted. The science of number - of the number of shades - is a
1 I I I HI amental theme in Beckett. What is not being as such, but is instead
j i Iposed or inscribed in being, is what lets itself be counted, what pertais to
pi mality, what is ofthe order of number. Number is obviously not an attbute
, 1 1 1 hcvoid or the dim: void and dim do not let themselves be counted. Instead,
i | t >the inscribed in being that lets itself be counted. It lets itself be counted
pri I llordially: 1 , 2, 3.
A last variant: the inscribed in being is what can worsen. ' Worsening' -
l l l essential theme in Worstard Ho, where worsening is one of the text's
I adi eal operations - means, amongst other things, but above all, to be iller
i | uthan said before [etre plus mal dit que deja ditl
Under this multiplicity of attributes -what is apparent in the dim, what
lHlstitutes an interval with respect to the void, what lets itself be counted,
wl lat is susceptible to worsening or to being iller said than said - there is the
l ',cneric name: ' the shades' . We can say that the shades are what is exposed in
I I t c dim. The shades are the exposed plural of the ' there is' , which manifests
.
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In Worstard Ho, the presentation of shades will be minimal: the count
will go up to three. We shall see why it can go no lower. Categorially, once
you count what lets itself be counted, you must at least count to three.
.
The frst shade is the standing shade, which counts as one. In tuth, it is
the one. The standing shade will also be found ' kneeling' - these
metamorphoses should elicit no surprise - or 'bowed' . These are different
Ilames. They are not so much states as names. Of this shade that counts as
one, it is said - fom page 34 ( 1 08) on - that it is an old woman:
.
h ' d t o ' S
1
4
2
Nothmg to s ow a woman s an ye a w man .
And Beckett immediately adds (this will be clarifed later):
.
f h d
3
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These are the fndamental attributes of the one: the one is the kneeling
shade and it is a woman.
Then there is the pair, which counts as two. The pair is the sole shade
that counts as two. Beckett will say: ' Two fee and two as one' - one shade.
nd once the pair is named, it is established that the shades which constitute
It are an old man and a child.
Let us remark that the one is not called woman until much later whilst
the two is named 'old man and child' right away. What will be sai+later
instead, is thanothing has proven that we were indeed dealing with an ol+
man ad a
.
chlld. In all these instances - with regard to the question of the
etermmatlOs ' ma' , ' woman' , ' child' - nothing provides proof, and yet it
IS the case. SImply put, the modality of saying is not the same for the one
woaand for the two-man-child. Of the one it is not said until much later
that It IS an old womn, whilst the composition of the pair is immediately
declared (ol
.
d a-chtld); the crucial statement returs: nothing proves that,
and yet. ThIS mdlcates that the masculine sexuated position is evident and
tat the impo
.
ss
.
ibility of proving it is dificult to understand. On the conrary,
1ce the femmme sexuated position is not evident, the impossibility of proving
It IS.
In the pair it is obviously a question of the other, of 'the-one-and-the-
other' .
'
.
Thother is here designated by its interal duplicity, by the fact that it
IS two. It IS a two that is the same. It is, let us say it again: ' Two free [shades]
and two as one. ' But, a contrario, it is the one that ts into two: the old man
and the chil. We must suppose that old man and child are the same man qua
shade, that IS to say, human life qua shade in its extreme of infancy and its
extre of old age; a life given in what splits it in two, in the unity of the pair
that It IS qua alterity to itself
In the end, we can say that the inscribed in being is visible humanity:
woan as one and as inclination, man as double in the unity of number. The
pertment ages are the extreme ones, as is always the case in Beckett: infant
and old an. The adult is almost an ignored category, an insignificant category.
Fmally, the fouh theme
.
ithought - as is to be expected. In and by
thugt the configuratlOns of vIsIble humanity and the imperative of saying
eXIst sImultaneously.
.
Tought is the recollection of the first and third themes: there is the
Imperative of saying, there is the inscribed in being, and this is ' for' and ' in'
thought. Let us note right away that Beckett's question is the following one:
4
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" I I I lVi nythat thought (the fourth theme) is the focal point or the recollection
. l I I I C i mperative of saying (the first theme) and of the arrangement of visible
hl l l l l : l I1ity - that is, of the shades (third theme) - what can tought say about
1 1 1 1 ' second teme, that is, about the question of being? This provides the
I I I < l adest possible organisation for the text as a whole. The philosophical
\ I I I 1 st ruction of the question will go like this: what can be pronounced about
l l i ' t here is' qua 'there is' from the vantage point of thought, in which the
I I l 1 perative of saying and the modification of the shades (i.e. the circulation
nlvi sible humanity) are given simultaneously?
In the figural register of Worstard Ho, thought is represented by a
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1 1 ('ad. One will speak of ' the head' or of 'the skll' . The head is repeatedly
( ai led the ' seat and germ of all . ' If it is referred to in this way, it is because
lD l h the imperative of saying and the shades exist for the head, and it is in the
l i lad that the question of being takes place.

What is the composition of thought? If reduced to its absolutely

pri mordial constituents - according to the procedure of simplification which
(' onstitutes Beckett' s organic method - there is the visible and there is the
iI Ilperative of saying. There is ' ill seen ill said' . This is thought: 'ill seen ill
sai d' . It follows from this that the presentation of the head will be essentially
reduced to its eyes, on the one hand, and to its brain, oozing words, on the
other: two holes on a brain, this is thought.
Hence to recurrent themes: that of the eyes and that of the oozing of
words, whose source is the sof matter of the brain. This is the material fgure
of spirit.
Let us be more precise.
It will be said that the eyes are ' clenched staring' . The 'movement' of
staring is essential to Worstward Ho. It designates seeing as such. This
' clenched staring' - obviously an abrupt juxtaposition - designates precisely
the emblem of the ill seen. Seeing is always an ill seeing, and consequently
the eye of seeing is ' clenched staring' .
As for words - the second attribute of thought after seeing - one will
say ' somehow from some soft mind they ooze' . These two maxims, the
existence of ' clenched staring eyes' and the fact that words ' somehow from
some soft mind [ . . . ] ooze' , determine the fourth theme, that is, thought in the
modality of existence represented by the skull.
It is of capital importance to note that the skull is a supplementary
shade. The skull makes three, besides the one offeminine inclination and the
other -in the guise of the pair - of the old man and the child. Thought always

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required is the possibility that something appear in its being. This possibility
is not constituted by the void, which is instead the name of being qua being.
The name of being qua possibility of appearance is ' dim'
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The dim is being to the extent that a question can be formulated as to
the being of being, that is, to the extent that being is exposed to the question
qua reserve of being for appearance [ressource d'etre de l 'apparaftre] .
This is why there must be two names (void and dim) and not just one.
For a question to be, being must have two names. Heidegger saw this too, in
his concepts of Sein and Seiende.
The second condition for a question is that there be thought. A skull
thought, let us call it. Skull-thought is an ill seeing and an ill saying or a
clenched staring eye and an oozing of names. But, and this point is essential,
the skull-thought is itself exposed. It is not subtracted fom the exposition of
being. It is not simply definable as that for which there is being -it participates
in being as such, it is caught in its exposition. In Beckett's vocabulary one
will say that the head (seat and terminus of all) or the skull are in the dim. Or
that skull-thought is the third shade. Or, again, that the skull-thought lets
'
itself be counted in the uncountable dim.
Does this not leave us exposed to an infinite regress? If thought as such
co-belongs with being, where is the thought of this co-belonging? From where
is it said that the head is in the dim? It seems that we are on the edge of the
necessity - if one can hazard this expression - of a meta-head. One must
count four, and then five, and so on to infnity.
The protocol of closure is given by the cogito; it is necessary to admit
that the head is counted by the head, or that the head sees itself as head. Or
again, that it is for the clenched staring eye that there is a clenched staring
eye. Here lies the Cartesian thread running through Beckett's thought. Beckett
never denied this thread, which is present fom the beginning of his work,
but in Worstward Ho it is identified as a kind of halting rule which alone
allows thatjor which there is the dim to also be in the dim.
Finally, and still remaining within the register of the minimal conditions
for a question, there must be - besides the 'there is' and the skull-thought
inscriptions of shade within the dim.
Shades are ruled by three relations. First, that ofthe one or the two, or
ofthe same and the other. In other terms, the relation of the kneeling one and
the walking pair, taken, like Platonic categories, as figures of the same and
the other. Second, that of the extremes of age, infancy and senescence,
extremes which also make it so that the pair is one. Third, the relation of the

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cs, woman and man.
These are the constitutive relations of the shades that populate the dim
i | it l i nfest the void.
A parenthesis: there is a point, only alluded to in Worstward Ho, which
l I l evertheless crucial; it is that, as we have seen, the sexes are without proof
Mocspecifically, they are the only thing to be without proof. The fact that
| hi s shade turs out to be old woman or old man, this is always without
I ' roof, whilst nevertheless being certain. This means that, for Beckett, the
d |I Terentiation of the sexes is, at one and the same time, absolutely certain
. i i icl absolutely beyond proof. This is why I can call it a pure disjunction.
Why a pure disjunction? It is certain that there is 'woman' and there is
, ! l l an' - in this case the old woman and the old man -but this certaint does
l I ot let itselfbe deduced or inferred on the basis of any particular predicative
I rai t. It is therefore a pre-linguistic certainty, in the sense that it can be said,
hi i |that this saying does not in mhave any other saying as its source. It is
O lirst saying. One can say that there are woman and man, but at no time can
mcinfer this from another saying, and in particular not from a descriptive,
\ I l empirical, saying.
e) Bei ng and Exi stence
Under these relations - of the one and the two, of the extremes of age,
and of the sexes - the shades attest not to being but to existence. What is
cxistence, and what distinguishes it from being?
Existence is the generic attribute of what is capable of worsening. What
can worsen exists. 'Worsening' is the active modality of any exposition to
t he seeing of the clenched staring eye and to the oozing of words. This
exposition is existence. Or, perhaps at a more fndamental level, what exists
is what lets itself be encountered. Being exists when it is in the guise of the
encounter.
Neither void nor dim designate something that can be encountered,
because every encounter is under two conditions: on the one hand, that there
be a possible interval of the void to section off what is encountered; on the
other, that there be the dim, the exposition of everything that exposes itself.
The shades are what lets itselfbe encountered. To let oneself be encountered
and to worsen are one and the same thing, and it is this that designates the
existence of shades. Void and dim - the names of being - do not exist.
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Therefore, the minimal set-up will also be referred to as follows: being,

thought, existence. When one possesses the fgures of being, thought and
existence, or the words for this set-up, or, as Beckett would say, the words to
ill say it - that is, when one possesses the minimal and experimental set-up
of saying - one can construct questions, one can set the -ward.
f) The Axi om of Sayi ng
The text will therefore organise itselfby way of hypotheses concering
the -ward, that is, the direction of thought. These hypotheses will concer
what binds, unbinds, or afects the triad of dim-being, shade-existence, and
skull-thought. Worstward H Owill treat the triad being/existence/thought under
the categories of the void, of the same and the other, of the three, and of the
seeing/saying complex.
Before forulating any hypotheses, one must seek support in a certain
number of axioms that establish the primary bindings or unbindings. Almost
the only axiom of Worstward Ho, which moreover generates its title, is an
old axiom of Beckett's. It is by no means invented here and perhaps even
constitutes one of his oldest axioms. This axiom goes: to say is to ill say.
It is necessary to flly understand that 'to say is to ill say' establishes
an essential identity. The essence of saying is ill saying. III saying is not a
failure of saying, but precisely the contrary: all saying is, in its very existence
as saying, an ill saying.
The ' ill saying' is implicitly opposed to the 'well saying' . What is the
well saying'? ' Well saying' constitutes a hypothesis of adequation: the saying
1b adequate to the said. But Beckett's fundamental thesis is that the saying
that is adequate to the said suppresses saying. Saying is only a free saying,
and in particular an artistic saying, to the extent that it does not coalesce with
the said, to the extent that it is not subject to the authorit of the said. Saying
is under the imperative of saying, it is under the imperative of the ' on', and is
not constrained by the said.
If there is no adequation, if the saying is not prescribed by ' what is
said' but only govered by saying, then ill saying is the fee essence of saying,
or the afirmation of the prescriptive autonomy of saying. One says in order
to ill say. The apex of saying - which is poetic or artistic saying - is then
precisely the controlled regulation of ill saying, what brings the prescriptive
autonomy of saying to its culmination.
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When reading in Beckett terms such as ' ill saying' , ' failure' , etc. , it is
l I \Tssary to keep all of this well in mind. Were we dealing with an empiricist
d |ri ne oflanguage according to which language sticks to things with various
l',rees of adherence, this would arouse no interest. Moreover, the text itself
wOll l d tum out to be impossible. The text only fnctions from the moment
l l i Jl one hears in the expressions ' fail' or ' ill say' the self-affrmation of the
I
llt:seription of saying as govered by its own rule. Beckett clearly indicates
l l i i from the start:
Say for be said.
'
Missaid. From now say for be missaid (. 7; p.89).147
g ) The Temptati on
The strict consequence of all this is that the norm of saying is called
, failure'
.
Of course, the fact that failure provides the norm of saying arouses
t l fallacious hope within the subject, a hope that Beckett identifies perfectly:
I hc hope of a maximal failure, of an absolute failure that would have the
mcrit of ting you off both language and saying, once and for all. This is
lhe shameful temptation, the temptation of subtracting oneself from the
i mperative of saying. The temptation to have done with the 'on' ; no longer to
suffer the intolerable prescription of ill saying.
Since well saying is impossible, the only hope lies in betrayal: to attain
failure so complete it would elicit a total abandonment of the prescription
itself, a relinquishment of saying and oflanguage. This would mean the ret
to the void -to be void or emptied, emptied of all prescription. In the end, the
temptation is to cease to exist in order to be. In this form of failure one returs
to the void, to pure being. This is what we could call the mystical temptation,
in the sense in which it appears in Wittgenstein, in the last proposition of the
Tractatus. To reach the point at which, since it is impossible to speak, one
can only remain silent. To reach the point at which the awareness that it is
impossible to say ' it' , that is, the awareness that ' it' has failed absolutely,
firmly places you under the sway of an imperative that is no longer the
imperative of saying but the imperative of silence.
In Beckett's vocabulary this is called ' going' . Going where? Well, going
away fom humanity. In truth, like Rimbaud Beckett thinks that one nevcr
leaves. He recognises absolutely the temptation of leaving humanity, the
temptation of failing both language and saying to the point of disgust. JO
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leave existence once and for all, to retur to being. But Beckett corects and
ultimately rejects this possibility.
Here is a text in which he evokes the hypothesis of an access to going
and to the void by means of an excess of failure, an excess of failure that
would be indistinguishable fom the absolute success of saying:
Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still
worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where
neither for good. Good and all (p. 8; p. 90).148
This is the temptation: to go where all shade is gone, where nothing is
exposed to the imperative of saying any longer.
But in numerous passages, frther on in the text, this temptation will
be challenged, revoked, prohibited. For example on page 37 ( 1 1 0), where the
idea of the 'but worse more . . . ' is declared to be inconceivable:
Back unsay better worse by no stretch more. If more dim less light then
better worse more dim. Unsaid then better worse by no stretch more. Better
worse may no less than less be more. Better worse what? The say? The
said? Same thing. Same nothing. Same all but nothing.149
The fndamental point is that the ' throw up for good, good and all'
does not exist, because every ' same nothing' is really a ' same all but nothing' .
The hypothesis of a radical departure that would subtact us fom the humanity
of the imperative the essential temptation at work in the prescription of
silence cannot succeed for ontological reasons. The ' same nothing' is really
always a ' same all but nothing', or a ' same almost nothing' , but never a
'same nothing' as such. Thus, there are never suficient grounds for subtracting
oneself from the imperative of saying, in the name either of the advent of a
pure 'nothing' or of absolute failure.
h ) The Laws of Worseni ng
From this point onwards, the fundamental law that govers the text is
that the worst that language is capable of the worsening never lets itself
be captured by the nothing. One is always in the ' same all but nothing' , but
never at the point ofthe ' go for good', where a capture by the nothing would
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i. | c place. This would be a nothing that is neither void nor dim, but the pure
: l i i dsi mple abolition of the prescription of saying.
We must therefore maintain the following: language partakes exclusively
. . l l hc capacity of the least. It does not partake of the capacity of the nothing.
| | hus, as Beckett will say, ' leastening words' [des mots qui reduisent] . One
hswords that leasten, and these words that leasten are those thanks to which
( \ l \can hold the worstward ho, that is, the direction of a centring of failure.
Between Mallarme's ' never direct, allusive words' and Beckett's
, kastening words' , the filiation is evident. To approach the thing that is to be
+| din the awareness that it cannot be said under the guarantee of saying or
ol lhe thing leads to a radical autonomisation ofthe prescription of saying.
' I hi s free saying can never be direct, or, according to Beckett's vocabulary, it
` O saying that leastens, that worsens.
In other words, language can expect the minumum of the best worse,
hi i lnot its abolition. Here is the essential text, the one in which the expression
' I castening words' also appears:
Worse less. By no stetch more, Worse for want of better less. Less best.
No. Naught best. Best worse. No. Not best worse. Naught not best worse.
Less best worse. No. Least. Least best worse. Least never to be naught.
Never to naught be brought. Never by naught be nulled. Unnullable least.
Say that best worse. With leastening words say least best worse. For want
ofworser worst. Unlessenable least best worse (pp. 31 -32; p. 1 06).
15
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'Least never to be naught' is the law of worsening. ' Say that best worse'
| > the 'unnullable least' . The 'unlessenable least best worse' can never be
confsed with abolition pure and simple, or with the noting
.
This means that
the 'one must remain silent' , in Wittgenstein's sense, is impracticable. We
must hold the worstard ho. Worstward Ho: the title is an imperative, and not
simply a description.
. .
The imperative of saying thus takes the guise of a constant repnse; It
belongs to the regime of the attempt, of effort, of work. The book itself wil l
try to worsen everything that offers itself up to the oozing of wods. A
considerable amount of the text is devoted to what could be called expenmcnts
in 'worsening' . Worstward Ho is a protocol of worsening, presented as a H_urc
of the self-afirmation of the prescription of saying. Worsening is a soverei gn
procedure of naming in the excess offailure; it is the same as arousing lhOuphl
by 'never direct, allusive words' , and carries with it the same impassablc
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proximity to nothingness as Mallanne's poetry.
Worsening, which is the exercise of language in its artistic tension,
takes place through two contradictory operations. What in fact is worsening?
It is the exercise of the sovereignty of saying with respect to the shades.
Therefore, it is both saying more about them and restricting what is said.
This is why the operations are contradictory. Worsening is saying more about
less. More words to better leasten.
Whence the paradoxical aspect of worsening, which is really the
substance of the text. In order to leasten 'what is said' so that -with regard to
this purging [epuration] - failure may become more manifest, it will be
necessary to introduce new words. These words are not additions - one does
not add, one does not make sums -but one must say more in order to leasten,
and thus one must say more in order to subtract. Here lies the constitutive
operation of language. To worsen is to advance the ' saying more' in order to
leasten.
i ) Exerci ses i n Worseni ng
The text lavishly multiplies worsening exercises over the entire
phenomenal feld of shades, over the configration of generic humanity. These
can be briefy categorised as follows:
- worsening the one, or, worsening the kneeling woman;
- worsening the two, or, worsening the pair of the old man and the
child;
- worsening the head, or, worsening the eyes, the oozing brain, and the
skull.
These are the three shades that constitute te phenomenal detenninations
of shade.
Worsening the one: this is the exercise that occupies page 2 1 (99):
First one. First try fail better one. Something there badly not wrong. Not
that as it is it is not bad. The no face bad. The no hands bad. The no-.
Enough. A pox on bad. Mere bad. Way for worse. Pending worse still.
First worse. Mere worse. Pending worse still. Add a-. Add? Never. Bow it
down. Be it bowed down. Deep down. Head in hat gone. More back gone.
Greatcoat cut off higher. Nothing from pelvis down. Nothing but bowed
back. Topless baseless hindm. Dim black. On unseen knees. In the dim
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void. Better worse so. Pending worse stilU5

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The deployment of names that marks out this frst shade with a great
Hl mber of subtactive attibutes is, at the same time, its leastening or reduction.
| l sreduction to what? Well, to what should be named a mark ofthe one [un
imit d'un], a mark that would give the shade with nothing else besides. The
words demanded for this mark are 'bowed back' . A simple curve. Nothing
I )ut a curve, such would be the ideality of the 'worse still' ; knowing that
l Ilore words are needed in order to make such a curve arise, because words
al one operate the leastening. We can thus say that an operation of nominal
( ) ver-abundance - over-abundance always being relative in Beckett - aims
hcre at an essential leastening.
This is the law of worsening: one cuts the legs, the head, the coat, one
(;uts all that one can, but each cut is in truth centred on the advent -by way of
supplementary subtractive details -of a pure mark. One must supplement so
as to purge the last mark of failure.
And now the worsening exercise of the two:
Next two. From bad to worsen. Try worsen. From merely bad. Add -.
Add? Never. The boots. Better worse bootless. Bare heels. Now the two
right. Now the two left. Lef right lef right on. Barefoot unreceding on.
Better worse so. A little better worse than nothing so (p. 23; p. 1 00).152
The boots - there aren't many names like 'boots' in this piece, whose
texture is extremely abstract. When there are such names, it is a sure sign that
we are dealing with a risky operation. In a moment we will see this with a
(;oncrete and essential word, the irruption of ' graveyard' . Nevertheless, the
boot, which appears all of a sudden, is only there in order to be crossed out,
crased: ' The boots. Better worse bootless. '
A part of things is only given so as to fail, to be crossed out; it only
(;omes to the surface of the text so as to be subtracted; here lies the
wntradictory nature of the operation. The logic of worsening, which is the
logic of the sovereignty of language, equates addition and subtraction.
Mallanne did not proceed otherwise. Mallanne, for whom the very act of the
poem consists in bringing about the emergence of dobject (swan, star, rose . . . )
whose arival imposes its own tenination. Beckett's 'boot' is the support
tenn of such an act.
Finally, worsening the head. This passage concers the eyes (rc(al l
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that the skull is composed of eyes on a brain):
The eyes. Time to try worsen. Somehow try worsen. Unclench. Say staring
open. All white and pupil. Dim white. White? No. All pupil. Dim black
holes. Unwavering gaping. Be they so said. With worsening words. From
now so. Better than nothing so bettered for the worse (p. 27; p. 1 03).153
The logic of the writing in this passage is altogether typical. On the
basis of the syntagm ' clenched staring' - whose meaning I 've already
discussed - we have the attempt at an opening. We will pass from ' clenched
staring' to ' staring open' , which is a semantically homogenous datum. ' Open'
will in tum give us white, and white will be terminated, giving us black. This
is the immediate chain. We pass from clenched to open, fom open to white,
and then white is crossed out in favour of black. The outcome of the operation
- the operation of worsening - is that in place of ' clenched staring' we will
have 'black holes' , and that, from now on, when it will be a question of eyes,
it will no longer even be in terms of the word ' eyes' - Beckett will simply
mention two black holes.
Note that the open and the black only emerge within the sequence of
the operation in order to pass from eyes to black holes, and that this operation
of worsening aims at ridding us of the word ' eyes' - too descriptive, too
empirical, and too singular - so as to lead us, by way of diagonal worsening
and deletion, to the simple acceptance of black holes as blind seats of visibility.
The eye as such is abolished. From this point onwards, there is only a pure
seeing linked to a hole, and this pure seeing linked to a hole is constructed by
means of the abolition of the eye with the (supplementary and exemplary)
mediation of the open and the white.
j ) Hol di ng Worstwa rd
Worsening is a labour, an inventive and arduous effectuation of the
imperative of saying. Being an effort, holding to the worstward ho demands
courage.
Where does the courage of effort come from? I think this is a very
important question, because it is in general the question of knowing where
the courage of holding to any procedure oftruth comes from. The question is
ultimately the following: where does the courage of truth come from?
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For Beckett, the courage oftruth could not come from the idea that we
wi l l be repaid by silence or by a successfl coincidence with being itself. We
have seen this already: there will be no termination of saying, no advent of
t he void as such. The on cannot be effaced.
So, where does courage come from? For Beckett, courage comes fom
t i le fact that words have the tendency to ring true. /extreme tension, which
perhaps constitutes Beckett's vocation as a writer, results fom the fact that
courage pertains to a quality of words that is contra to their use in worsening.
| 'here is something like an aura of correspondence in words from which
( paradoxically) we draw the courage to break with correspondence itself,
t hat is, to hold worstward.
The courage of effort is always drawn out against its own destination.
|,et us call this the torsion of saying: the courage of the continuation of effort
i s drawn from words themselves, but fom words taken against their genuine
destination, which is to worsen.
Effort - in this case, artistic or poetic effort - is a barren work on
language, undertaken in order to submit language to the exercises of
worsening. But this barren effort draws its energy fom a fortunate disposition
oflanguage: a sort of phantasm of correspondence that haunts language and
to which one rets as if it were the possible place in which to draw from
language itself, but wholly against the grain of its destination, the courage of
its treatment. In Worstard Ho this tension gives rise to some very beautifl
passages. Here is the first:
The words too whosesoever. What room for worse! How almost true they
sometimes almost ring! How wanting in inanity! Say the night is young
alas and take heart, Or better worse say still a watch of night alas to come.
A rest of/ast watch to come. And take heart [Et prendre courage] (pp. 20-
21 ; p. 99). 154
It is to the extent that one can say something that rings almost true -
that one ean say what in the poem is 'like' the true, and take heart - that one
holds worstward. ' Say the night is young alas and take heart. ' How
magnificent! Here is a variation on the theme:
What words for what then? How almost they still ring. As somehow from
some soft of mind they ooze. From it in it ooze. How all but uninanc. 1o
last unlessenable least how loath to leasten. For then in utmost dim |o
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unutter leastmost all (p. 33; p. 1 07).155

Everything here shows to what extent one is ' loath to leasten' , to what
extent this efort is barren. One loaths to leasten because words are 'all but
uninane' , because the word sounds true, because it rings clear and it is fom
the word that we take heart, that we draw our courage. But taking heart for
what? Well, precisely in order to ill say; to challenge the illusion that it rings
true, the illusion that sUons us to courage. The torsion of saying is thus
both what clarifies the barrenness of effort (one must overcome, towards the
worst, the clarity of words) and the courage with which we treat this
barrenness.
Nevertheless, there is another reason why holding worstward proves
difcult: being as such resists, being rebels against the logic of the worst. As
worsening comes to be exercised upon the shades, one reaches the edge of
the dim, the edge of the void, and there to continue to worsen becomes more
and more difcult. As if the experience of being were witness, not to an
impasse of worsening, but to a dificulty, to a growing effort - ever more
exhausting - in this worsening.
When one is led to the edge of being by a barren and attentive exercise
in the worsening of appearances, a sort of invariance comes to confound
saying, exposing it to an experience of suffering - as if the imperative of
saying encountered here what is frthest away from it, or most indifferent.
This will be said in two ways: according to the dim or according to the void.
This relation between the dim, the void and the imperative of saying brings
us to the core of our ontological questions.
Let us recall that dim is the name of what exposes being. It follows
fom this that the dim can never be a total darkness, a darkness that the
imperative of saying desires as its own impossibility. The imperative of saying,
which desires the leastmost, is polarised by the idea that the dim could become
te obscure, the absolutely dark. The text makes several hypotheses concering
how this desire can be satisfied. But these hypotheses are ultimately rejected,
for there is always a minimal exposition of being. The being of void being is
to expose itself as dim; in other words, the being of being is to expose itself
and exposition rules out the absoluteness ofthe dark or obscure. Even if one
can lessen the exposition, one can never attain the obscure as such. Of the
dim, it will be said that it is an 'unworsenable worse' :
So leastward on. So long as dim still. Dim undimmed. Or dimmed to
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dimmer still [lus obscur encore]. To dimmost dim. Leastmost in dimmost
dim. Utmost dim. Leastmost in utmost dim. Unworsenable worst (p. 33;
p. 1 07). 15
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Thought can move in the leastmost, in the utmost dim, but it has no
access to the obscure as such. There is always a lesser least - so let us state
the fndamental axiom once again: ' least never to be naught' . The argument
l>simple: because the dim, which is the exposition of being, is a condition of
the worstward ho -what exposes it to saying - it can never be entirely given
over to it. We may go worstward, but we can never go voidward [Nous ne
pouvons mettre cap sur Ie neant, seulement sur Ie pire]. There can be no
voidward precisely because the dim is a condition of the -ward. Thus one
can argue for the quasi-obscure, the almost obscure, but the dim in its being
remains dim. Ultimately, the dim resists worsening.
k) The Unworsena bl e Voi d
The void is given in experience. It is given in the interval of shades
within the dim. It is what separates. In fact, the void is the ground [ond] of
being, but in its exposition it is a pure gap [ecart]. With respect to the shades
or the pair, Beckett will say: 'vast of void atween' . Such is the fgure in
which the void is given .
The worsening aims to get closer to the void as such, no longer to have
the void in its mere dimension of interval, but the void as void - being as
retracted from its exposition. But if the void is subtracted from its own
exposition it can no longer be the correlate of the process of worsening,
because the process of worsening only works on shades and on their void
intervals. So that the void 'in itself' cannot be worked upon according to the
laws of worsening. You can vary the intervals, but the void as void remains
radically unworsenable. Now, if it is radically unworsenable, it means that i t
cannot even be ill said. This point is a very subtle one. The void 'in itself' | >
what cannot be ill said. This is its defnition. The void cannot but be said. ln
it, the saying and the said coincide, which prohibits ill saying. Such 0
coincidence finds its reason in the fact that the void itself is nothing bU| | | s
own name. Of the void 'in itself' you have nothing but the name. Y| |h| u
Beckett's text this is expressly formulated in the following form:
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That the void is subtracted fom ill saying means that there is no art of
the void. The void is subtracted fom that which suggests an art within
language: the logic of worsening. When you say 'the void' you have said all
that can be said, and you possess no process that could elicit the metamorphosis
of this saying. In other words, there is no metaphor for the void.
In the subjective register, the void, being but a name, only arouses the
desire for its disappearance. |the skull the void arouses not the process of
worsening - which is impossible in its regard - but the absolute impatience
of this pure name, the desire that the void be exposed as such, annihilated,
something which is nevertheless impossible.
As soon as one touches upon a void that is not an interval, upon the
void 'in itself', one enters what in Beckett constitutes the fgure of an
ontological desire that is subtracted from the imperative of saying: the fsion
in nothingness of the void with the dim. It will also be remarked that, in a
manner resembling the fnctioning of drives, the name of the void sets off a
desire for disappearance, but that this desire for disappearance is without
object, for there is here nothing but a name. The void will always counter any
process of disappearance with the fact that it is effectively subtracted from
worsening; this subtraction results from a property of the void, which is that
in it the 'maximum' and the ' almost' are the same thing. Let us note that this
is not the case with the dim, so that the two names of being do not fnction in
the same way. The dim can be dimmost, leastmost dimmost; the void cannot.
The void cannot but be said, seized as pure name and subtracted from every
principle of variability, and therefore of metaphor or metamorhosis, because,
within it, the ' maximum' and the ' almost' coincide absolutely. Here then is
the great passage on the void:
All save void_ No. Void too. Unworsenable void. Never less. Never more.
Never since first said never unsaid never worse said never not gnawing to
be gone.
Say child gone [ . . . ] (p. 42; p. 1 1 3).158
' Say child gone' : Beckett attempts to approach the question at an angle.
The unworsenable void cannot disappear, but if, for example, one makes a
shade disappear, since one is dealing with a shade-infested void, perhaps a
greater void will ensue. This growth would deliver the void over to the process
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or l anguage. It is this experiment that the continuation of the text describes:
Say child gone. As good as gone. From the void. From the stare. Void then
not that much more? Say old man gone. Old woman gone. As good as gone.
Void then not that much more again? No. Void most when almost. Worst
when almost. Less then? All shades as good as gone. If then not that much
more than that much less then? Less worse then? Enough. A pox on void.
Unmoreable unlessable unworseable evermost almost void (pp. 42-43; p.
113). 159
The experiment, as one can see, fails. The void qua pure nomination
remains radically unworsenable and thus unsayable.
I ) Appea ri ng and Di sa p pea ri n g . Movement
Together with the supposed movements of appearance and
disappearance, the argument tied to the void summons all of the Platonic
supreme ideas. We have being, which is the void and the dim; the same,
which is the one-woman; the other, which is the old manchild-two. The
question is that of knowing what becomes of movement and rest, the last two
categories in the fve primordial genera of The Sophist.
The question of movement and rest presents itself in the form of two
interrogatons: What can disappear? And: What can change?
There is an absolutely essential thesis, which says that absolute
disappearance is the disappearance of the dim. If one asks: What can disappear
absolutely? The response is: The dim. For example:
On back to unsay void can go [disparition du vide]. [As I' ve already said,
the disappearance of the void is subordinated to the disappearance of the
dim.-AB] Void cannot go. Save dim go. Then all go. All not already gone.
Till dim back. Then all back. All not still gone. The one can go. The twain
can go. Dim can go. Void cannot go. Save dim go. Then all go (p. 1 8; p.
97
).
160
There always remains the possible hypothesis of an absol u te
disappearance that would present itself as the disappearance of exposi t ion
itself, and therefore as the disappearance of the dim. But one must not fget
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that this hypothesis is beyond saying, that the imperative of saying has nothing
to do with the possibility of the disappearance of the dim. Hence the
disappearance of the dim, like its reappearance, is an abstract hypothesis that
can be fOImulated but which does not give rise to any experience whatsoever.
There is a horizon of absolute disappearance, thinkable in the statement ' dim
can go'. Nevertheless, this statement remains indiferent to the entire protocol
of the text.
The problem will therefore centre upon the appearance and
disappearance of shades. This is a problem of an altogether different order
which is associated to the question ofthought. On the contrary, the hypothesi
of the disappearance of the dim is beyond saying and beyond thought. More
generally, this new problem is to do with the movement of shades.
The investigation ofthis point is very complex, and I will limit myself
here to presenting my conclusions alone.
First, the one is not capable of movement. The fgure ofthe old woman
which is the mark of the One, will certainly be termed ' stooped' and the
' kneeling' , all of which seems to express change. But the crucial proviso is
that we are dealing here only with prescriptions of saying, rules of the worst,
and never with a movement proper. It is not true that the one stoops or kneels.
The text always states that one [on] will say kneeling, sunk, etc. All this is
recribed by the logic of lessening within worsening, but does not thereby
mdIcate a capacity of the one [I 'un] to any sort of movement.
The first thesis is therefore Parmenidean: what is counted as one insofar
. . '
as It IS only counted as one, remains indifferent to movement.
.
Seccnd statement: thought (the head, the skull) is incapable of
dISappearIng. There are a number of texts concering this point. Here is one:
The head. Ask not if it can go. Say no. Unasking no. It cannot go. Save
dim go. Then all go. Oh dim go. Go for good. All for good. Good and all
_
1 9; p. 98). 161
This ' Oh dim go' remains without efect. As we've seen, you can always
say 'Oh dim go' , the dim does not care in the least.
What is important for us then is that the head is incapable of
disappearing, save of course the dim go, but then all go.
Consequently, we must note that the head has the same status as the
void when it comes to the question of disappearance. This is exactly
Parmenides' maxim: ' It is the same to think and to be' . Parenides designates
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ql lestion of disappearance - which is the very test or ordeal of being
l l II"stward H L declares that the skull and the void are under the same sign.
This means that ultimately only the other, or the two, supports
I l l ovement: this is the third thesis.
This is a classical thesis, a Greek thesis. There is no movement but of
| hcpair, i .e. of the old man and the child. It is they who walk, who plod on.
Jht - is the idea that movement qua alteration is consubstantially linked to
|hc ' other' . But what is significant here is that this movement is in a certain
,ense immobile. When speaking of the old man and the child - this is a
veritable leitmotiv the text will constantly say:
Plod on and never recede (p. 1 3; p. 93).
16
2
There is movement, but there is an interal immobility to this movement.
They plod on and never recede. What does this mean? Of course, this means
that there is movement (they plod on), but that there is only one situation of
heing, that there is only one ontological situation. One will also say: there is
but one place. This is what is declared very early on by the maxim:
No place but the one (p. 1 1 ; p. 92).
16
3
There is but one place, or one universe; there is only one figure of
being, not two. For the pair effectively to recede, for it to recede in going,
there would have to be an other place, the pair would have to be able to pass
into another place. But there is no other place: 'No place but the one' . In
other words, there is no duality in being. Being is One in its localisation. This
is why movement must always be recognised, but, at the same time, must be
grasped as relative because it does not allow us to leave the unity of the
place. This is what is confirmed by the pair.
, m) Love
This immobile migration, which is that of the two, is deeply markcd hy
Beckett's conception of love. Here, it is the old man and the child, but i t
matters little. For what we have is the maxim of the two, and, in that prodi i Ll s
text on love that is Enough, Beckett presents us with the two oflove as a sorl
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of migration, which is at the same time a migration unto oneself Such is the
essence of love. The migration does not make one pass fom one place to
another. Instead, it is a delocalisation interal to the place, and this immanent
delocalisation finds its paradigm in the two of love. This explains why the
passages on the old man and the child are marked by a muted emotion, which
is very particular to Worstard Ho: the immobile migration designates what
could be called the spatiality oflove.
Here is one ofthese texts, in which a powerful and abstract tenderess
- echoing Enough - can be heard:
Hand in hand with equal plod they go. In the fee hands -no. Free empty
hands. Backs tured both bowed with equal plod they go. The child hand
raised to reach the holding hand. Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be
held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and
never recede. Backs ted. Both bowed. Joined by held holding hands.
Plod on as one. One shade. Another shade (. 1 3; p.93).
I
64
n ) Appea ri ng and Di sap peari ng . Change. The
Sku l l
A hypothesis accessible to the skull would be that the shades -between
a disappearance and a reappearance -have been modified. This hypothesis is
evo
.
ked and worked through, but it is expressly presented as a hypothesis of
saymg:
They fade [disparaissent]. Now the one. Now the twain. Now both. Fade
back [reapparaissent] . Now the one. Now the twain. Now both. Fade?
No. Sudden go. Sudden back. Now the one. Now the twain. Now both.
Unchanged? Sudden back unchanged? Yes. Say yes. Each time unchanged.
Somehow unchanged. Till no. Till say no. Sudden back changed. Somehow
changed. Each time somehow changed (. 14; p. 94).16
5
That there can be real changes, that is, changes caught between appearance
and disappearance, is not a hypothesis liable to afect the being of a shade;
rather, it is a hypothesis that the prescription of saying might forulate. It is
somewhat like above with ' Oh dim go' , or when one says ' kneeling' ,
'stooped', etc. It is necessary to distinguish what is an attribute of the shade
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In the end, with regard to shades of type one (the woman) and type two
( the old man and the child), only the immobile migration of the pair bears
witess to a movement.
Thus we are finally led to the question of the changes ofthe type three
shade, the skull, the skull fom which words ooze, the skull fom which the
prescription of saying oozes. At this juncture, there clearly intervenes the
halting point of which we spoke above: the structure of the cogito. Every
modifcation, disappearance, reappearance or alteration of the skull is blocked
by the fact that the skull must be represented as that which seizes itself in the
dim.
Therefore we cannot presume that everything has disappeared in the
skull. The hypothesis of radical doubt, which would affect the shades with a
total disappearance - subject to the prescription to be made by the skull --
cannot be maintained, for the same reasons that force Cartesian radical doubt
to impose limits upon itself. Here is the passage in question:
In the skull all gone [disparu]. All? No. All cannot go. Till dim go. Say
then but the two gone. In the skull one and two gone. From the void. From
the stare. In the skull all save the skull gone. The stare. Alone in the dim
void. Alone to be seen. Dimly seen. In the skull the skull alone to be seen.
The staring eyes. Dimly seen. By the staring eyes (p. 25-26; p. 102).1 66
The hypothesis of the disappearance of the shades, based on the fact
that they would have gone from the skull - and thus that they would no
longer be of the order of seeing or of ill seeing - does not entail the
disappearance of the all, the ' all go'; in particular, it does not entail the
disappearance of all the shades, because the skull, which itself is a shade,
cannot itself disappear or ' go' .
The Cartesian matrix is necessarily stated as follows: 'In the skll all
save the skull gone' . I think, therefore I am a shade in the dim. The skul l i s
the shade-subject, and cannot disappear; it cannot ' go' .
c) Of t he Su bject as Sku l l . Wi l l , Pai n, J oy
The subject as skull is fndamentally reducible to saying and seeing;
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the skull brings together staring eyes and a brain. But there are, as in Descartes,
other affections. In particular, there are the will, pain and joy, all of whose
places are assigned in the text. Each of these affections will be studied in
accordance with the method of worsening, that is, in their essential
' unlessenable least' .
What is the essential unlessenable least of the will? It is the will given
in its ultimate form, which is to will the non-will, or to will that there shall be
no more willing, that is, to will itself as non-will. In Beckett's own words this
is the ' longing that vain longing go' :
Longing the so-said mind long lost to longing. The so-missaid. So far so
missaid. Dint of long longing lost to longing. Long vain longing. And
longing still. Faintly longing still. Faintly vainly longing still. For fainter
still. For faintest. Faintly vainly longing for the least of longing.
Unlessenable least of longing. Unstillable vain least of longing still.
Longing that all go [que tout disparaisse] . Dim go. Void go. Longing go.
Vain longing that vain longing go (p. 36; p. 1 09).167
Many comments could be made regarding the correlations between
this passage and the canonical doctrines of will. We could say that willing is
shaped by the imperative of saying and that the ' all go' - the will that the
'vain longing that vain longing go' itself go or disappear - is the irreducible
trace of will, or that the will, as the imperative of saying, cannot but go on.
Pain is ofthe body (whilst joy comes from words). In the body, pain is
what provokes movement, and this is what makes it the first witness of the
remains of mind. Pain is the bodily proof that there are remains of mind,
inasmuch as it is what arouses the shades to movement:
It stands. What? Yes. Say it stands. Had to up in the end and stand. Say
bones. No bones but say bones. Say gound. No ground but say ground.
So as to say pain. No mind and pain? Say yes that the bones may pain till
no choice but stand. Somehow up and stand. Or better worse remains. Say
remains of mind where none to permit of pain. Pain of bones till no choice
but up and stand. Somehow up. Somehow stand. Remains of mind where
none for the sake of pain. Here of bones. Other examples if needs must. Of
pain. Relieffrom. Change of (. 9; p. 90).16
8
Joy, in the end, is on the side of words. To rejoice is to rejoice that there
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are so few words to say what there is to say. Joy is always the joy of the
poverty of words. The mark of the state of joy or of rejoicing - of what
rejoices - is that there are exceedingly few words to say it. Upon reflection,
this is entirely true. Exteme joy is precisely what possesses few or no words
to speak itself. Whence the fact that in the fgure of the declaration of love
there is nothing to say but ' I love you' - an extremely meagre statement,
because it finds itself in the element of joy.
I am thinking, in Richard Strauss 's Elektra, of the scene of the
recognition of Orestes by Elektra, in which Elektra sings a very violent
'Orestes! ' and the music is suddenly paralysed. Here we encounter a musical
passage injortissimo, but one that is absolutely formless and rather lengthy.
I have always liked that quite a lot. It is as if an unspeakable and extreme joy
were musically presented in the self-paralysis of the music, as if its interal
melodic configuration (which later on will present itself, over and over again,
in saccharine waltzes) were stricken by powerlessness: here is a moment of
'rejoicing' , understood as an impoverished disposition of naming.
Beckett says this very clearly. It is evidently linked to the fact that
there are poor remains of mind, and poor words for these poor remains:
Remains of mind then still. Enough still. Somewhose somewhere somehow
enough still. No mind and words? Even such words. So enough still. Just
enough still to joy. Joy! Just enough still to joy that only they. Only!
(p. 29; p. 1 04)16
9
So much for the subjective faculties other than seeing and saying, and
above all the three main ones (will, pain, joy). All things considered, what
we have here is a classical doctrine of the passions.
p) How can a Su bj ect be Thoug ht?
Given what we have just said, if we wish to proceed in the study of the
subject, we must do so subtractively. Fundamentally, Beckett's method is
like Husserl's epoche tured upside down. Husserl's epoche consists t n
subtacting the thesis of the world, in subtracting the ' there is' in order |O
then t towards the movement or the pure fux of that interiority which t >
directed at this 'there is' . Husserl's lineage origiates in Cartesian doubt.
The thetic character of the universe of the intentional operali On> O |
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consciousness is retracted in order to try to apprehend the conscious structure
that govers these operations, independently of any thesis concering the
world.
Beckett's method is precisely the opposite: it is a question of sUbtracting
or suspending the subject so as to see what then happens to being. The
hypothesis of a seeing without words will be forwarded. A hypothesis of
ords without seeing will also be made, together with a hypothesis of a
dIsappearance of words. And it will be noted that there is then a better seen
[du mieux vu] . Here is one of the protocols ofthis experiment:
Blanks for when words gone. When nohow on. Then all seen as only then.
Undimmed. All undimmed that words dim. All so seen unsaid. No ooze
then. No trace on sof when fom it ooze again. In it ooze again. Ooze
alone for seen as seen with ooze. Died. No ooze for seen undimmed.
For when nohow on. No ooze for when ooze gone (p. 40; p. 1 12).170
Here it would be necessary to explain the text in greater detail. We are
dealinwith a protocol of seeing that remains undimmed when the hypothesis
of a dIsappearance of words is made, the hypothesis of the real end of the
imperative of saying. Like Husserl 's epoche, this is a pure abstract hypothesis,
as well as an untenable hypothesis, one that is actually impracticable. In this
hypothesis, some light is shed on being. The inverse experiment can also be
caied out: subtracting sight and then asking oneself what is the destiny of
an III saying that is disconnected from seeing, fom ill seeing.
_ I shall not develop these experiments any frther. Ultimately, if we
recapItulate our argument about the question of disappearance we can obtain
three propositions.
First of all, the void is unworsenable once it is caught in the exposition
of
.
the dim. This means that there is no experience of being, only a name of
bem. A name commands a saying, but an experience is an ill saying and not
a saymg proper.
Sconly, the skull or subject cannot really be subtracted fom seeing
and aymg; It can only be subtracted in formal experiments [experiences], in
partIcular because for itself it is always 'not gone' .
Finally, the shades - i.e. the same and the other - are worsenable (from
the point of view of the skull) and are therefore objects of experience of
. . .
7
artIstIc exposItion.
Here is what is exposed, said and outlined in the text, together with a
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host of other things. In Worstward Ho, there is an entire doctrine of time, of
:;pace, of variations . . . we could go on forever.
At least until page 45 ( 1 1 5). Because fom tis point onwards, something
dse happens, whose complexity is such that long analyses would still be
required in order to get to the bottom of it. Let me simply indicate the essential
points.
c ) The Event
Until page 45, we remain within the parameters of the minimal set-up
that links being, existence and thought. It is at this point that we witness the
production of an event in the strict sense - a discontinuity, an event prepared
by what Beckett calls a last state. The last state is grosso modo what we have
just described: it is the last state as the last state of the state, the last state of
the saying of the state of things. This state is seized by the impossibility of
annihilation - ' save dim go' , which remains a hypothesis beyond saying.
17
l
The event -of whose trajectory we shall have to say more -will arrange,
or expose, an imperative of saying reduced (, leastened' ) to the statement of
its own cessation. The conditions will be modifed in and by the event in
such a way that the content of the 'on' will be strictly limited to the ' nohow
on' . What will remain to be said will simply be that there is nothing more to
be said. And thus we shall have a saying that has reached an absolutely
maximal degree of purification .
Everything begins with the recapitulation of the last state:
Same stoop for all. Same vasts apart. Such last state. Latest state. Till
somehow less in vain. Worse in vain. All gnawing to be naught. Never to
be naught (. 46; p. 1 1 5).
172
The last or latest state seals the process of worsening as interminable.
Its maxim is: ' Worse in vain' . But, once the recapitulation is complete thcre
brusquely occurs -in a moment introduced by ' sudden' -a sort of distancing
of this state to a limit position, which is like its absolute retreat into the interior
of language. As if everything that had been said, by being able to be said i n
its last state, suddenly found itself at an infinitesimal distance frol11 l Ut
imperative of language.
must be noted tat tis movement is absolutely parallel to the i rruptioll
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of the Constellation at the end of Mallarme's Coup de des. In my view, the
analogy is a conscious one - we shall see why. In this moment when there is
nothing more to say but 'behold the state ofthings, the things of being' (which
Mallarme says in the form: 'Nothing has taken place but the place') - when
one thinks that the text will stop there, that this maxim represents the last
word on what the imperative of saying is capable of-it is as though a kind of
addition took place. This addition is sudden, abrupt, in ruptue, and takes
place on a scene situated at a remove fom the one at hand, a scene in which
a metamorphosis of exposition is presented - a sidereal metamorhosis, or a
'siderealisation' [sideration]. It is not a question of the disappearance of the
dim, but of a retreat of being to its very limit. Just as in Mallare the question
of the dice-throw results in the appearance of the Great Bear, likewise what
was counted in the dim will here be fxed in pinholes - a closely related
metaphor. Here is the passage introduced by the clause of rupture, ' Enough' :
Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All
least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of
boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther. Nohow less.
Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.
Said nohow on (pp. 46-47; p. 1 1 6).173
I would simply like to insist upon a few points.
The intratextual, evental character of this limit-disposition is marked
by the fact that the ' sudden' is devoid of movement: ' Sudden all far. No
move and sudden all far' . Therefore it is not a change, but a separation; it is
another scene, doubling the scene that was primordially established.
Secondly - making me think that the Mallarmean configuration is
conscious - there is the passage: 'Vasts apart. At bounds of boundless void' .
This sounds very close to 'on high perhaps, as far as place can fse with the
beyond . . . a constellation. '174 I am absolutely convinced that Beckett's three
pins and Mallarme's seven stars are the same thing.
For thought, they are in fact the same thing: at the moment in which
there is nothing more to say but the stable figure of being, there emerges, in
a suddenness that amounts to a grace without concept, doverall configuration
in which one will be able to say 'nohow on'. Not an 'on' ordained or prescribed
to the shades, but simply 'nohow on' -the 'on' of saying reduced, or leastened,
to the purity of its possible cessation.
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However, the configuration of possible-saying is no longer a state of

heing, an exercise in worsening. It is an event, creating an afar. It is an
i ncalculable distancing. From the point of view ofthe poetics ofthe text, we
would need to demonstrate that this evental confguration -this ' sudden' - is
acsthetically or poetically prepared by a specific figure. In Mallarme, the
Constellation is prepared by the fgure of the master, drowning himself on
the surface of the sea. In Beckett, this fgural preparation, which deserves to
be admired, consists in the altogether unpredictable metamorphosis of the
one-woman into the gravestone, in a passage whose imagery of discontinuity
should alert us. Immediately prior to this passage, a page before the event at
the limits, we find the following:
Nothing and yet a woman. Old and yet old. On unseen knees. Stooped as
loving memory some old gavestones stoop. In tat old graveyard. Names
gone and when to when. Stoop mute over the gaves of none (p. 45; p. 1 1 5).1
75
This passage is absolutely singular and paradoxical in relation to what
we have argued hitherto. First of all, because it makes a metaphor emerge
with regard to the shades. The one-woman, the stoop of the one-woman,
literally becomes a gravestone. And on the stoop of this gravestone, the subject
is now given only in the erasure of its name, in the crossing out of its name
and date of existence.
It could be said that it is on the background of these ' graves of none' ,
on this new stoop, that the ' enough' indicates the possibility of the event. The
stoop opens onto the sudden, the anonymous tomb opens onto the astral pin.
m Coup de des, it is because the element of the place has managed to
metamorhose into something other than itselfthat the evental ruptue ofthe
constellation is possible.
In Worstard Ho, we have a grave; the old woman herself has become
a grave, a one-grave. Likewise, in Mallarme's poem we have the foam
becoming vessel and, in so doing, call1ing forth the vessel's captain, etc. We
have a transmigration of the identity of the shade into the figure ofthe gravc,
and when you have the grave, you also have the migration of the place: what
was dim, void, or unnameable place, becomes a graveyard. I call this a figural
preparation.
In effect, we can say that every event admits of a figural preparation,
that it always possesses a pre-eventalfigure. In our text, the figure i s gi ven
fom the moment that the shades become the symbol of being of an ex istel1cc.
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What is the symbol of being of an existence, if not the gravestone, on which
we find the name, as well as the dates of birth and death, effaced? This is the
moment when existence is ready to present itself as symbol of being and
when being receives its third name: neither void nor dim, but graveyard.
The grave presents the moment when, by a mutation interal to saying,
existence attains a symbolism of being, such that the nature of what one will
be able to pronounce with regard to being changes drastically. An altered
ontological scene doubles the last state, which proves to be not the last, but
only the latest. There is a state superumerary to the last state -precisely the
one that constitutes itself all of a sudden. Having been figurally prepared, an
event is what happens so that the latest state of being will not be the last.
And what will remain in the end? Well, a saying on a background [ond]
of nothing or of night: the saying of the 'on', of the 'nohow on', the imperative
of saying as such. Ultimately, this saying is the terminus of a sort of astral
language, floating above its own ruin and on the basis of which all can begin
again, all can and must recommence. This ineluctable recommencement can
be called the unnameable of saying, its ' on' .176 And the good - that is, the
proper mode of the good within saying - is to sustain the 'on'. That is all. To
sustain it without naming it. To sustain the ' on' and to sustain it at the extreme,
incandescent point at which its sole apparent content is: 'nohow on' .
But in order for this to be, an event must go beyond the last state of
being. Then and only then can I and must I continue. Unless, in order to
recreate the conditions for obeying this imperative, one must fall asleep a
little; the time necessary to conjoin, in a simulacrum of the void, the dim
half-light of being and the intoxication of the event. Perhaps the entire
difference between Beckett and Mallarme lies here. The first forbids sleep,
like he forbids death. One must remain awake. For the second, afer the work
of poetry one can also ret to the shade - through the suspension of the
question, through the saving interruption. This is because Mallarme, having
posited, once and for all, that a Book is possible, can rest content with ' tries
in view of better' [d'essais en vue du mieux], and sleep between attempts. In
this regard, I approve of his being a French faun, rather than an Irish
insomniac. 177
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Yes, of course, there is in Beckett what does not happen, what insists
on not happening - like Godot, like Molloy in search of hi
.
s mother. /+
there is also repetition, like in the discouragement that afflIcts the bodIes
busy looking for their lost one in the cylinder of the world.

But why not begin instead with what happens, with thIS fIgure 01
suddenness that seizes the prose, disrupting both its rhythm and its muyc1
Why not begin with the link between the impatience of the 'Enogh! ' und

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suddenness that also summons the distant, that constitutes the dis
appropriation of our enslavement to the monotony of the near. Let us listen to
the almost stellar ending of Worstard Ho:
Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All
least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of
boundless void (WH, p. 46; NO, p. 1 1 6).
1 7
9
Alteratively, we could begin with the naming of what happens. Afer
all, for Beckett, to find the name of what does not happen is a matter of
comedy - like in the amusing facility of the proper name ' Godot', this
occasional God of the theatre. On the contrary, to fnd the name of what
happens demands an invention within language, a poetic forcing. Like when
- in H Seen H Said- a sound comes to unsettle the inspection of proximity
and awaken the mind. Beckett's question is: How can this sound be said? In
other words: How can the sound be said as the event is waning? This is his
answer:
Forthwith the uncommon common noun collapsion. Reinforced a little
later if not enfeebled by the infequent slumberers. A slumberous collapsion
(ISIS, p. 55; NO, p. 83).1 80
And having matched - in order to name what happens - the uncommon to
the infequent, we are accorded the gift, as the paragraph concludes, of a
' gleam of hope. By the grace of these modest beginnings' (ISIS, p. 55; NO,
p.
g_ . s
Where then are these ' modest beginnings' ? In the prose, in the beauty
of the prose, through which courage is incessantly renewed. For if the
paradoxical exactitude of an ill said in prose comes to correspond to the ill
seen of experience, then the awakening of mind under the injunction of 'what
happens' gives us, at least, the courage to continue.
Of course, the fnction of words is that of bringing about the failure of
things, because things themselves are failures of being. The ground of
everything is but void and dim. The aim of the prose is to hold the worstward
ho, to ill say the ill seen, to fail in words the failure of experience. It must:
Say that best worst. With leastening words say least best worse. For want
of worser worst. Unlessenable least best worst (WH, p. 32; NO, p. 1 06).182
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But the whole problem is that this failure of prose is by no means given.
|l i san effort and an ascesis, because words themselves ring clear. As Beckett
says: 'How almost true they sometimes almost ring! How wanting in inanity!
Say the night is young alas and take heart' (WH, pp. 20-21 ; NO, p.
qq_.s
Artistic or poetic efort is a work upon language whose aim is to bring language
under the rule of the worst. But this barren effort draws its energy from a
lortuate disposition oflanguage, a sort of aura of correspondence that haunts
language, and which is where - in a fgure of torsion - the writer looks for
the courage to break with correspondence itself. '
This is why we must begin with beauty. What is beauty? It is the trace
- within the ascetic efort to submit saying to the 'unlessenable least best
worst' - of the paradoxical courage that feeds this effort, and which is
nourished by the ' ringing clear' of words, by their lack of ' inanity' , and by
their fallacious virtue of correspondence. Beauty surges forth when we
understand that the path of words goes counter to the demand of thought.
This is because words bear the courage of the mUltiple and the true, whilst
thought obstinately seeks to approach the void. Beauty takes place when the
poetic naming of events seizes thought at the edge of the void.
By surprise, beauty superimposes the path of words onto the counter
path of thought. In other words, it superimposes the multiple onto the void.
This is why in Beckett we fnd three regimes of prose, three configurations
of beauty.
The first comes forth when words settle upon the inertia of being, upon
the still surface of what there is, respecting the countours of thought whilst
modifing its colour, like a golden dust spread upon the gray rock of the
planet. Let us listen to Lessness:
Earth sky as one all sides endlessness little body only upright. One step
more one alone all alone in the sand no hold he will make it. Ash grey little
body only upright heart beating face to endlessness. Light refge sheer
white blank planes all gone fom mind. All sides endlessness earth sky as
one no sound no stir (eSp, p. 1 56; GSP, p. 201).184
But we also fnd it -this prose brought to it greatest calm -when what.
remains of humanity walks the world without pain, benefting from a |uuu
compatible with the surest of maladies. Such is the case with the two loyers
in Enough, as she who renders their chronicle declares:
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I don't know what the weather is now. But in my life it was eterally mild.
As if the earth had come to rest in spring (CSP, p. 143; GSP, p. 1 91).1 85
Yes, we can certainly call this regime of prose that of mildness
[douceur] . Because within it everything happens, for a time, as ifthe path of
words doubled, almost silently, the counter-path ofthought -the one matched
by the other in a sort of immobile movement.
At the other extreme, we find what I will call Beckett's sarcastic prose.
Built almost entirely on rhythm, it gratingly utters - a little as with some of
Mahler's allegros, with a touch ofthe lop-sided and incongruous -that words
are an inadequate vehicle, that ill saying is always already too much of a well
saying, and that the counter-path of thought can only be rediscovered by
throttling words, SUbjecting them to a syntactical ordeal that forces them to
ill ring. Here is an altogether typical example of this regime (in From an
Abandoned Work):
Ah my father and mother, to think they are probably in paradise, they were
so good. Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there,
and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off
their bliss. Yes, I believe all their blather about the life to come, it cheers
me up, and unhappiness like mine, there's no annihilating that
(CSP, p. 1 33; GSP, p. 1 59). 186
We should understand that the prosodic regime of mildness seeks the
slowness of a coincidence, whilst the sarcastic regime attempts to establish a
perpetual lag [dlxalage] , and is therefore in need of an acceleration of saying,
of an energy that must be ceaselessly nourished. Words always bum when
they are forced to counter thought. But Beckett, in his own sovereign way,
knows that there is the slow combustion that takes place in the mild and
noctal embers of prose, on the one hand, and there is the dry fre of
incinerating sarcasm, on the other.
Finally, where can we fnd the entanglement of these two regimes; the
melding, in the long run, of these contrasting fires? It is in Beckett's most
ambitious prose, which holds together the two primordial regimes, oscillating
as it does between the emaciated primacy of the void and the proliferation of
ters, between mildness (be it the mildness of tears) and violence (be it the
violence of laughter). This is a prose thoroughly recast in order to follow a
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hecause of a preoccupation with formal novelty, but because m the verbal

arks that are thereby opened one can follow, almost at every instant, both the
:;lI btractive counter-path of thought - which leads to the imminence of the
I lothing and the radiating path of words - which leads to the captue
.
of
what happens, as well as to a singular form of happiness. Such is the am1t10n
o|Beckett's worst understood prose, that of How It Is. Allow me a smgle
quote, where a long affirmative cadence, which recalls Bossuet, culminates

||:sarcasm:
from the next mortal to the next leading nowhere and saving correction no
other goal than the next mortal cleave to him give him a name train up
blooody him all over with Roman capitals gorge on his fables unite for life
in stoic love to the last shrimp and a little longer (HIl, p. 69; HIl US p.
62)187
Let us call this third regime of prose and beauty the regime of
metamorphoses.
Behold Beckett: the confident poet of mildness, the rhythmic master of
sarcasm the constructor of metamorhoses.
, .
will always be a question of making sense of the magmfcent formula
from The Unnamable: ' I alone am man and all the rest divine' (T, p. 302; J,
p. 300). To relegate the divine and its curse to the periphery of saying, n to
declare man naked, without either hope or hopelessness, relentless, survlvmg,
and consigned to the excessive language of his desire.
.
But also to let each and every one know that it is necessary to be faithfl
which is not so easy - to Vladimir's sentence in Waitingfor Godot: 'But at
this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, wheter we like it or
not' (CDW, p. 74; WG, p. 5 1).
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Revised by Nina Power
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And rew Gi bson
Alain Badiou's work on Beckett radically takes issue with what he
takes to be a distinct and coherent tradition I ing through Beckett criticism.
Badiou argues that the tradition has too ofen made of Beckett an absurdist Or
existentialist, a nihilist or tragic pessimist. In doing so, it has efectively always
contemplated Beckett as its own opposite, as the negative to the unrel Un|i ng
positivity of its own discourse. For it has invariably adopted the pO|n| O|

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view of the proprietor, for whom possessions are ' the only proof of being and
sense'. In its very admiration of Beckett, the tradition has declared its distance
from him. That distance is also the measure of its own worldliness. Badiou is
opposed to the view that Beckett moved towards ' a nihilistic destitution ,
towards a radical opacity of significations' . The criticism that produces this
insistence can understand Beckett only as inverting what it takes to be its
own fllness. For Badiou, however, from a philosophical perspective, that
fullness -of being and meaning -is no more self-evident than is the supposed
'poverty' of Beckett's art. From the philosopher's point of view, what primarily
commands attention, in Beckett's work, is not a condition of existential
deprivation. It is the evidence of labour, unremitting effort and, above all,
thought: ' Beckett speaks to us' , Badiou writes, with existentialist criticism in
mind, of something ' far more thought out than this two-bit, dinner-party vision
of despair' [ 'beaucoup plus pense que ce desespoir de salon' ] .
Strictly speaking, however, from an Anglo-American perspective the
critical tradition with which Badiou takes issue is one that now looks rther
dated. It has been superseded by the theoretical tum in Beckett studies: the
various theoretically informed, sophisticated and sometimes brilliant studies
of Beckett that have been appearing since the late eighties. Much of that
criticism has also taken issue with the tradition described by Badiou. Thomas
Trezise, for example, has called what he refers to as 'the pervasive association
of
.
Be
.
ckett's work with the ideology of existential humanism' into question,
prIncIpally because it ' derives from a phenomenological understanding of
the
.
h
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umn subject'

which Trezise is concered to interrogate (Trezise, p. 5).
WrItmg J 1 996, RIchard Begam suggests that readings of Beckett as either
' a itic nihilist' or an ' existential humanist' are being fast outstripped by
a CrItlcIsm that reads Beckett 'through the discourse of poststructuralism'
and drastically reconstitutes our understanding of his treatment of ' such
fndamental issues as the subject-object dialectic, the metaphysics of presence,
and the correspondence theory oftruth' (Begam, p. 8). Badiou's writings on
Beckett do not refer to this criticism, and he appears to be unaware of it.
What I want to do here, then, is to position Badiou 's account of Beckett
not in relation to those commentaries he in some small measure addresses
'
but in relation to a critical tadition with which he might appear more strikingl,
o compete
.
for a contemporary terrain. This seems all the more appropriate
n tat BadlOu has taken issue with many of the thinkers who have chiefly
IllspIred the tradition in question (Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Deleuze,
Foucault, Lyotard). He has called, for instance, for a reconfiguration of post-
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war French thought which would place him on one side, perhaps surprisingly,
| i ithe company of Sarte and Lacan (a Sartre and Lacan one must imagine
read in Badiou's own distinctive terms), and, on the other side, contemporary
I l cideggerians, Bergsonians and those heirs to the linguistic tum that, in his
Maniesto for Philosophy, he calls ' the sophists' . I shall proceed by identifing
what I take to be five principal concers in the dominant discourses in Beckett
eriticism over the past fifeen years. I call these concers: the logic of reversal;
the general economy; repetition; the instability of the name; the dissolution
of the subject. These five themes are by no means clearly and consistently
distinct fom one another: they play against each other, and sometimes overlap.
Nor are they necessarily discoverable in all the positions to which I shall
refer: indeed, I will simplif matters by associating each theme with one
Beckett critic in particular, scattering references to others here and there. In
one form or another, however, the themes recur. I would maintain that, taken
together, they represent a kind of disposition within Beckett criticism at the
current time, a set of parameters within which it has been operating. By and
large -and one would have to except here, for instance, Leslie Hill's emphasis
on the ' emotional fervour' and ' intellectual disarray' to be found in Beckett's
work (Hill, p. x) - the tendency of the disposition in question has been to
rethink the Beckettian proj ect as determined less by mood (the angst or despair
of the existentialist, for example) than by what I would term the diagnostic
attitude. I shall counterpose the five themes to fve emphases that I take to be
central to Badiou's account of Beckett. There can be no question of
systematically opposing Badiou's Beckett at every point to what we might
call the postmoder or poststructuralist Beckett. There are clearly occasions
on which Badiou and at least some of the new Beckett criticism have a certain
ground in common
.
Towards the end, too, I shall argue that, whilst Badiou's
own terms of reference constitute a signifcant contribution to Beckett studies,
they are not themselves immune to question and -more importantly -neither
is the overall philosophical structue in which he locates them. To some extent,
Badiou's terms may seem to ask for a rather different set of applications or
distributions to those proposed by Badiou himself I shall nonetheless claim
that Badiou's work has the power to orient Beckett studies in a different
direction: towards understanding Beckett's work, neither as determined by
mood nor as engaged in a practice of theoretical diagnosis, but rathcr u u
project of thought, one whose implications are ultimately ethical.
According to the concept of a logic of reversal, in Beckett's work
opposite terms are exchangeable, implode, cannot be kept apu|| . Jhc
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architecture that once cemented them in place, baldly confonting one another,
has come asunder. Its joints have sprung loose. From now on, interminably
and indeterminably, there is play within the system. Beckett sees this before
others; alteratively, he sees it - and articulates it -with special penetration.
Leslie Hill in particular has meticulously traced the logic of reversal through
a range of Beckett's works. Indeed, I have borrowed the ter fom him. Beckett
is committed to defending the autonomy of literary texts, says Hill. His
commitment leads him to define fction ' as an activity oflanguage in which,
paradoxically, the foundations of meaning are attacked by the uncontrollable,
self-inverting character of meaning itself' (Hill, p. 6). Beckett is concered
with ' what could be called indifference'. that which is in-between positions
of meaning, neither positive nor negative, constantly shifting and irreducible
to subject or object' . He therefore understands a logic of circularity - the
'purgatorial cycle' (Hill, p. 1 0) - as being what constitutes a modem literary
text. There is no dialectical union of opposites in Beckett's work, but rather a
movement of constant displacement. Thus at the very heart of Murphy, for
example, there lies paradox, oxymoron and chiasmus, contradictory apposition
and rhetorical inversion, an unstoppable play of convergences and divergences.
So, too, in Molloy, binaries become 'both crucial and indeterinate, significant
yet devoid of meaning' (Hill, p. 62). The signifcance of that great Beckettian
figure, aporia - patiCUlarly in the Trilog - is that it both describes and
challenges the possibility of a 'moment of passage' (Hill, p. 63), at once
articulating and suspending a structure of opposition. Theatre allows Beckett
to move even frther away fom dialectics (Hill, p. 1 32). Later prose texts
like The Lost Ones fall prey to ' aporetic contradiction' or ' a powerful
identificatory ambivalence' (Hill, pp. 1 55, 1 57). Logically enough, the
switchback aflicts the diference-indiference dyad itself. Thus in Watt, Watt's
quest is for 'the impossible difference' (Hill, p. 29) that will serve as anchor,
security, foundation, but instead encounters Knott, a figure of indiference,
' engulfment and indeterminacy, apathy and invisibility' (Hill, p. 27). At the
same time, however, indifference in Watt becomes an uncontrollable
proliferation of difference: Beckett ' dramatises the threat of engulfment by
indifference by multiplying all manner of differences, contrasts, distinctions
in his own text' (Hill, p. 34).
In efect, the logic of reversal instigates a hollowing or emptying out of
value; except that, for Hill, it is not so much value as 'positions of meaning'
that are at issue. This way of putting matters seems to me to be quite
characteristic of recent Beckett criticism. Here the gap between that criticism,
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and the existentialist and humanist criticism that preceded it, looks narower
t han it may initially have appeared to be. Where Beckett' s concer was
I()rmerly deemed to be an absence of sense (' absurdity'), recent criticism
now takes it to be the activity of sense-making, understood as differentiation.
|n either instance, the question of an already existent meaning is of cardinal
i mportance. By contrast, Badiou has been much concered to t philosophy
dccisively away fom hermeneutics and towards an interest in the emergence
of truths in their radical newness. If, as we will shortly see, this interest also
involves a reduction of experience to a finite set of minimal fnctions, these
are established as beyond interpretation. Not surprisingly, therefore, Badiou
does not read Beckett as engaged in a more or less deconstructive kind of
work. For he experiences the weight of doxa more oppressively than most
current deconstuctionists appear to, and understands Beckett as labouring
under the same oppression. In Badiou's terms, Beckett 'makes holes' in
knowledge. In contadistinction to contemporary Beckettians, Badiou stesses
historicity on the one hand and a principle of antagonism on the other. Here
the cardinal sentence appears on the first page of Treless Desire: ' thought
only subtracts itself fom the spirit of its time by means of a constant and
delicate labour' . Badiou's Beckett is not primarily engaged in an activity of
constatation, that is, in the registering and diagnosis of a general structure of
sense. With a force and decisiveness that, afer all, might mae him fnally
seem closer to Sartre than to Derrida, he rather commits his art to opposition,
a scrupulous but fercely corrosive assault on contemporary orthodoxies,
particularly as they are couched in language. Of course, one can hardly claim
that this assault has gone unnoticed by previous or indeed by contemporary
critics. Hill notes, for example, the 'peremptory and polemical' references to
'received opinion' in Beckett's essay 'Dante . . . Bruno. Vico . . . Joyce' and in
his monograph on Proust (Hill, p. 2). He asserts quite rightly that Beckett's
attitude of ' indifference' is also an ' abdication from the world's commercial
round' (Hill, p. 9). Similarly, recent critics like Richard Begam have reminded
us of and indeed done much to refine our sense ofthe extent to which Beckett's
art works to undermine established codes of representation. None the less,
the deconstuctive bent of recent criticism has made it wary of attributing to
Beckett's art a rigorously negative power. Badiou, by contrast, has no such
qualms.
The key term in the sentence fom Tireless Desire that I have just quotcd
is subtraction. It is subtraction, in effect, that Badiou counterposes to t l1
logic of reversal. Badiou asserts that, ' since Plato, philosophy is a D|c0kwi t h
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opinion. For the philosopher, everything that is consensual is suspect' . In
Badiou's philosophy, what he calls truths are not objects of knowledge but
holes made in the orders of knowledge and representation and indiscerible
to them. They appear as a subtraction from the particularity of what is curently
known. With Lacan in mind, Badiou calls this process a reduction of the
density of knowledge. Truths do not destroy a previous knowledge. They
rather traverse and fracture it. A tth is always distinct fom the realm of
what Badiou calls opinion, the realm customarily occupied by the human
animal going about its ordinary business and according to which this animal
sustains itself in its social existence. Truths appear as subtractions from
opinion. Philosophy formalises truths and places them in relation to one
another. It understands that they emerge in relation to the void (which is
precisely what means that they are always possible) and therefore takes its
bearings fom a ' subtractive' conception of being. But philosophy itself does
not produce truths. By the same token, it does not exactly subtract. Truths
appear in four domains; in other words, there are four spheres oflife in which
subtraction can take place: the political, the romantic, the scientifc and the
artistic. It is clear that, for Badiou, Beckett's work constitutes a primary
instance of art as an activity of subtraction. Beckett is concered with
subtraction as a patient, disciplined, vigilant elimination of doxa. In a fine
phrase, Badiou even suggests that Beckett's prose is itselfthe very movement
of 'negligence' ofthe mundane. It is seldom, if ever, writes Badiou, that one
finds a writer of Beckett's calibre so little exposed to the world and so little
compromised by his relations with it. Badiou partly shares the continuing
emphasis in recent criticism on Beckett's quarrel with Descartes. He would
also partly assent to Trezise's case for an anti-phenomenological Beckett. He
sees Beckett as inverting the Husserlian epoche and breaking with ' Cartesian
terrorism' . But the inversion and break are finally less important than a
fundamental allegiance, a shared commitment to subtaction. In this respect,
for Badiou, it would be crucial to register what Beckett once said about the
active force of his own will to self-impoverishment (in speaking of ' my desire
to make myself still poorer' ). Self-impoverishment would be an austere and
necessary clearing of the ground for thought, as distinct from the incorrigible,
muddy complicities of daily life (for Badiou insists that we are bound to
inhabit the world of opinion, we cannot do otherwise). True, the principle of
methodical ascesis to which Badiou is committed has no immediate
implication for subjectivity. But the structures that Beckettian self
impoverishment itself is concered so rigorously to undermine are arguably
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kss those of selfood than of the delusive corucopia of extant knowledge.

| | | any case, as we shall shortly see, Badiou's account of Beckett's development
does not precisely correspond to his own very specific conception of
sl I bjectivation. There is a sense in which, unlike what we might ter Badiou's
paradigmatic subject - Cantor would perhaps be the most obvious example
hi s Beckett never decisively moves beyond ' working with impotence,
ignorance', in Beckett's own famous phrase. In any event, in his suspension
ul all that is inessential, for Badiou, Beckett has long been exemplary, perhaps
above all others.
But if subtraction operates as a kind of clearing of the ground, what is
the thought that proceeds fom or along with it? Badiou describes it as what,
following Mallarme, he calls a mode of 'restricted action' (action restreinte).
This concept may be pointedly contrasted with the shif in recent Beckett
criticism away fom a Beckett understood in terms of a restricted economy
towards a Beckett whose work refers us to the general economy. The shif is
evident, above all, in Trezise's book Into the Breach, which is where these
terms chiefly fgure. For Trezise, the general economy - as opposed in
particular to the restricted economy of phenomenology - 'produces the world
. . . and exceeds it' as a ' strangeness constitutive of all familiarity' (Trezise, p.
30). Since phenomenology conceives of subjectivity as a 'separation fom
exteriority', the general economy is irreducible to its terms (Trezise, pp. 6,
8). For his part, however, Beckett understands that, however originary it
presents itself as being, all separation is itself conditioned. This is why he
gives up on an art of ' the feasible' : he recognises that literature ' in its very
secondarity belies the priority of that world that originates in the dis
appearance ofthe sign' (Trezise, p. 3 1). Beckettian art exposes the ' illusory
priority of consciousness' and ' its pre-originary involvement in an economy
of signification' that escapes it (Trezise, p. 32). It dramatises the immemorial
dispossession of subjectivity as ' an involvement with an outside' that is always
' already within' (Trezise, p. 33). Thus Molloy reverses the reversal by virtue
of which closure or separation appears to precede, found and condition ' its
own genesis' (Trezise, p. 48); Malone Dies reverses the phenomenological
pour-soi into the pour I ' autre of signifcation; and the 'non-self-coincidental
voice' of the Unnamable ' thematizes literature itself as the ex-pression of a
SUbjectivity beyond separation' (Trezise, p. 97). The personages in the Trilogy
are powerless because they cannot escape an ironical knowledge that, 0s
speaking subjects, they articulate themselves only on the basis of a mOc
fndamental intersubjectivity that they cannot articulate. In this m0nncr,
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Beckett calls to account ' the era in which the philosophy of separation has
striven to totalize the very alterity that conditions and exceeds it' (Trezise, p.
65).
The point is not exactly that Trezise's concept of alterity has no meaning
for Badiou, but rather that he sees alterity as banally self-evident, and therefore
as without any great importance. ' Infinite alterity, ' he writes, in his Ethics,
'is quite simply what there is' . What matters crucially is not alterity or ' the
infinite multiplicity of differences' , but sameness, understood as a feature
not of what exists already but of what 'comes to be' .
1
87 Badiou would certainly
have no interest in mounting a defence specifically of phenomenology or
phenomenological readings of Beckett. Yet his own account of Beckett takes
a very different direction to Trezise's. For Badiou's Beckett is not concered
with a concept of the general, but rather with the 'restricted action' of what
Badiou calls ' writing the generic' . Beckett's work is therefore not read as a
diagnosis of its own condition. The Beckettian project is rather a question of
determination and therefore also a mode of action. It constitutes itself as a
form of thought that is self-grounding or self-constituent, establishing its
own interal samenesses or consistencies. (We shall note a little later that
this emphasis creates certain problems for Badiou). It is worth reflecting
here on what Badiou says about the poem and, above all, the Mallarmean
poem in ' Que pense Ie poeme?' : the poem or work cannot be general or
refer to any generality.
1
89 In its singularity, it proffers not knowledge but
thought. The work has no object or objectivity. In its self-constitution, as its
own universe, it aims rather to deny or depose the obj ect. What emerges in
this denial of objectivity is pure thought or the Mallarmean 'pure notion' .
Nothing confirms the universe - constituted by and as the work -as having a
right to exist. In this respect, the work of art is pure afirmation (which is
how Badiou can claim that 'in an almost aggressive way, all of Beckett's
genius tends towards afrmation' , and yet, in doing so, mean something quite
different by afirmation to what the existential humanists meant). This is
generic work, in Badiou's understanding of it: Beckett reduces experience to
a set of signifcant minima, 'to certain major fnctions or axiomatic terms'
(Movement, Rest, the Same and the Other, the Logos); to certain questions
about these fnctions (the place of being, the subject, 'what happens' , the
existence of the pair); to certain responses to these questions (the grey-black
of Being, the solipsistic torture of the subject, the event and its nomination,
love). It is thus that he produces what Badiou calls his axiomatics of humanity.
Like Rimbaud and Mallarme, Beckett decides a universe into existence, and
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proceeds to make it consistent on the basis of that decision. Beckett writes,
says Badiou, at the very point at which the decision as to the being of the
I hi ng in question is made. He commits himself to a treatment of that which
alone constitutes an ' essential determination' (see ' The Writing of the Generic'
i 0 this volume). This ' determination' is neither an objective essence nor
established in its right to existence. It proceeds axiomatically, on the basis of
O soit, mettons, disons, or supposons que.
If, as Badiou adamantly maintains, his is a philosophy of sameness
rather than alterity, this does not mean that it is a philosophy of inexorable
recurrence. Something like the reverse is true: Badiou is intent on sustaining
uthought of the radical break - if within a set of rigorous conditions -under
the rubric of the event. Here again, his thinking takes a different tack to the
new Beckett criticism, particularly with regard to what has tended to be its
concer with repetition. Richard Begam, for example, reads Beckett in terms
of a Derridean scepticism according to which every attempt to move 'beyond'
or ' outside' metaphysics, humanism, anthropologism insistently returs to
'a set of ideas . . . which themselves participate in the anthropocentrism they
are meant to transcend' . For Begam's Beckett, there is no rupture that is not
a repetition. But the most signifcant and infuential study of repetition in
Beckett has been Steven Connor's Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theor and
Text. Connor does not simply assert the power of repetition over that of
newness in Beckett's work, but rather suggests that they share a complex
and problematic interelationship. Repetition does not necessarily have a
stymying efect on Beckett's world. It is not an index of an essential paralysis.
Nor does Connor read it as a centring or unifing force in Beckett's work.
Indeed, he suggests that Beckett's practice ' instances the powerfl possibilities
of reproduction over the sterile compulsions of replication' (Connor, p. 201 ).
He argues that repetition brings with it ' a principle of diference' , in Beckett,
that it even activates a 'perverse dynamism of difference' (Connor, p. 1 3).
This is hardly surrising, since, according to Connor, Beckett tends to dissolve
the difference between repetition and difference itself. Yet it is none the less
the case that Beckett's work ' shows a self-constraining movement in which
sameness always inhabits or inhibits what may initially present itself as
novelty' (Connor, p. 2). Connor's concept of a Beckettian ' self-constraint'
actually bears a certain resemblance to what Badiou means by ' restricted
action' . But Connor's Beckett can imagine nothing beyond the ' self
constraining movement' of his art. This means that that art is everywhere
intrinsically ambivalent: in Murphy, for example, ' repetition enacts u
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doubleness, asserting both the freedom of the language from referenti al
constraints and its interal emptiness and exhaustion' (Connor, p. 23). I |I
Krapp SLast Tape, as Krapp listens to himself, repetition opens up possibilities,
in that he recognises his ' ironic non-coincidence with himself', the truth of
self-difference (Connor, p. 1 28). On the other hand, it closes possibilities
down, in that the play also demonstrates the Derridean principle of the graft,
according to which ' every utterance can be taken up or enveloped by some
other occasion' (Connor, p. 1 30). The effects of repetition thus also tend
towards inertia, a reminder of ' the death into writing of every living word'
(ibid.).
As Connor describes it, the ineluctable ambivalence of repetition in
Beckett thus traps him, again, in the endlessness of Hill 's 'purgatorial cycle' .
There is no exterior to this purgatory. There cannot be, because the power of
the relationships between repetition and diference transcends time and history.
For Badiou, however, this is not the case, because tere is always the possibility
of an event. The event is an ' extra-being' . ' Every singular truth' , writes
Badiou, 'has its origin in an event. Something must happen, in order for there
to be something new. Even in our personal lives, there must be an encounter,
there must be something which cannot be calculated, predicted or managed,
there must be a break based only on chance'. An event is a substanceless
fagment of pure fortuitousness. It is also ephemeral, and therefore precisely
historical. It arrives as a supplement to being, in that it both pertains to a
given situation and yet is also outside and detached from the latter's 'rules' ,
constraining us to decide on a new way of being which conservatism would
decree to be impossible. Of course, no newness is absolutely new: the event
must compose with elements of the situation as given. In this respect, Badiou
does not so much oppose the very ters in which Begam and Connor construct
their Becketts as alter the proportions of those terms. Nonetheless, what
istnguishes Badiou's account of the 'purgatorial cycle' - which he interrets,
U hIS own way, as a seemingly interminable oscillation between the dim or
grey-black of being and the solipsistic torture ofthe cogito - is that it ultimately
presents Beckett with an impasse fom which he gradually recognises that he
must work his way fee. Thus, fom Texts for Nothing onwards, Beckett's
work begins to open itself up to the event: to chance, the incident, ' sudden
modifications of the given', even to the possibility of happiness and love.
Becktt effects this, not least, to ret to an earlier point, by abandoning the
questIon of meaning. This is evident in later work from The Lost Ones to
Enough to Seen II Said. Worstward Ho even presents us with a kind of
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' ; l I l 1 l 1nary of Beckett's trajectory, in this respect, tracing the course of a long
| houIthat ends in an impasse. This impasse, however, is decisively broken
prccisely by an event.
If the event is not to sink back unnoticed into the grey-black of being,
| it) wever - if it is to inaugurate what Badiou calls a truth procedure - it must
hc held, stabilised in a trace. This means that it must be named. For Badiou,
i i i Beckett's later work, the activity of naming becomes very important. Here,
again, Badiou seems at odds with recent critics, who have repeatedly inisted
l the instability of the name or what Carla Locatelli calls ' the realIty of
semantic instability' (Locatelli, p. 229), with Watt's deliberations on the word
' pot' as a kind of locus classicus or textual crux. For Locatelli, ' the
rundamental dichotomy between words and things' is what powers the
theoretical interrogation sustained by Beckett's art (Locatelli, p. 5 1 ). She pits
Beckett unstintingly against naIve referential fallacies and logocentric closure.
In Locatelli's account, Beckett moves steadily towards a ' literature of the
unword' by means of a process of ' active and lucid "unwording'" (Locatelli,
p. ix). His art does not exactly repudiate the practice of naming, however.
Instead, he institutes a ' suspension of designation' (Locatelli, p. 6) which, by
means of paradox, contradiction, lacunae, 'pseudo-referents' (Locatelli, p.
58), ' comic slippage' , ' irresolution' (Locatelli, pp. 1 00- 1 ) and other devices
produces ' a type of verbal art that faces the problem of the visibility ofreali
by deconstructing the unity of saying' (Locatelli, p. 228). In fact, LocatellI
also describes 'designative suspension' as a process of ' subtraction' . But the
context for what she means by the term is not what Badiou sees as a given
order of knowledge pertaining to a situation but, as in other recent studies of
Beckett, the 'logocentric orientation that characterises Wester thought' (pp.
225-26).
Badiou puts this familiar emphasis into reverse. For Badiou - and this
makes him quite remarkably distinct from many of his philosophical and
theoretical contemporaries - there is at least one domain in which language
must be deemed to ' come afer' , to have a secondary or subordinate fnction.
' There exists a realm of the thinkable', he asserts, ' that is inaccessible to the
so-called total jurisdiction oflanguage' . As Badiou afrms the sheer radicality
of the event in its rarity, so too he also affrms its radically heterogeneous
relation to the orders of language. The event is hors loi (outside the law) and
a supplement to the situation at hand. As such, it is irreducible to the terms of
that situation, and is thus subtracted fom any and every regime of sense. It
must therefore be named; in efect, it calls for a name, and this namc serves
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This way ofthinking Beckett in relation to subjectivity is quite foreign
to Badiou. For one thing, it takes Beckett's ' characters' to be representative
of the generalised conditions of subjectivity. But, as I observed earlier, for
Badiou, like Mallann6's poems, Beckett's art cannot be general or refer to
any generality. Beckett decides a world into existence, in all its singularity.
The question of subjectivation needs to be approached quite diferently,
principally in relation to Beckett himself. Badiou's conception of the subject
is very different from the one on which Katz depends. There is no universal
or general subject whose deconstruction would now be imperative. Subjects
are subjects of events, and specifc to them. A truth - in what we saw earlier
is Badiou's sense of the term - is the consequence of an event. Truths persist
because of the allegiance of their subjects, who commit themselves to truths
and insist upon them. The subj ect i s constructed in a process of
supplementation that makes the subject more and other than he or she has
hitherto been; or, better still, it even ' induces' a subject. Ordinarily, the human
animal comports itself in terms of Spinoza's ' perseverance in being' , the
pursuit of interests, self-preservation. Individual consciousness is indeed
always already ' deconstructed' ; it is an indeterminate and heterogeneous flux.
Identity is no more than a given state of this flux, a representation expressing
a more or less habitual preference for certain features of the fux at the expense
of others. The representation in question is what one customarily takes for
the stable structure of a self. But this perseverance is the law of one's being
only insofar as one knows oneself. The experience of the event and the
'process' of a truth do not fall under this law. Routine perseverance in being
can be broken by an event, an encounter with something that refses to
correspond to what one has taken for the law of one's being and is not
representable in its terms. It is thus that subjectivation begins.
A concept of fdelity is therefore crucial to Badiou's thought. The
subjects of a truth remain faithfl to the event that inaugurated the truth in
question. Fidelity is the 'process' of continuing within a situationfrom the
point ofview ofthe event that has come to supplement it. It is the determination
to think a world according to the principle of what has come to change it, to
make it new. SUbjectivation is fidelity to the interruption constituted by the
event and therefore a continuing resistance to the law. Subjectivity is
perseverance in what has broken one's perseverance in being. In a phrase of
Lacan's that Badiou returs to repeatedly, the imperative undergone in
subjectivation is 'ne pas ceder sur son desir' ('not to give up on one's desire').
The question is: how am I to continue to exceed my own being, to remain
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lrue to the shock of an event that came to me fom beyond the terms of my
knowledge? How am I to remain true to 'son desir', one Sdesire, my desire
as what I do not know about myself? How do I continue to will something
that I could not have willed to start with, that could only have come to me
through an encounter?
In Badiou's account of him, Beckett possesses two qualities that might
seem to indicate fdelity, in Badiou's sense of the term: ascesis and vigilance.
The first is intrinsic to Beckett's practices of subtraction and 'restricted action' .
Beckett engages in them with what is, for Badiou, a kind of principled
intransigence. In other words, he refses to give up on a desire that has
overtaken him. His is a ' constant and delicate labour' undertaken without
promises or guarantees, and with no certain knowledge of where it is tending .
Indeed, it led Beckett precisely into crisis and impasse. But it is also at the
very heart ofthe Beckettian lesson, which is a lesson in measure, exactitude
and courage. As regards vigilance: attentiveness - attentiveness, that is, to
the possibility of the most radical difference that is the event -is or becomes
Beckett's very principle. Badiou fnally contrasts a vigilant Beckett with
Mallarme the Irish insomniac with the French faun. For Mallarme, says
,
Badiou, it is always possible to break fom the poetic endeavour, to relinquish
the efort, to suspend activities, to cease to pose the poet's question. Mallarme
can always retur to the indeterminacy from which the poetic endeavour
springs and will spring again. There is no possibility of any relaxation in
Beckett. His work has no place for a suspension of operations. Here, again,
he is intransigent, not only in his asceticism, but in his injunction to
watchflness.
But there is an oddity, here. As I suggested earlier, Badiou's account of
Beckettian fidelity does not exactly correspond to his larger account of the
structure of subjectivation itself. Subjectivation begins with an event, to which
the subject then declares his or her fidelity. But Beckett is not the subject of
an event, for Badiou; at least, he has given no indication that he sees Beckett
in this way. Rather, Beckett is faithful to an exteriority, to what lies outside
te particularity of what is currently known. Initially, this commitment appears
only in negative form, in the austere operations of subtraction and the
singularity of 'restricted action' . After Texts for Nothing, however, it becomes
a commitment to the possibility of the event. But neither commitment is
precisely an instance of fidelity, since there is a sense in which Beckett has
nothing to which to be faithfl. Indeed, Badiou has preferred to speak of
Beckett's courage, rather than his fidelity. One might propose of course that
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the very extent to which Badiou's version of Beckett departs or differs from
the terms of his own philosophy actually makes him look less open than the
new Beckett criticism to the charge of using Beckett as an exemplifcation of
a prior set of decisions. The very rif between Badiou's philosophical system
and his version of Beckett's art helps to preserve an aesthetic practice in its
specifcity, as a procedure whose truth is sui generis, both immanent and
singular. This would be consistent with Badiou's assertion, notably in '
and Philosophy' , fom the Petit manuel d'inesthetique, that philosophy does
not produce truths, as art does, but rather grasps, announces and displays
them; that its relation to a n artistic truth will therefore always be in some
sense secondary. 19
0
Such arguments, however, do not wholly dispose of the problem. Badiou
has a quite unBeckettian attachment to the clarity of narrative sequence. His
accounts of the progress of a truth or the process of subjectivation and of
Beckett's career both take the form of orderly, sequential narrative. The touble
is that the second narrative does not conform to the frst. Furthermore, the
narrative of Beckett's career will hold good only if modifed to the point
where it hardly looks like a plausible narative at all. The early Beckett does
not commit himself to subtraction, for instance, without waverings and
demurrals. As I have argued elsewhere, Murphy is an ironic account of the
problematics of subtraction understood, in this instance, as a principle central
to moderism. For all Badiou's claims that, in How It Is and The Lost Ones,
we find a Beckett concered to tum away fom the agonistics of the cogito
and towards the other, both are principally later instances of a practice of
'restricted action' which offer no more obvious hope of liberation than did
the Trilog. This is indicative: Badiou appears reluctant to countenance the
possibility that there might be a paradoxical or problematic aspect to his twin
insistence on the self-founding character of Beckettian thought on the one
hand and Beckett's desire to open his art up to the event or encounter on the
other. Is the relationship between these two principles not partly contadictory?
Is there not, in Beckett's work as a whole, a kind of sporadic, irregular
oscillation between them that cannot be reduced to logical or chronological
order? So, too, Badiou's account of the place of the event in Beckett seems
unduly confining, both in terms of period (with the exception of Watt, Beckett
afer 1 960) and modality (the event happens, and is named). Is there no sense
of events in the Trilog? If not, is that just the case because Badiou can only
uderstand the event in one particular, narratable dimension, as founding the
progress ofa truth? Does not Badiou's theory of the event actually also require
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a theory of a play in being, ' eventflness' , a version or, better, an equivalent
of Heideggerian Ereignis? Might not Beckett be concered with this play,
and thus with other kinds of event, as well as the one that interests Badiou?
Might he not be much concered, in Texts for Nothing, for example, with
what Bennington has called 'writing the event?' Might Badiou' s understanding
of the Beckettian event need to be supplemented fom elsewhere, notably,
perhaps, from Lyotard? Beckett's treatment of the event is arguably
multifarious, heterogeneous and uneven, and cannot be encapsulated in
narrative form.
Leslie Hill has stressed the danger of taking ' a misleading teleological
approach to Beckett's literary project' (Hill, p. 1 21 ). For all his own distrust
of teleological assumptions, it seems to me that Badiou has not been altogether
successfl in avoiding this trap. In fact, I would suggest that his narrative of
Beckett needs to be worked over in an awareness of the very principle of
disunity and complicating incoherence in Beckett's work to which the new
Beckett criticism has so efectively successflly alerted us. In this respect, at
least, the two critical dispositions should not be placed in polar opposition.
That said, however reworked and redistributed, Badiou's terms of reference
- subtraction, 'restricted action', the event, naming-as-missaying and fdelity
or courage - seem to me to offer an important new framework for
understanding Beckett. This famework is ethical. Recent Beckett criticism
has found in Beckett a writer concered to elucidate or to deconstruct - to
diagnose - the generalised conditions within which meaning or truth is
produced. In Badiou's own specific sense, he and Beckett, too, are interested
in sets of conditions for truths. They are partly concered with the conditions
ruptured by truths, or upon which truths supervene, as in the case of the
Beckettian concer with the reduction of experience to a set of major functions.
They are also much preoccupied with the formal criteria for the appearance
of truths. But the postmoder or post-structuralist Beckettian's attention to
the conditions of truth necessarily problematises truth itself At the very least,
it shrinks truth's scope. In Badiou, by contrast, truths are added on to their
conditions, to the world. This is the case because truths are singular not general.
They are historically inexistent or ' indiscerible' before their emergence, if
universal in their tajectory in so far as they are available to all. This conviction
categorically deterines Badiou's reading of Beckett. Beckett's art is founded
on a fierce resistance to doxa. It opens up a space for a diferent construction
of the world through an axiomatic procedure whose mode is hypothesis. Whilst
failure never ceases to haunt this project, tentatively, contradictorily, fitfully,
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and by a variety of diferent means, Beckett edges towards a faith in possibility.
This is also a faith in transformation whose token is the transformation of
language itself To retur to the Sartre with whose project Badiou partly
identifes his own, one might think of Badiou's Beckett as granting at least a
kind of minimal credibility to the assertion, in the Critique ofDialectical
Reason, that ' man exists only in flashes' . Such a project - a project whose
ultimate bearing is surely on the legacy of a century of disaster, one of what
Beckett calls 'the times of the great massacres' - could only be undertaken
with the extraordinary and selfless courage that has long been attributed to
Beckett. As Badiou's writings help us see, this project is, in the highest degree,
an ethical one.
Bi bl i ogra phy
BEGAM, Richard, Samuel Beckett and the End ofModernit (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1 996)
CONNOR, Steven, Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory and Text (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1 988)
HILL, Leslie, Beckett ' Fiction: In Diferent Words (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1 990)
KATZ, Daniel, Saying (No More: Subjectivit and Consciousness in the
Prose ofSamuel Beckett (Evanston, Illinois: Northwester University
Press, 1 999)
LOCATELLI, Carla, Unwording the World: Samuel Beckett ' Prse Works
After the Noble Prize (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1 990)
TREZISE, Thomas, Into the Breach: Samuel Beckett and the Ends of
Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1 990)
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1 [' L' ecriture du generique: Samuel Beckett', in Conditions (Paris, Editions du Seuil:
1 992), pp. 329-366. This text was read out in 1 989, in the context of the Conferences
du Perroquet (a series oflectures set up by I 'Organisation politique in Paris). It was
published as a conference pamphlet and has long been out of print. It will be noted
tat, since this lecture was given, Samuel Beckett has died. And that Worstward Ho
has been admirably translated into French by
E
dith Fouier, under the title Cap au
7
pire (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1 991). ]
2 [Mirlitonnade is a Beckettian neologism used as the title for a set of poems written
for the most part between 1 976 and 1 978, which Beckett himself described as 'gloomy
French doggerel' (quoted in James !owlson, Damned to Fame: The Lie o/Samuel

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1 9 [We are here following Beckett's usage for the translations of (monce and
enoneiation, following a suggestion by Anne Banfield. Badiou's discussion here echoes
Michel Foucault's distinction (itself originating with Benveuiste) between an
'enunciating subject' [sujet del 'enoneiation] and a ' subject of the statement' [sujet de
I 'enonce] . See The Archaeolog ofKnowledge (London: Routledge, 1 989) p. l 07. ]
20 [ . . . ]je croyais par moments que ce serait la ma recompense d 'avoir si vaillamment
parte, entrer encore vivant dans Ie silence [ . . . ] (. 1 83).
21 Mapensee s 'est pensee et [ . . . ]je suis parfaitement mort [letter to Cazalis, May 14,
1 867].
22 Moi je ne pense, si c ' est la cet afolement vertiineux comme d 'un guepier qu 'on
enfume, que de passe un certain degre de terreur (p. 1 06).
23 [ . . . ] ilfaut continuer, je ne peux pas continuerje vais continuer (. 21 3).
24 [ . . . ] un qui parle en disant, tout en parlant, Qui parle, et de quoi, et un qui entend,
muet, sans comprendre, loin de tous [ . . . ] . Et cet autre [ . . . ] qui divague ainsi, a coups
de moi a pourvoir et de lui depourvus [ . . . ] . Voila un joU trio, et dire que tout 9a ne fait
qu 'un, et que cet un ne fait que rien, et quel rien, il ne vaut rien (. 1 99).
25 Fut-il jamais un temps ou plus question de questions? Mort-nees jusqu 'a la
deriere. Avant. Sitot con9ues. Avant. OU plus question de repondre. De ne Ie pouvoir.
De ne pouvoir ne pas vouloir savoir De ne Ie pouvoir. Non. Jamais. Un reve. Voila la
reponse (. 46).
26 [For a meta-ontological presentation of Bad iou's theory of orientations in thought,
see Meditation 27 ofL'etre et l 'evenement (Paris. Seuil, 1 988), pp. 3 1 1 -3 1 5. ]
27 [On the relationship between the concepts of generic and indiscerible, a crucial
feature of Badiou's philosophy, see Maniesto for Philosophy, ' Conference sur la
soustraction' in Conditions, and L 'etre et l 'evenement, Meditations 33 and 34.]
28 [ . . . ] on est ce qu' on est, en partie tout au moins (p. 8 1).
29 Terre ingrate mais pas totalement (. 35). [This can be translated literally as
'Ungratefl earth but not entirely. ' ]
30 [For Lacan's concept of the 'Not-All ' , originating in his mathemes of (feminine)
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scxuation, see Jacques Lacan, Seminar 2: On Feminine Sexualit, the Limits ofLove
and Knowledge, 1/2-!/J, ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. by Bruce Fink
( London: WWNorton, 1 998).]
3 1 [By adding in the French '(Monsieur Noeud, Monsieur Noue)' - literally Mister
Knot, Mister Knotted - Badiou is alluding to the link between the concept of structure
and the theory of knots in late Lacan.]
32 [ . . . ] a la maison de Monsieur Knott rien ne pouvait etre ajoute, rien soustrait,
mais que telle elle etait alors, telle elle avait ete au commencement, et telle elle resterait
jusqu 'a lafn, sous tous les rapports essentiels, et cela parce qu 'ici a chaque instant
toute presence signifcative, et iei tout presence etait significative, meme si l 'on ne
pouvait dire de quoi, impliquait cette meme presence a tout instant [ . . ] (pp. 135-
136).
33 [ . . . ] brillants de clarte formelle et au contenu impenetrable (p. 75).
34 [ . . . ] la signiication attribuee a cet ordre d 'incidents par Watt, dans ses relations,
etait tantot la signifcation originale perdue et puis recouvree, et tan tot une signifcation
tout autre que la signifcation originale, et tantot une signification degagee, dans un
delai plus ou moins long, et avec plus ou moins de mal, de l'originale absence de
signification (. 80).
35 Hamm: Qu 'est-ce qui se passe? / Clov: Quelque chose suit son cours. /n temps.
/ Hamm: Clov! / Clov (agace): Qu 'est-ce que c 'est? / Hamm: On n 'est pas en train de
. . . de . . . signifier quelque chose? / Clov: Signiier? Nous, signifier! (re brei) Ah
elle est bonne! (. 49)
36 Pendant l 'inspection soudain un bruit. Faisant sans que celle-la s 'interrmpe
que I 'esprit se reveille. Comme l 'expliquer? Et sans aller jusque-la comment Ie dire?
Loin en arritre de I '(il la quete s ' engage. Pendant que I ' evenement palit. Quel qu 'il
fut. Mais voila qu ' a la rescousse soudain il se renouvelle. Du coup Ie nom commun
peu commun de crulement. Renforce peu apres sinon affaibli par I 'inusuel languide.
Un croulement languide. Deux. Loin de l 'oeil tout a sa torture toujours une lueur
d'espoir Par la grace de ces modestes debuts (. 70).
37 [The 'out-of-place' [horlieu], together with the ' space of placements' [esplace],
provides the conceptual matrix for Badiou's attempt to re-found dialectics as a theory
of political subjectivation in his Theorie du sujet (Paris: Seuil, 1 982). ]
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8 [In the lines that follow, Badiou plays on the French title ofthe textgLe Depeupleur,
lIterally, ' The Depopulator' . ]
39 Sejour ou des corps vont cherchant chacun son depeupleur (p. 7).
40 [ . . . ] dans Ie cylindre Ie peu possible la ou it n 'est pas n 'est seulement plus et dans
Ie moindre moins Ie rien tout en tier si cette notion est maintenue (p. 28).
41 [The notion of a mi-dire is discussed by Lacan in Seminar XIII. ]
42 [ . . . ] la voix etant ainsi faite je cite que de notre vie totale eUe ne dit que les trois
quarts (p. 202)
43 [ . . . ] en tout cas on est dans lajusticeje n 'aijamais entendu dire le contraire(.
1 93)
.
44 [ . . . ] la vie dans I 'amour stoique [ . . . ] (. 97)
45 [ . . . ] se rencontrer comme moi je l 'entends, cela depasse tout ce que peut le
sentiment, si puissant soil-it, et tout ce que sait Ie corps, queUe qu 'en soit la science
(. 1 59). .
46 [ . . . ] que de marivaudages, de frayeurs et de farouches attouchements, dont il
importe seulement de retenir ceci, qu 'ils firent entrevoir a Macmann ce que signijiait
l 'expression etre deu (p. 1 44).
47 soit en clair je cite ou bien je suis seul et plus de probleme ou bien nous sommes
en nombre infini et plus de probleme non plus (. 1 92)
48 - Ie haut du lac, avec la barque, nage pres de la rive, puis pousse la barque au
large et laisse aller a la derive. Elle etail couchee sur les planches du fond, les mains
sous la tete et les yeux fermes. Soleil flamboyant, au brin de brise, I 'eau un peu
clapoteuse comme je I 'aime. J'ai remarque une egratignure sur sa cuisse et lui ai
deande comment elle se l ' etait faite. En cueuillant des groseilles a maquereau,
m a-;-elle repondu. J'ai dit encore que ca me semblait sans espoir et pas la peine de
continuer et elle a fait oui sans ouvrir les yeux. Je lui ai demande de me regarder et
apres quelques instants - apres quelques instants elle I 'a fait, mais les yeux comme
des fentes a cause du solei!. Je me suis penche sur elle pour qu 'i!s soient dans I ' ombre
et i!s se sont ouverts. M'ont laisse entrer Nous derivions parmi les roseaux et la
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barque s ' est coincee. Comme its se pliaient, avec un soupir, devant la proue! Je me
suis coule sur elle, mon visage dans ses seins et ma main sur elle. Nous restions m ,
couches, sans remuer Mais, sous nous, tout remuait, et nous remuait, doucement, de
haut en bas, et d'un cote a l 'autre. / Passe minuit. Jamais entendu - (pp. 24-26)
49 II causait rarement geodesie. Mais nous avons du parcourir plusieurs fois
l 'equivalent de l 'equateur terrestre. A raison d'environ cinq kilometres par jour et
nuit en moyenne. Nous nous refugiions dans I 'arithmetique. Que de calculs mentaux
efectues de concert plies en deux! Nous elevions ainsi a la troisieme puissance des
nombres teraires en tiers. Parfois sous une pluie dituvienne. Tant bien que mal se
gravant au fur et a mesure dans sa memoire les cubes s 'accumulaient. En vue de
I ' operation inverse a un stade ulterieur Quand Ie temps aurait fait son oeuvre (pp.
38-39).
50 Par une rampe de cinquante pour cent sa tete frolait Ie sol. Je ne sais pas a quoi
it devait ce gout. A I 'amour de la terre et des milles parfums et teintes des fleurs. Ou
plus betement a des imperatif d'ordre anatomique. !n 'ajamais souleve la question.
Le sommet atteint helas it faUa it redescendre. / Pour pouvoir de temps a autre jouir
du ciel il se servait d 'une petite glace rnde. L' ayant voitee de son soufe et ensuite
frottee contre son mollet il y cherchait les constellations. Je I 'ail s 'ecriait-i! en parlant
de la Lyre ou du Cygne. Et souvent it aoutait que Ie ciel n 'avait rien (. 42).
5 1 [Badiou's statement resonates far more with the last line in the French version (t
souvent i! ajoutait que le ciel n 'avail rien) than with the far more ambivalent, if not
altogether deflationary, tone of 'the sky seemed much the same' in the English. Whilst
the English could be said to retain the ultimate indifference of being (the sk) to the
event of love ('the sky has nothing' , 'the sky seemed much the same') it seems to
offer a less confrontational and heroic figure of the Two. Perhaps this shif in emphasis
could be sM arised by saying that in the English version the sky is indifferent to the
event of love, whilst in the French text love allows us to become indifferent to the
indifference of being, by fixing it into a 'constellation' that we can possess.]
52 [The theme of the Constellation is one that Badiou draws from the thinking of
Stephane Mallarme. For Badiou's thinking on Mallarme, see 'La methode de Mallarme:
soustraction et isolement' , in Conditions, pp. 1 08-129, ' Philosophie du faune', in
Petit Manuel d'Inesthetique (Paris: Seuil, 1 998), pp. 1 89-21 5, as well as the earlier
'Est-il exact que toute pensee emet un coup de des' , Les conferences du perroquet 5
(January 1986), pp. 1 -20.]
53 Tu es sur Ie dos au pied d 'un tremble. Dans son ombre tremblante. EUe couchee a
I 41
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A| a| 8ad | ou On oec/eu
ecoutez les feuilles. Dans leur ombre tremblante (p. 65-66).
69 De sa couche elle voit se lever Venus. Encore. De sa couche par temps clair elle
voit se lever Venus suivie du solei!. Elle en veut alors au principe de toute vie. Encore.
Le soir par temps clair elle jouit de sa revanche. A Venus. Devant I 'autre fenetre.
Assise raide sur sa vieille chaise elle guette la radieuse (p. 7).
70 Je m 'en vais maintenant tout efacer sauf les feurs. Plus de pluies. Plus de
mamelons. Rien que nous deux nous trafnant dans les feurs. Assez mes vieux seins
sentent sa vieille main (p. 47).
71 Travail, famille, troisieme patrie, his to ires de fesses, fnances, art et nature, for
interieur, sante, logement, Dieu et les hommes, autant de desastres (Fragment de
thM.re II, in Pas, p. 39).
72 soit en clair je cite ou bien je suis seul et plus de probleme ou bien nous sommes
en nombre infni et plus de probleme non plus (p. 1 92)
73 les dejections non elles sont moi mais je les aime les vieilles boftes mal videes
mollement McMes non plus autre chose la boue engloutit tout moi seul elle me porte
mes vingt kilos trente kilos elle cede un peu sous ca puis ne cede plus je ne fuis pas je
m 'exile (p. 60)
74 [See notes 2 and 3. ]
75 Endroit clos. Tout ce qu 'ilfaut savoir pour dire est su (Pour fnir encore et autres
'
fOirades, p. 57)[See note 8 on the title of this text].
76 Ciel gris sans nuage pas un bruit rien qui bouge terre sable gris cendre. Petit
corps meme gris que la terre Ie ciel les ruines seul debout. Oris cendre a la ronde
terre ciel confondus lointains sans fn (p. 70).
77 [It is far easier to identif this 'conceptual ' consistency in Beckett's French work,
where the name of the place of being is quite consistentlypenombre. As many of the
quotations presented here demonstrate, in the English works there is some variation
in Beckett's designation of this 'place' . See the translators' introduction for frther
discussion of the concept of place in light of Badiou's recent theory of appearance.]
78 Ce qui frappe d'abord dans cette penombre est la sensation de jaune qu 'elle
donne pour ne pas dire de soufre ucause des associations (p. 32).
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79 Penombre obscure source pas suo Savoir Ie minimum. Ne rien savoir non. Sera it
trop beau. Tout au plus Ie minime minimum (p. 1 0).
80 Disparition du vide ne se peut. Sauf disparition de lapenombre. Alors disparition
de tout (. 22).
8 1 Je Ie crois, oui, je crois que tout ce qui est faux se laisse davantage reduire, en
notions claires et distinctes, distinctes de toutes les autres notions (. 1 1 0).
82 [ . . . ] c ' est un reve, c ' est peut-etre un reve, ca m ' etonnerait, je vais me reveiller,
dans Ie silence, ne plus m 'endormir, ce sera moi, ou rever encore, rever un silence, un
silence de reve [ . . . ] (p. 21 2).
83 Moi je ne pense, si c ' est la cet afolement vertigineux comme d 'un guepier qu ' on
enfume, que depasse un certain degre de terreur (p. 1 06).
84 [ . . . ] un qui parle en dis ant, tout en parlant, Qui parle, et de quoi, et un qui entend,
muet, sans comprendre, loin de tous [ . . . ]. Et cet autre [ . . . ] qui divague ainsi, ucoups
de moi a pourvoir et de lui depourvus [ . . . ]. Voila un joti trio, et dire que tout ca ne fait
qu 'un, et que cet un nefait que rien, et quel rien, il ne vaut rien (p. 1 99).
85 [Badiou's theory of the count-as-one [compte-pour-un] constitutes one of the
foundational moments in his ontology, as can be seen in Meditation 1 of L 'etre et
I 'evenement.]
86 [ . . ] il faut continuer je ne peux pas continuer, je vais continuer (p. 21 3).
87 [ . . . ] a la maison de Monsieur Knott rien ne pouvait etre ajoute, rien soustrait,
mais que telle elle etait alors, telle elle avait ete au commencement, et telle elle resterait
jusqu 'a lafn, sous tous les rapports essentiels [ . ] (pp. 135- 1 36).
88 [ . . . ] brillants de clarteformelle et au contenu impenetrable (p. 75).
89 [ . . . ] la signification attribuee a cet ordre d 'incidents par Watt, dans ses relations,
etait tant6t la signification originale perdue et puis recouvree, et tant6t une signifcation
tout autre que la signifcation originale, et tant6t une signiication degagee, dans un
delai plus ou moins long, et avec plus ou moins de mal, de l 'originale absence de
signifcation (p. 80).
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90 Quelque chose suit son cours (p. 49).
91 Signifier? Nous, signifer? Ah elle est bonne! (p. 49).
92 [Badiou fonulates the distinction between presentation and representation in
L' etre et [ ' evenement, see especially Meditations 1 , 8 and 9. ]
93 Pendant [ 'inspection soudain un bruit. Faisant sans que celle-f s 'interrompe
que I 'esprit se reveille. Comment l 'expliquer? Et sans aUer jusque-Ia comment Ie
dire? Loin en arriere de I 'adl la quete s 'engage. Pendant que I 'evenement palit. Quel
qu'ilfot. Mais voila qu'a la rescousse soudain il se renouvelle. Du coup Ie nom commun
peu commun de croulement. Renforce peu apres sinon afaibli par I 'inusuel languide.
Un croulement languide. Deu. Loin de I 'cil tout a sa torture toujours une lueur
d 'espoir. Par la grace de ces modestes debuts (p. 70).
94 Nous nous refugiions dans l 'arithmetique. Que de calculs mentaux efectues de
concert plies en deux! (p. 38)
95 [ . . . ] de marivaudages, de frayeurs et de farouches attouchements, dont if importe
seulement de retenir ceci, qu 'ils frent entrevoir u Macmann ce que signifiait
l 'expression etre deux (p. 144).
96 [In this respect, it is interesting to note the 'philological' debate over the exact
dimensions of the cylinder, discussed in the 'Notes on the Texts' ofthe Grove Press
edition of the Complete Short Prose, edited by S.E. Gontarski (p. 282). The original
French text mistakenly gives the dimensions as 80,000 square centimeters, whilst the
correct figure (given a height of 1 6 meters and a circumference of 50) should be of
approximately 12,000,000 square centimeters. As Beckett wryly noted upon being
presented with the error (which had emerged on the occasion of a stage adaptation of
The Lost Ones): 'Afer all, you can't play fast and loose itpi. ]
97 Sejour ou des corps vont cherchant chacun son depeupleur (. 7).
98 Vus sous un certain angle ces corps sont de quatre sortes. Premierement ceux qui
circulent sans arret. Deuiemement ceux qui s 'arretent quelquefois, Troisiemement
ceux qui a moins d 'en etre chasses ne quittent jamais la place qu 'its ont conquise et
chasses se jettent sur la premiere de fibre pour s y immobiliser de nouveau. [ . W . ]
Quatriemement ceux qui ne cherchent pas ou non-chercheurs assis pour la plupart
contre Ie mur [ . . . ] (pp. 12-13).
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99 [ . . . ] dans Ie cyfindre Ie peu possible la ou it n 'est pas n 'est seulement plus et dans
Ie moindre moins Ie rien tout entier si cette notion est maintenue (p. 28).
1 00 [ . . . ] en tout cas on est dans lajusticeje n 'aijamais entendu dire Ie contraire(p.
1 93)
1 01 [ . q . ] se rencontrer comme moi je I' entends, ' cela de passe tout ce que peut Ie
sentiment, si puissant soit-il, et tout ce que sait Ie corps, queUe qu 'en soit la science
(. 1 59).
1 02 [ . . . ] Ie temps beni du bleu [ . . . ] (Sans, p. 70).
1 03 Nous nous etions scindes si c ' est cela qu 'it desirait (p. 38).
104 [Le dur desir de durer is the title of a collection of poety by Paul Eluad, published
in 1 946.]
1 05 Pour pouvoir de temps a autre jouir du ciel if se servait d 'une petite glace ronde.
L 'ayant voilee de son soujle et ensuite frottee contre son mollet iI y cherchait les
constellations. Je I ' ail s ' ecriait-il en parlant de la Lyre ou du Cygne. Et souvent if
ajoutait que Ie ciel n 'avait rien (. 42).
1 06 [See note 50]
1 07 voix forte, un peu solennelle, manifestement celle de Krapp a une epoque tres
anterieure (p. l3).
108 indestructible association jusqu 'au dernier soupir de la tempete et de la nuit
avec la lumiere de l'entendement et lefeu- (p. 23).
1 09 Krapp debranche impatiemment I 'appareil [ . . . ] (p. 23).
1 1 0 - Ie haut du lac, avec la barque, nage pres de la rive, puis pousse la barque au
large et laisse aller ula derive. Elle etait couchee sur les planches du fond, les mains
sous la tete et les yeux fermes. Solei! famboyant, un brin de brise, I 'eau un peu
clapoteuse comme je l 'aime. J'ai remarque une egratignure sur sa cuisse et lui ai
demande comment elle se I ' etail faite, En cueillant des groseilles a maquereau, m 'a t
elle repondu. J' ai dit encore que 9a me semblait sans espoir et pas la peine de continuer
et elle a fait oui sans ouvrir les yeux. Je lui ai demande de me regarder et apres
quelques instants . . . apres quelques instants elle l 'afail, mais les yeux comme des
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fentes a cause du solei!. Je me suis penche sur elle pour qu 'ils soient dans I 'ombre et
ils se sont ouverts. M'ont laisse entrer. Nous derivions parmi les rseau et la barque
s 'est coincee. Comme ils se pliaient, avec un soupir, devant la proue! Je me suis coule
sur elle, mon visage dans ses seins et ma main sur elle. Nous restons la, couches, sans
remuer Mais, sous nous, tout remuait, et nous remuait, doucement, de haut en bas, et
d'un cote a I 'autre (pp. 24-26).
1 1 1 Vens d'ecouter ce pauvre petit cretin pour qui je me prenais il y a trente ans,
dicile de croire quej'aiejamais be con a ce point lao 9a au moins c'estjni, Dieu
merci (p. 27).
1 12 Krapp demeure immobile, regardant dans Ie vide devant lui. La bande continue
a se derouler en silence (p. 33).
1 1 3 cette vie qu 'il aurait eue inventee rememoree un peu de chaque comment savoir
cette chose la-haut il me la donnait je la faisais mienne ce qui me chantait les ciels
surtout les chemins surtout ou il se glissait comme ils changeaient suivant Ie ciel et
ou on allait dans I 'atlantique Ie soir l ' ocean suivant qu 'on allait aux lies ou en revenait
I 'humeur du moment pas tellement les gens tres peu toujours les memes j' en prenais
j'en laissais de bons moments il n' en reste rien (pp. 1 13-1 14)
1 14 c 'bait de bons moments bons pour moi on parle de moi pour lui aussi on parle
de lui aussi heureux [ . . . J (p. 79)
1 1 5 moi rien seulement dis ceci dis cela ta vie la-haut TA VIE un temps ma vie L
A
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*
HA UT un temps long la-haut DANS LA dans la LUMIERE un temps lumiere sa vie la-
haut dans la lumiere octosyllabe presque a tout prendre un hasard (p. 1 1 3)
1 1 6 Une voix parvient a quelqu 'un dans Ie noir (p. 7).
1 1 7 Tu vis Ie jour dans la chambre ou vraisemblablement tu fus concu (p. 1 5).
1 1 8 Une greve. Le soir. La lumiere meurt. Nulle bientot elle ne mourra plus. Non.
Rien de tel alors que nulle lumiere. Elle allait mourant jusqu 'a l ' aube et ne mourait
jamais. Tu es debout Ie dos a la mer Seul bruit Ie sien. Toujours plus faible umesure
que tout doucement elle s 'etoigne. Jusqu 'au moment ou tout doucement elle revient.
Tu t'appuies sur un long baton. Tes mains reposent sur Ie pommeau et sur elles ta
tete. Tes yeux s 'ils venaient a s ' ouvrir verraient d' abord au loin dans les deriers
rayons les pans de ton manteau et les tiges de tes brodequins enfonces dans la sable.
Ensuite et elle seule Ie temps qu 'elle disparaisse I ' ombre du baton sur la sable. Qu' elle
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disparaisse a ta vue. Nuit sans lune ni boiles. Si tes yeux venaient a s 'ouvrir Ie noir
s 'eclaircirait (pp. 74-75).
1 1 9 Bleme, quoique nullement invisible, sous un certain eclairage. Donne Ie bon
eclairage. Gris plutot que blanc, gris blanc (p. 14).
120 Les mots vous ldchent, il est des moments ou meme eux vous ldchent. Pas vrai,
Willie? Pas vrai, Wllie, que meme les mots vous ldchent, par moments? Qu 'est-ce
qu 'on peut bienfaire alors, jusqu 'a ce qu 'ils reviennent? (p. 30)
1 21 Pense, pore! (p. 55)
122 [ . . . J la barbe les fammes les pleurs les pierres si bleues si calmes helas la tete la
tete la tile la tete en Normandie malgre Ie tennis les labeurs abandonnes ina cheves
plus grave les pierres brefje reprends helas helas abandonnes inacheves la tete la
tete en Normandie malgre Ie tennis la tete helas les pierres Conard Conard . . . (pp. 57-
58)
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123 Vous n 'avez pasjini de m 'empoissoner avec vos histoires e temps. est msense.
Quand! Quand! Un jour ca ne vous suft pas, un jour pareil aux autres it est devenu
muet, un jour je suis devenu aveugle, un jour nous deviendrons sourds, un jour nous
sommes nes, un jour nous mourrons, Ie meme jour Ie meme instant, ca ne vous suft
pas? Elles accouchent a cheval sur une tombe, Ie jour brille un instant, puis c' est la
nuit unouveau (pp. 1 1 6- 1 1 7).
124 Quefaisons-nous ici, voila ce qu 'ilfaut se demander Nous avons la chance de Ie
savoir. Oui, dans cette immense confusion, une seule chose est claire: nous attendons
que Godot vienne. [ . . . J Ou que la nuit tombe. Nous sommes au rendez-vous, un point
c 'est tout. Nous ne sommes pas de saints, mais nous sommes au rendez-vous. Combien
de gens peuvent en dire autant? (pp. 1 03-104)
125 [ . . . J a nouveau seuls, au milieu des solitudes (p. 1 05).
1 26 1Elle nefut pas convaincue. J'aurais pu m 'en douter. Elle t'a empeste, disait
elle toujours, tu pues la pute. Pas moyen de repondre a ca. Je la pris done dans mes
bras et luijurai queje ne pourrais vivre sans elle. Je Ie pensais du reste. Oui,j'en suis
persuade. Elle ne me repoussa pas. / F 1. Juges done de mon efarement lorsqu 'un
beau matin, m 'bant enfermee avec mon chagrin dans mes appartements, je Ie vois
arriver I 'oreille basse, tomber a genoux devant moi, enfouir son visage dans mon
giron et . . . passer aux aveux (pp. 13-14).
I I

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`
1 27 Puis parler, vite, des mots, comme I 'enfant solitaire qui se met en plusieurs,
deux, trois, pour etre ensemble, et parler ensemble, dans fa nuit (pp. 92-93).
1 28 Ce n 'est pas tous lesjours qu 'on a besoin de nous. Non pas a vrai dire qu 'on ait
pYisement besoin de nous. D 'autres feraient aussi bien I 'afaire, sinon mieu. L 'appef
que nous venons d'entendre, c 'est plutot a l'humanite tout entitre qu'il s 'adresse.
Mais a cet endroit, en ce moment, I 'humanite c ' est nous, que ca nous plaise ou non
(p. 1 03).
129 Nous sommes des hommes (p. 1 07).
130 Les yeux uses d'ofenses s 'attardent vils sur tout ce qu 'ils ont si longuement
prie, dans la deriere, la vraie priere enfn, celle qui ne sollicite rien. Et c 'est alors
qu 'un petit air d'exaucement ranime les 1UQ morts et qu 'un murmure nait dans
l 'univers muet, vous reprochant afectueusement de vous etre desespere trop tard(.
1 72).
1 3 1 Ie bleu qu' on voyait dans la poussiere blanche [ . . . ] (p. 1 1 0).
132 [ . . . ] Ie voyage Ie couple I 'abandon ou tout se raconte Ie bourreau qu 'on aurait
eu puis perdu Ie voyage qu' on aurait fait la victime qu 'on aurait eue puis perdue les
images Ie sac les petites his to ires de la-haut petites scenes un peu de bleu inferaux
homes (. 1 99) [In Badiou's quotation the sentence reads inferaux hommes, 'men
inferal' -however, it seems that Beckett has here, rather enigmatically, lef the English
'homes' in the French text, which Badiou has in tur read as an erratum. ]
1 33 Assez. Soudain assez. Soudain tout loin. Nul mouvement et soudain tout loin.
Tout moindre. Trois epingles. Un trou d'epingle. Dans l 'obscurissime penombre. A
des vastitudes de distance. Au limites du vide illimite (. 62).
1 34 [ . . . ] considere comme une sorte d'agglutinant mortel [ . . . ] (. 148).
1 35 C' hait seulement en Ie deplacant dans cette atmosphere, comment dire, de fnalite
sans fn, pourquoi pas, que j 'osais considerer Ie travail a executer(. 1 72).
7
136 [Originally published as 'Ete, existence, pensee: prose et concept', in Petit manuel
d'inesthhique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 998), pp. 137-187. Unless otherwise noted
all references in this essay are to Worstward Ho. In the body ofthe text, the first page
number refers to the Calder edition, the second to the Grove edition. ]

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1 37 [Molloy was in part tanslated mcollaboration with Patrick Bowles, 'The Expelled'
and 'The End' were translated in collaboration with Richard Seaver, and the two brief
texts ' The Image' and 'The Cliff' were translated by Edith Fouier.]
1 38 [It ahnost goes without saying that by inverting the direction of Bad iou's operation
our own translation has had to confont a number of serious challenges, often forcing
us to test the resources of the English language in order to maintain the closeness of
Badiou's reading, as well as the way in which Beckett's own terminology is
progressively appropriated into Badiou's prose. We shall try to deal with specific
issues as they appear, in the notes. Hopeflly, the singular distance provided by passing
through Fourier's tanslation will prove illuminating even when the discussion of
the text is restored to the English language and the principal quotations are fom
Beckett's original. ]
1 39 Encore. Dire encore. Soit dit encore. Tant mal que pis encore (. 7).
1 40 Soit dit plus meche encore (. 62).
1 41 Disparition du vide ne se peut. Sauf disparition de la penombre. Alors disparition
de tout (. 22).
142 Rien qui prouve que celui d'une femme et pourtant d'unefemme (. 45).
1 43 Ont suinte de la substance molle qui s 'ammolit les mots d'unefemme (p. 45).
144 Desormais un pour I ' agenouille. Comme desormais deux pour la paire. La paire
comme un seul s ' en allant tant mal que mal. Comme desormais trois pour la tete (.
24).
1 45 Ce que c 'est que les mots qu 'il secrete disent. Quoi l 'ainsi dit vide. L 'ainsi dite
penombre. Les ainsi dites ombres. L 'ainsi dit siege et germe de tout (. 38).
146 [Badiou is currently developing a systematic approach to the relation between
being and appearance, to be presented in his forthcomingLogiques des Mondes (Paris:
Seuil, 2004). Many of the themes anticipated in these writings on Beckett find their
logical and mathematical formalisation in this work, sections of which will appear in
English in Alain Badiou, Theoretical Writings, edited and translated by Ray Brassier
and Alberto Toscano (London: Continuum, 2003).]
I 1
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1 47 Dire pour soit dit. Mal dit. Dire desormais pour soit mal dit(p. 7).
148 Essayer encore. Rater encore. Rater mieux encore. Ou mieux plus mal. Rater
plus mal encore. Encore plus mal encore. Jusqu 'u etre degoute pour de bon. Vomir
pour de bon. Partir pour de bon. La au ni I 'un ni I 'autre pour de bon. Une bonne fois
pour toutes pour de bon (p. 8).
1 49 Retour dedire mieux plus mal plus pas concevable. Si plus obscur mains lumineux
alors mieux plus mal plus obscur. Dedit done mieux plus mal plus pas concevable.
Pas mains que moins mieu plus mal peut etre plus. Mieux plus mal quai? Le dire? Le
dit? Meme chose. Meme rien. Meme peu s 'en faut rien (p. 49).
150 Pire moindre. Plus pas concevable. Pire a defaut d'un meilleur moindre. Le
meilleur moindre. Non. Neant Ie meilleur Le meilleur pire. Non. Pas Ie meilleur pire.
Neant pas Ie meilleur pire. Mains meilleur pire. Non. Le mains. Le mains meilleur
pire. Le moindrejamais ne peut etre neant. Jamais au neant ne peut etre ramene.
Jamais par Ie neant annule. Inannulable moindre. Dire ce meilleur pire. Avec des
mots qui reduisent dire Ie moindre meilleur pire. A defaut du bien pis que pire.
L 'imminimisable moindre meilleur pire (p. 41 ).
1 5 1 D 'abord un. D 'abord essayer de mieux rater un. Quelque chose la qui ne cloche
pas assez mal. Non pas que tel quel ce ne so it pas rate. Rate nul visage. Ratees les
nulles mains. Le nul -. Assez. Peste soit du rate. Minimement rate. Place au plus mal.
En attendant pis encore. D 'abord plus mal. Minimement plus mal. En attendant pis
encore. Ajouter un -. Ajouter? Jamais. Le courber plus bas. Qu 'usoit courbe plus
bas. Au plus bas. Tete chapeautee disparue. Long pardessus coupe plus haut. Rien du
bassin jusqu 'en bas. Rien que les dos courbe. Trone vu de dos sans haut sans base.
Nair obscur Sur genoux invisibles. Dans la penombre vide. Mieux plus mal ainsi. En
attendant pis encore (pp. 26-27).
1 52 Puis deux. De rate a empirer Essayer d' empirer. A partir du minimement rate.
Ajouter -. Ajouter? Jamais. Les bottines. Mieux plus mal sans bottines. Talons nus.
Tant6t les deux droits. Tant6t les deux gauches. Gauche droite gauche droite encore.
Pieds nus s ' en vont et jamais ne s ' en eloignent. Mieux plus mal ainsi. Un petit peu
mieux plus mal que rien ainsi (pp. 28-29).
1 53 Les yeux. Temps d'essayer d'empirer. Tant mal que pis essayer d'empirer Plus
clos. Dire ecarquilles ouverts. Tout blanc et pupille. Blanc obscur Blanc? Non. Tout
pupille. Trus nair obscur. Beance qui ne vacille. Soient ainsi dUs. Avec les mots qui
empirent. Desormais ainsi. Mieux que rien uce point ameliores au pire(pp. 34-35).
I 4
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154 Les mots aussi de qui qu 'ils soient. Que de place laissee au plus mal! Comme
parfois as presque sonnent presque vrai! Comme l 'ineptie leur fait defaut! Dire la
nuit est jeune helas et prendre courage. Ou mieux plus mal dire une nuit veille encore
helas a venir. Un reste de deriere veille a venir. Et prendre courage (pp. 25-26).
1 55 Quels mots pour quai alors? Comme aspresque sonnent encore. Tandis que tant
mal que pis hors de quelque substance moUe de I 'esprit as suintent. Hors ca en ca
suintent. Comme c ' est peu s ' en faut non inepte. Jusqu 'au dernier imminimisable
moindre comme on rechigne a reduire. Car alors dans I 'ultime penombre fnir par
de-proferer Ie moindrissime tout (p. 43).
1 56 Ainsi cap au moindre encore. Tant que la penombre perdure encore. Penombre
inobscurcie. Ou obscurcie a plus obscur encore. A I ' obscurcissime penombre. Le
moindrissime dans l'obscurissime penombre. L 'ultime penombre. Le moindrissime
dans I 'ultime penombre. Pire inempirable (pp. 42-43).
1 57 Le vide. Comment essayer dire? Comment essayer rater? Nul essai rien de rate.
Dire seulement-(. 20)
1 58 Tout saufle vide. Non. Le vide aussi. Inempirable vide. Jamais moindre. Jamais
augmente. Jamais depuis que d'abord dit jamais dedit jamais plus mal dit jamais
sans que ne devore I 'envie qu 'a ait disparu. Dire I 'enfant disparu (pp. 55-56).
1 59 Dire I 'enfant disparu. Tout comme. Hors vide. Hors ecarquilles. Le vide alors
n ' en est-il pas d' autant plus grand? Dire Ie vieil homme disparu. La vieille femme
disparue. Tout comme. Le vide n 'en est-if pas d'autant plus grand encore? Non. Vide
au maximum lorsque presque. Au pire lorsque presque. Moindre alors? Toutes ombres
tout comme disparues. Si done pas tellement plus que ca tellement mains alors? Mains
pire alors? Assez. Peste soil du vide. Inaugmentable imminimisable inempirable
sempiterel presque vide (p. 56). [The US edition has 'then' instead of 'than' mthe
line 'ifthen not that much more than that much less then?']
1 60 Encore retour pour dedire disparition du vide. Disparition du vide ne se peut.
Sauf disparition de la penombre. Alors disparition de tout. Tout pas deja disparu.
Jusqu 'a penombre reapparue. Alors tout reapparu. Tout pas a jamais disparu.
Disparition de I 'une se peut. Disparition des deux se peut. Disparition du vide ne se
peut. Sauf disparition de la penombre. Alors disparition de tout(p. 22).
1 61 La tete. Ne pas demander si disparition se peut. Dire non. Sans demander non.
D 'elle disparition ne se peut. Sauf disparition de la penombre. Alors disparition de
I

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tout. Disparais penombre! Disparais pour de bon. Tout pour de bon. Une bonne fois
pour toutes pour de bon (. 26).
1 62 Tant mal que mal s 'en vont etjamais ne s 'eloignent (. 1 5).
163 Nul fieu que I 'unique (. 1 3).
1 64 Main dans la main its vont tant mal que mal d 'un pas egal. Dans les mains fibres
- non. Vdes les mains fibres. Tous deux dos courbe vus de dos ils von! tant mal que
mal d'un pas ega!. Levee la main de I 'enfant pour atteindre la main qui etreint.
Etreindre la vieille main qui etreint. Etreindre et etre etreint. Tant mal que mal s 'en
vont et jamais ne s 'eloign en!. Lentement sans pause tant mal que mal s ' en vont et
jamais ne s 'eloignent. Vus de dos. Tous deux courbees. Unis par les mains etreintes
etreignant. Tant mal que mal s 'en vont comme un seul. Une seule ombre. Une autre
ombre (pp. 14- 1 5).
165 Lentement ils disparaissent. TantOt I 'un. TantOt la paire. TantOt les deux. Lentement
reapparaissent. Tantot l 'un. TantOt la paire. TantOt les deux. Lentement? Non.
Disparition soudaine. Reapparition soudaine. TantOt I' un. TantOt la paire. TantOt les
deux. / Inchanges? Soudain reapparus inchanges? Oui. Dire oui. Chaque fois
inchanges. Tant mal que pis inchanges. Jusqu 'a non. Jusqu 'a dire non. Soudain
reapparus changes. Tant mal que pis changes. Chaque fois tant mal que pis changes
(. 1 6).
1 66 Dans Ie crane tout disparu. Tout? Disparition de tout ne se peut. Jusqu'a
disparition de la penombre. Dire alors seuls diparus les deux. Dans Ie crane un et
deux disparus. Hors du vide. Hors des yeux. Dans Ie crane tout disparu saufle crane.
Les ecarquitles. Seuls dans la penombre vide. Seuls a etre vus. Obscurement vus.
Dans Ie crane Ie crane seul uetre vu. Les yeux ecarquilles. Obscurement vus. Par les
yeux ecarquilles (. 32).
1 67 II voudrait I 'ainsi dit esprit qui depuis si longtemps a perdu tout vouloir. L 'ainsi
mal dit. Pour I 'instant ainsi mal dit. A force de long vouloir tout vouloir envole. Long
vouloir en vain. Et voudrait encore. Vaguement voudrait encore. Vguement vainement
voudrait encore. Que plus vague encore. Que Ie plus vague. Vaguement vainement
voudrait que Ie vouloir soit Ie moindre. Imminimisable minimum de vouloir Inapaisable
vain minimum de vouloir encore. / Voudrait que tout disparaisse. Disparaisse la
penombre. Disparaisse Ie vide. Disparaisse Ie vouloir Disparaisse Ie vain vouloir
que Ie vain vouloir disparaisse (pp. 47-48). [The US edition has 'last' not ' least' in
the line 'Unstillable vain, least oflonging' . ]
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1 68 ! est debout. Quoi? Oui. Le dire debout. Force d la jin a se mettre et tenir
debout. Dire des os. Nul os mais dire des os. Dire un sol. Nul sol mais dire un sol.
Pour povoir dire douleur. Nul esprit et douleur? Dire oui pour que les os puissent tant
lui douloir que plus qu 'use mettre debout. Tant mal que pis se mettre et tenir debout.
Ou mieux plus mal des restes. Dire des restes d'esprit ounul auxjns de la douleur
Douleur des os telle que plus qu 'a se mettre debout. Tant mal que pis s 'y mettre. Tant
mal que pis y tenir Restes d 'esprit ou nul aux jns de la douleur. Iei des os. D 'autres
exemples au besoin. De douleur. De comment soulagee. De comment variee (pp. 9-
1 0).
1 69 Restes d'esprit done encore. Assez encore. Tant mal a qui tant mal ou tant mal
que pis assez encore. Pas d'esprit et des mots? Meme de tels mots. Done assez encore.
Juste assez pour se rejouir Rejouir! Juste assez encore pour se rejouir que seulement
eux. Seulement! (pp. 37-38)
1 70 Hiatus pour lorsque les mots disparus. Lorsque plus meche. Alors tout vu comme
alors seulement. Desobscurci. Desobscurci tout ce que les mots obscurcissent. Tout
ainsi vu non dit. Pas de suintement alors. Pas trace sur la substance moUe lorsque
d' eUe suinte encore. En elle suinte encore. Suintement seulement pour vu tel que vu
avec suintement. Obscurci. Pas de suintement pour vu desobscurci. Pour lorsque
plus meche. Pas de suintement pour lorsque suintement disparu (. 53).
1 71 [Badiou's doctrine ofthe state of a situation as a re-presentation of being is laid
out in Meditations 8 and 9 ofL'etre et l 'evenement. The crux of this doctrine is that
events always take place despite the state and at a distance fom it, whilst at the same
time measuring the excess of re-presentation over presentation, of the state over the
situation (or in Beckettian terms, of the dim over the void). ]
1 72 Meme inclinaison pour tous. Memes vastitudes de distance. Meme hat dernier
Dernier en date. Jusqu ' a tant mal que pis moindre en vain. Pire en vain. Devore tout
I 'en vie d'etre neant. Neantjamais ne se peut etre (. 61).
1 73 Assez. Soudain assez. Soudain tout loin. Nul mouvement et soudain tout loin.
Tout moindre. Trois epingles. Un trou d'epingle. Dans l 'obscurissime penombre. A
des vastitudes de distance. Aux limites du vide illimite. D 'ou pas plus loin. Mieux plus
mal pas plus loin. Plus meche moins. Plus meche pire. Plus meche neant. Plus meche
encore. / Soit dit plus meche encore (. 62).
1 74 [ . . . ] u I 'altitude peut-etre aussi loin qu 'un endroitfusionne avec au-dela [ . . .
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une constellation [A Throw ofthe Dice/Un coup de des, in Stephane Mallarme,
Collected Poems, translated and with a commentary by Henry Weinfeld (Berkeley:
University of Cali fomi a Press, 1 994), p. 144].
175 Rien et pourtant une femme. Veille et pourtant vieille. Sur genoux invisibles.
Inclinee comme de vieilles pierres tombales tendre memoire s 'inclinent. Dans ce vieux
cimetiere. Noms efaces et de quand a quand. Inclinees muettes sur les tombes de nuls
etres (pp. 60-61).
1 76 [On the unnameable as a concept defining the ethic of truths, see 'La verite:
fonage et innomable' in Conditions (pp. 1 96-21 2) and Ethics (p. 80-87). It is worth
noting that lately Badiou has abandoned this doctrine, thinking it too compromised
with a difse culpabilisation of philosophy, and also much reconfigured his theory of
naming. See his forthcoming interview with Bruno Bosteels and Peter Hallward in
Angelaki, ' Beyond Formalisation' . ]
1 77 [In the collection from which this article is taken it is followed by a piece entitled
' Philosophy of the Faun', a reading of Mallarme's poemL 'Apres-midi d'unfaune.]

1 78 [Originally published as ' Ce qui a ive', in Regis Salgado and Evelyne Grossman,
eds, Samuel Beckett, l 'ecriture et la scene (Paris: SEDES, 1 998), pp. 9-12. ]
1 79 Assez. Soudain assez. Soudain tout loin. Nul mouvement et soudain tout loin.
Tout moindre. Trois epingles. Un tru d'epingle. Dans I 'obscurissime penombre. A
des vastitudes de distance. Aux limites du vide illimite (p. 62).
1 80 Du coup Ie nom commun peu commun de crulement. Renforce peu apres sinon
afaibli par I 'inusuel languide. Un croulement languide (p. 70).
1 81 [ . . . ] d'espoir Par la grace de ces modestes debuts (p. 70).
1 82 Dire ce meilleur pire. Avec des mots qui rMuisent dire Ie moindre meilleur pire.
A defaut du bien pis que pire. L 'imminimisable moindre meilleur pire (p. 41).
1 83 Comme paiois ils presque sonnent presque vrai! Comme I 'ineptie leur fait defaut!
Dire la nuit est jeune helas et prendre courage (p. 25).
1 84 Terre del conondus infni sans relief petit corps seul debout. Encore un pas un
seul tout seul dans les sables sans prise il le fera. Gris cendre petit corps seul debout
ccur battant face au lointains. Lumiere refuge blancheur rase faces sans trace aucun
I s
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souvenir. Lointains sans fn terre del confondus pas un bruit rien qui bouge (p. 77).
1 85 Je ne sais plus Ie temps qu 'ilfaU. Mais du temps de ma vie il hait d'une douceur
herelle. Comme si la terre s ' hait endormie au point veral (p. 44).
1 86 Ah mon pere et ma mere, dire qu 'ils doivent etre au paradis, bons comme
.
ils
l 'etaient. Aller en enfer, c 'est la grace queje demande, et la ontnuer uIS mdlre
:
t 'ils me voient de la-haut et m 'entendent, a pourrazt lUI couper a c Ique a
e eux qu
.
I ' f t e ra me remonte, et
leur felicite. Oui, je crois toutes leurs conerzes u a vie u ur: _
pour du malheur comme Ie mien pas de neant qUI tlenne (p. 1 9).
1 87 de mortel suivant en mortel suivant ne menant nulle part sans autre bt jusqu '
plus ample que Ie mortel suivant me coller contre Ie nommer Ie dressr e covrr
'usqu' au sang de majuscules romaines me gaver de se fables nous unzr pour a vie
J
dans I 'amour stoi"quejusqu 'au dernier hareng gai et un peu plus (p. 97)
1 88 Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. by Peter Hallward (London:
Verso, 2001), pp. 25 and 27.
.
.
7
1 89 ' Que pense Ie poeme?' , in Roger-Pol Droit (ed.), L 'Ar est-II une connazssance.
(Paris: Le Monde, 1993), pp. 21424.
1 90 Petit manuel d'inesthhique, pp. 9-29.
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abstraction 6, 40
absurd, the xxii, 3, 38, 1 1 9, 1 33
activity 47, 63, 1 22- 1 24, 1 29, 1 30
afirmation xii, xv, xix, xxix, 41 , 90,
91 , 93, 1 26
All, the 7, 1 0, 1 8, 77, 1 00, 1 01 , 1 02,
1 05, 1 08- 1 1 0, 1 14, En29
ascesis xxviii, 45, 46, 47, 59, 60, 65,
77, 1 1 5, 1 24, 1 33
beauty xvi, xxvi, 29; 41 , 42, 44, 46,
66, 67, 71 , 73, 75, 76, 77, 1 14,
Pl B| H BD| DU LO CKll
1 1 5, 1 1 7, En50, En76, En 1 45,
En1 70
being passim intro. , passim ch. 1 ,
passim ch.2, passim ch. 3, 1 1 4,
1 1 5, 1 20, 1 24- 130, 1 32, 1 34
Bergson, H. 1 21
Blanchot, M. xi, xii, xiv, 1 1
categories xiii, xiv, xv, xxv, 8, 1 5, 16,
23, 61 , 88, 90, 1 01
chance xvi, xxiv, 1 7, 20, 21 , 26, 27,
28, 3 1 , 55, 128
`

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cinema 40, 42
closed, the 5, 6, 1 0, 20, 28, 49, 5 1 ,
56
cogitoxiv-xxxii, 9- 1 5, 19, 28, 33, 51 ,
53, 54, 55, 61 , 64, 68, 72, 88, 1 04,
128, 1 3 1 , 1 34
comedy xviii, xxix, 44, 75, 1 14
count, the 14, 54, 83, 84, 86, 88, 1 02,
1 1 0, En84
couple, the 6, 1 3, 60, 63, 64, 66, 74,
76
courage xii, xxi, xxiv, xxx, 40, 41 ,
77, 96, 97, 98, 1 14, 1 1 5
Dante xiv, 23, 61 , 1 23
dark, the xvi, xxxi, 7, 25-29, 3 1 , 32,
35, 47, 5 1 , 63, 65, 70, 71 , 74, 98
death 7, 1 1 , 12, 24, 34, 40, 45, 47,
49, 56, 60, 1 1 1 , 128
Descartes, R. xviii, xxi, xxvii, 9, 1 0,
44, 1 05, 1 24
desire xix, xxxiii, 3, 23, 24, 33, 34,
52, 61 , 62, 66, 67, 74, 75, 77, 98,
1 00, 1 1 7, 1 24, 1 32, 1 33
despair 4, 1 5, 38, 76, 1 20, 1 21
dialectic xxvii, 2, 5 1 , 1 20, 1 22, En36
dim xxiii, xxv, xxix-xxxi, 50, 5 1 , 54,
77, passim ch.3, 1 14, 128, 1 30,
En1 70
dying 1 2, 28, 45, 47, 52, 53
encounter passim intro. , 1 5, 1 7, 23,
25-29, 3 1 , 33, 35, 37, 38, 47, 60,
63-66, 68, 70, 73, 89, 98, 1 06,
1 22, 128, 1 32- 1 34
eterity 61 , 66, 67, 77
event passim intro, 5, 1 8, 20, 21 , 22,
28, 3 1 , 32, 33, 50, 55-59, 62, 64,
72, 76, 1 08-1 12, 1 14, 1 1 5, 126-
1 30, 132- 1 35, En50, En1 70
exhaustion 1 1 , 1 3, 128
existence xvi, xvii, xxiii, xxv, 4, 5, 8,
9, 20, 26, 38, 40, 41 , 47, 50, 54,
60, 64, 68, 70, 76, 77, 85, 89-91 ,
1 09, 1 1 1 , 1 12, 1 26, 1 27, 1 32, 1 35
existentialism xiv, xxi, 39, 40
failure xvii, 1 0, 1 7, 25, 62, 90-95,
1 14, 1 1 5
fgures xv, xvi, xx, xxii, xxiii, xxiv,
xxx, 49, 60, 62-65, 74, 75, 88, 90
finitude xiv, 40
fux 1 , 2, 45, 48, 1 07, 1 32
freedom 1 8, 22, 39, 55, 56, 62, 127
fnctions xiii, xx, xxi, xxii, 3, 1 9,
3 1 , 32, 44-47, 52, 60, 66, 123,
1 26, 1 35
going 2, 3, 29, 30, 46, 49, 1 03
happiness xvi, 6, 1 7, 26, 29, 32, 33,
34, 35, 55, 59, 64, 66, 1 1 7, 128
Heidegger, M. xxvi, 88, 1 20, 1 21 ,
1 35
Heraclitus 1 , 48
hope xii, xv, xvi, xxx, xxxii 2, 1 1 , 21 ,
22, 40, 41 , 48, 50, 52, 58, 59, 69,
91 , 1 14, 1 1 7, 1 30, 1 34
humanity, generic xiii, xviii, xxi, xxii,
xxiii, xxvi, xxix, xxx, xxxii, 3,
4, 6, 7, 16, 26, 44, 46, 47, 54, 63,
94, 1 26
humour xiv, 46, 75
Husserl, E. xviii, xxii, xxvii, 44, 1 07,
1 08, 1 24
immobility xxiii, xxxi, 2, 5, 6, 7, 24,
26, 31 -34, 45, 47, 50, 54, 65, 66,
1 03
impasse, in Beckett's work xiv, xvi,
xviii, xxiv, xxx, xxxii, 12, 14, 39,
41 , 54, 55, 56, 128, 129, 1 33
I z
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incidents 19, 20, 21 , 3 1 , 56, 57
infnity xvi, xvii, 1 7, 27, 28, 30, 32,
33, 67, 88
jokes xix, 43
jouey 6, 7, 26, 31 , 40, 45, 76
justice 26, 64
Kafka, 16, 39
Kant, I. xviii, xxii, 2, 41 , 77
kowledge 6, 1 9, 30, 50, 54, 56, 57,
66, 67, 1 23- 1 26, 1 29, 1 31 , 1 33
Lacan, J. 1 8, 25, 1 21 , 124, 1 32,En29,
En30, En40
language passim intro. , 3, 5, 7, 8, 1 8,
21 , 22, 34, passim ch.2, 79-81 ,
91 - 1 00, 1 09, 1 12, 1 14, 1 1 5, 1 1 7,
1 22, 1 23, 1 27, 1 29- 1 3 1 , 1 36,
En1 37
localisation xxiii, xxv, xxxi, 5, 6, 7,
9, 50, 5 1 , 103
love xvi, xxvi, 5, 26-33, 46, 56, 60,
64-67, 74, 75, 77, 1 03, 106, 1 1 7,
1 26, 1 28, En50
Mallarme, S. xix, xx, xxi, xxvii, 12,
51 , 77, 93, 95, 1 09-1 1 2, 1 25, 1 26,
1 32, 1 33, En51 , En1 73, En1 76
mathematics xxiii, xxxi, 30, 60
meaning 8, 9, 1 5, 19, 20, 21 , 22, 28,
3 1 , 32, 41 , 55, 57-60, 72, 76, 1 20,
1 22, 1 23, 128, 1 30, 1 31 , 1 35
memory xvi, xviii, 30, 44, 66, 67, 70
mobility xxxii, 45, 52, 65
movement xxii, xxiii, xxxi, 4, 6, 8,
23, 24, 40, 44-47, 50, 52, 54, 57,
58, 61 , 63, 85, 1 01 - 1 04, 1 06, 1 07,
1 09, 1 1 0, 1 16, 122, 124, 1 26, 127,
1 30, 1 3 1
multiple, the xxi, xxvi, 12, 1 7, 28, 29,
30, 3 1 , 1 1 5
Pl B | H BD| DU LO aoc/ott
music 41 , 1 06, 1 07
naming xxiii, xxxii, 1 1 , 1 3, 1 8, 21 ,
22, 3 1 , 51 , 58, 82, 93, 1 07, 1 1 2,
1 1 4, 1 1 5, 1 29, 1 30, 1 35, En1 75
nihilism xii, xxx, 1 5, 39
non-being 2, 7, 9, 1 0, 48, 5 1
nostalgia 38, 64, 67-71 , 73
open, the xxiii, 6, 1 7, 30, 31 , 49, 51 ,
96
optimism 24, 62
oscillation xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xxx, 2,
8, 9, 1 7, 40, 41 , 53, 55, 1 28, 1 34,
En4
other, the, (alterity) xv, xvi, xx, xxiv,
xxvi, xxx, passim 4-32, passim
40-77, 84, 86, 88, 90, 1 01 - 1 03,
108, 1 26, 1 31 , 1 32, 134
passivity 13, 14, 47, 53, 54
place xv, xx, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxxii,
4- 1 2, 14, 1 5, 1 8, 1 9, 21 , 22, 23,
passim 45-77, 86, 97, 1 03, 1 09-
1 1 1, 1 1 7, 1 26, 1 34, En36, En76
Plato xxii, xxvii, 4, 23, 47, 88, 1 01 ,
123
plays, radio 74
poem xxvi, 4, 16, 1 7, 29, 30, 3 1 , 33,
40, 41 , 48, 5 1 , 60, 71 , 77, 80, 95,
97, 1 1 1 , 126, 132, En2, En1 76
politics 33
predestination xv, 1 7, 1 8, 55, 56
procedures xvii, xxvi, xxix, xxxii, 1 6,
33
Proust, M
.
42, 67, 1 23
repetition xiv, xv, 16, 33, 38, 40, 55,
57, 77, 1 1 3, 1 21 , 1 27, 128
Rimbaud, A. xix, xx, xxi, 37, 91, 1 1 3,
1 26
Sartre, J-P. xiv, xxiv, 38, 39, 1 21 , 1 23,
I 1
i

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P| B | H BD| DU LO CKll
1 36
saying xiv, xix, xxv, xxxii, 2, 3, 7, 8,
1 3, 22, 45, 46, 52, 53, 58, 59, 72,
76, passim ch.3, 1 1 5, 1 1 6, 1 1 7,
129- 1 3 1 , 1 35, En6
sense 3, 9, 20, 40, 45, 55, 57, 73, 87,
1 20, 1 23, 1 29, 1 30
sexuation xvi, 22, 27, 33, 34, 64, 65,
66, 84, En29
signifcation 55, 57, 58, 80, 1 20, 1 25,
1 30
silence xi, xiii, xvi, xvii, xix, 1 1 - 1 4,
23, 38, 39, 45, 52-55, 69, 75, 91 ,
92, 96, 1 1 7, 1 3 1
solipsism xv, xvi, xviii, xx, 5, 1 4, 28,
3 1 , 33, 55, 66, 68, 77
Sophist, The xxii, 4, 47, 1 01 , 1 21
subject, the passim intro. , 2, 3, 4, 1 0-
1 8, 22-26, 3 1 , 33, 44, 47, 5 1 -55,
59, 60, 64, 65, 68, 91 , 1 00, 1 05,
1 07, 1 08, 1 1 1 , 120- 1 22, 1 24- 1 26,
1 3 1 - 1 34, En36
subtraction xxv, xxviii, xxix, xxxi, 3,
8, 9, 1 8, 19, 95, 1 00, 1 23-1 25,
1 29, 1 30, 1 33- 1 35
supplement, of being xxiii, xxiv, xxv,
xxix, 4, 1 6, 1 8, 1 9, 20, 2 1 , 22,
51 , 56, 86, 96, 1 28-1 30, 1 32, 1 35
terror xv, 12, 1 3, 53, 55, 64, 1 24
theatre, the 40, 42, 60, 7 1 , 74, 76,
1 14, 1 22
thought xviii, xx, xxii, xxiii, xxv,

XXN1 XXN11 XX1X XXX1 XXX1I
xxxiii, 3, 4, 6, 1 2, 1 5, 1 6, 1 8,
1 9, 20, 27, 38, 40, 41 , 46, 48, 52-
57, 59, 66, 75, passim 80-90, 93,
98, 1 01 , 1 02, 1 09, 1 1 0, 1 1 5-
1 1 7, 1 20- 1 26, 1 29- 1 34, En25
torture xiv, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii,
xxiv, xxx, 1 0, 1 2- 1 6, 21 , 29, 32,
49, 51 , 52, 54-56, 59, 72, 1 26, 128
trajectory 2, 4, 1 6, 1 7, 55, 57, 1 28,
1 35
truth xi, xx, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxxi,
4, 5, 7, 1 0, 1 6, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28,
33, 51 , 59, 60, 67, 77, 96, 1 20,
1 23, 1 24, 1 28, 1 29, 1 32, 1 34, 1 35,
En1 75
Two, the xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, xxiv,
xxxii, 5, 1 3, 1 7, 21 , 25-29, 3 1 -
34, 58, 60, 64, 66, 74, 75, 84, 86,
88, 89, 94, 95, 1 0 1 - 1 03, 1 05,
En50
void xix, xxv, xxx, 7- 1 0, 1 4, 21 , 22,
33, 34, 35, 40, 50, 66, 77, passim
ch.3, 1 14- 1 1 6, 1 24, En1 70
Wittgenstein, L. 91 , 93
youth 37-40, 68
I 4