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on

beckett

alain badiou

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editors

alberto toscano & nina power

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Copyright Clinamen Press 2003

Translation, introduction
Postface Andrew
published by Clinamen PTP rl:iT
Unit B
Aldow Enterprise Park
Blackett Street
Manchester
M12 6AE
www.clinamen.co.uk

This book is dedicated to the memory of our friend

'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: L '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
,

'Etre, existence, pensee: prose et concept'

First English translation Stanford University Press
Stanford University Press, 1450 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, California
This book is supported by the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs
as part of the Burgess Programme headed for the French Embassy
in London by the Institnt Franyais du Royaurne-Uni
All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced, stored in or introduced 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 from the British Library
hardback

ISBN 1903083 26 5

paperback

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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Sam Gillespie

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Contents
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Notes on References
Note on the Contributors
Acknowledgements
Editors' Introduction - 'Think, pig!'
Author's Preface

I 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

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Notes
Index

Vlll

IX
X

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xxxv

37
79
113
1 19
1 37
161

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Badiou

On

Beckett

Note on the References

Note on the Contributors

The situation regarding Beckett translations is without doubt a complicated one, for a variety of
oft-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

i'

are to the editions currently in print by each publisher. The abbreviations used throughout the

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texts for the British and American editions are as follows:

C - Company (Calder Publishers, 1996)

CDW - The Complete Dramatic Works (Faber and Faber, 1 990)
CSP - Collected Shorter Prose 1945-1980 (Calder Publishers, 1 986)
E Endgame (Grove Press, 1 958)
GSP The Complete Short Prose 1929-1989 (Grove Press, 1995)
HD - Happy Days (Grove Press, 1 983)
HII- How It Is (Calder Publishers, 1 996)
HII US How It Is (Grove Press, 1988)
ISIS - III Seen III Said (Calder Publishers, 1 997)
M - Murphy (Calder Publishers, 1 997)
MUS - Murphy (Grove Press, 1 970)
NO - Nohow On (Company, III Seen III Said, Worstward Ho) (Grove Press, 1 996)
SP Collected Shorter Plays (Grove Press, 1 984)
T - Trilogy (Calder Publishers, 1 994)
TN - Three Novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) (Grove Press, 1991)
W Watt (Calder Publishers, 1 970)
W US Watt (Grove Press, 1 970)
WG - Waiting/or Godot (Grove Press, 1954)
WH - Worstward Ho (Calder Publishers, 1 983)

Andrew Gibson is Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at

Royal Holloway and is the author of Postmodernity, Ethics and the

Novel: From Leavis to Levinas. He is currently preparing a book on

Badiou's reading of Beckett.

Nina Power is currently studying for a PhD in philosophy at

Middlesex University, London.

several articles on Badiou, De1euze , Nietzsche and Schelling. He is

the translator of Badiou's forthcoming Handbook ofInaesthetics
and The Century.

Alberto Toscano teaches at Goldsmiths College and is the author of

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Acknowledgements

l Ala i n

B a d i ou

On

Beckett

'Think, pig!'

An Introduction to Badiou's Beckett

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The editors wish to thank Leslie Hill for his insightful comments and advice
on the original manuscript, Bill Ross at Clinamen for his patience, amiability
and useful interventions, Peter Hallward and Ray Brassier for their vital
insights into Badiou's thought, Dr Julian Garforth at the Beckett archive
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 proje ct.
,

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
from the more recent Petit manuel d 'inesthetique ( 1 998); and finally 'Ce qui
arrive' , a brief conference intervention, also from 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 from those of
other French thinkers such as Deleuze, Bataille, Blanchot or Derrida (to note
some of the most obvious of Badiou's 'rivals' in this enterprise), as well as
from the majority ofAnglo-American Beckett scholarship.2 This introduction
will seek to develop two basic theses: Firstly, that Badiou's reading ofBeckett,
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 ultim

ately
different in kind to them, in its general aims as well as in the detail
of its
argument s. Secondly, that, whilst Badiou's writings on Beckett functio
n to
some extent as occasions for the rehearsal or mise-en-scene of the princi
pal
components of his philosophy - event, subject, truth, being, appearanc
e, the
generic - they are by no means a mere 'application' of Badiou's doctrin
e to a
figure writing (ostensibly) in another discipline. Rather, we shall arg
ue that
the encounter with Beckett forces Badiou to introduce concepts and ope
rations
which, if not entirely new to his thinking, nevertheless constitute considera
ble,
and po ssibly problematic, additions to, or variations upon, the fundam
ental
tenets of his enterprise. Taken together, these two lines of inquiry wil
l also
give us the opportunity to consider the vexed question of the relatio
nship
between philosophy and literature, as it comes to be defined by Badio
u's
recent doctrine of 'inaesthetics' .

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In order to indicate in what sense these texts present a unique exposition

of Be ckett's thinking, it is worth beginning with one of Badiou's dec
isive
formulas: 'the lesson of Be ckett is a lesson in measure, exactitud
e and
courage' . From the outset, we can of course note the polemical nat
ure of
such an affirmation, designed as it is to elicit the surprise and conste
rnation
of a certain sensus communis pervading both Beckett criticism proper
and
the reception of his work beyond the narrow confines of the academ
y. In his
exploration of Beckett's writings, Badiou outlines a vision of a pareddown,
philosophically amenable, and ultimately (and, prima facie, surpri
singly)
resourceful literary and intellectual projec t. In stark contrast to pre
valent
readings of Be ckett's work by either Anglo-American or (the major
ity of)
other European commentators, Badiou conceives of Be ckett's oeuvre
as, in
toto, more hopeful than hopeless, more optimistic than nihilistic.
Ho w, in the first pla ce, is this affirmative, courageous - thoug
h
atheological and non-redemptive - Beckett possible? The Beckett we
know
from Blanchot, from Bataille, from Ricks on the British side, and
from
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' ofwriting defmitively about Beckett. Ind
eed,

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Badiou

On

Beckett

IlllpiclcJy has this edict of 'timidity' subtended the 'post-humanist' rules

III (:oll1mentary about Beckett, that it is seemingly impossible to assert

:lllything at all about Beckett; all one can do is acknowledge that every possible
assertion already becomes its negative within Beckett's work itself, so that

allY criticism begins already from a position of inherent weakness, prefigured

hy thc wry 'admission' that Beckett has stranded his critics in the position of
having nothing left to do. From the outset Badiou's unusually strong reading
thus upsets the (admittedly understandable) trepidation that has always
accompanied the more careful readings of Beckett undertaken during the
laller half of the 20th century.
Badiou will thus engage in none ofthe rhetoric, so often manifested in
thc scholarship, that finds in Beckett so many hypostases ofthe 'paralysing'
i mperative of language and silence, the opacity of the signifier, the end of
1l10dernity, etc. In fact, Badiou fails to even discuss the vast bulk of
contemporary Anglo-American Beckett scholarship, as well as refusing 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 first 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 (without, 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 transformations, 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 thinking worthy of the name, Beckett's
writing draws its force and urgency precisely from the way that it subtracts
itself from our impressions and intuitions; in other words, from the manner

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in which it excavates our muddled and spontaneous phenomenologies to reveal

a sparse but essential set of invariant functions that determine our 'generic
humanity'.
Where then, does Badiou find 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 are to be found: The importance ofthe much-overlooked
and, as Badiou puts it, 'worst understood' 1960s prose text How It Is, and the
identification of a chronological break (corresponding to a real crisis in
Beckett's thought) before and after 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 B adiou's concern with B eckett' 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 96 1 , with
Beckett's English version published by Calder in 1964) seems most often 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 torture
of language in the prose works up to and including the Trilogy and Textsfor
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 'truth' ofhuman
finitude 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

XIV

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Badiou

On

Beckett

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 purification. As Badiou puts it:
It was necessary to have done with the alternation 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 figure of the Other,
fissuring and displacing the solipsistic internment of the cogito. In order to
shed some light on this transformation we will need to shift 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 'affirmative' reading
from 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 from the event is absolutely singular, though
(crucially) universalisable.
The encounter, if it happens at all, is absolutely not pre-determined.
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 figure of love ... the Two occurs, together with the Two of the
sexes or sexualised figures. ' The numericality 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, from
whence arises the Two, does not lead back to a new One, the love which
would be denigrated as 'fusion' in the Freudian sense, or even in a banal,
romantic, popular-cultural sense, but to infinity. One, Two, infinity: For the
voice ofHow ItIs, there is: 'before Pim with Pim after Pim' . This 'exponential
curve' to infinity derives from the fact that the Two of love, of the pure
encounter is apassage. 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'
singularity of an unforeseen encounter.
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 itself
limited to it (here we are obliged to bracket the - always ironic - question:

Beckett

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 ofHow 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
different man more universal' . What the temporary, non-fusional, 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 from 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 concerns its
oscillations and aporias. This position, which can be expediently summarised
as a concern with method- and which does not exclude careful 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 horror 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 nature of a rationally re-constructible
and rigorously actualised method. Indeed, it is only by confronting 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 from 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:

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 fundamental 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, B adiou's
uncompromising penchant for formalisation is designed to affirm the rigour
ofwriting as a discipline ofthought, 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) from 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 'thinking humanity'.
The first approach to the question of method is couched in explicitly
philosophical parameters. Tracing a lineage from Descartes to Husserl in
terms of a postulate of suspension, Badiou argues that Beckett's method of

suhtractive paring-down- or 'leastening' in the vocabulary of WorstwardHo

is akin to Husserl's epoch?! 'turned upside down'. By this Badiou means
tha t rather than 'bracketing' or suspending the world in order to examine the
purciy 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
is an intriguing reversal, and links back to Badiou's initial formulation for
the condition of possibility for the encounter, for the Two. Before this event,
there is 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' ofbeing. It is in this space that the language ofthe cogito attempts
to 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-affirmation 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 himself, 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 ofthe event, the fact that the latter can never be transitive

XVI I I

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Rectification, or the work on the isolation of tenns. Expansion, or the

poetic incision of memory. Declaration, or the function of emergence of
prose. Declension, or the tender cadence of disaster. Interruption, or the
maxims of comedy. Elongation, or the phrased embodiment of variants.

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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 ofinterruption, 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 'after ' the event , or rather, a writing that wholly affirms the
undecidability proper to an event that can never be attested in or by the situation
without a long labour of detection and reconfiguration. This is why Mallarme's
method is concerned 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 itself from 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 affirm 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 subj ect to the infinite ordeal of solipsism, to that

( 'artesian torture which so preoccupies B adiou in these pages. The

identification of the functions of the human on the basis of the torsion of the
cogito onto the imperative of language, together with the cartography of the
places and inscriptions of being, all seem to indicate, in Badiou's reading, an
attempt 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 interruption 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 courageous 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 pure multiple (' after ').
Lest this partition appear all too tidy, it is worth turning 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 ofappearance,
subjectivity and language in these essays on Beckett, focussing throughout
on how these notions determine a certain perspective on thinking humanity,
that is, on humanity as a pure capacity to be affected by the irruption of
novelty and to decide upon the event.
We have grown accustomed to (and accustomed to criticising) claims
that Beckett's work offers 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 fifties 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 carry 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

xx

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Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett r-------

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isolation of some unalienable qualities or properties 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
functions, to its atemporal determinants.
It is in this respect that Beckett is compared to Descartes - suspending
all that is inessential and doubtful 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 functions
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 ofmind'. 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 functions,
humanity is only more admirable, more energetic, more immortal' .
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 humanity receives any sustained formal treatment in Badiou
- something that should not elicit surprise, given both Badiou's fidelity 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 functions 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 the human as capacity and the imperative oflanguage.
Lastly, it demands the introduction of the crucial concept of Badiou'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

in his philosophy, ofphilosophical 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 first 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' concerns 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 turns out that the resolute annihilation 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 turn
excludes itself from 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 figure, thrice divided into a subject of
enunciation, a passive body ofsubjectivation and a subject of the question.
On this 'third' subject, it is worth quoting Badiou at length.

XXII

XXIII

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l Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett

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'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 grey-black that localises being - is
ultimately nothing but an empty scene. To fill it, it is necessary to

tum

towards this irreducible region of existence constituted by speech - the

third universal function of humanity, along with movement and immobility.
But what is the being of speech, if it is not the speaking subject? It is

l Al a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett ,-----therefore necessary that the subject literally twist itself towards its own
utterance. This time, it is the expression 'writhing in pain' that must be
interpreted literally. Once one perceives that the identity of the subject is
triple, and not just double, the subject appears as tom.

,
,
,
,
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" I

It is the tension within this subject of language, and its incapacity to

twist free ofthe equivocity that defines its triplicate composition, which will
lead Beckett into the notorious impasses, and chiefly to the crisis which we've
already seen is punctuated by and surpassed 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 from 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 fiction. In this sense, it is not rare and dependent on chance,
decision and fidelity; rather, it is an inescapable and constitutive feature of
the fictional set-up, or, if one will allow the expression, it functions as its
intrinsic supplement.
Beckett's 'misuse' of language 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 torture
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 figures 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 of Worstward 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 perpetrate 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 s inaesthetics is not the author but the work- is
defined by the movement beyond the tormenting excess of a subject of
language towards the futural 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
-

XXIV

works of Beckett?

Surely, Beckett's Cartesian scenarios preclude any crypto

I{omantic dissolution of human subjectivity into the One of language. But
lqually, they forestall any thanatological 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
incliminable 'function' of the human, an essential component of that capacity
/()r thought that determines the existence ofhumanity. It is this role oflanguage
that Badiou is obliged to assume and, in a qualified manner, affirm. What his
rcconstruction 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 from a subtraction ofand, of course, through
language (though this does not stop Badiou, himself a novelist and playwrigh.w
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 defining name for existence (as opposed to
being) in Badiou: appearance. The doctrine of appearance, which has been a
chief preoccupation ofBadiou in recent years, finds 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 from existence. The purity of the void can only be
attained in the intervals of appearance, through those operations that 'worsen'

XXV

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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 reconfigure the relationship between philosophy
and literature as separate, if interacting, disciplines of thought. Badiou's
'official' 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 identification
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
open). 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

J'()l11 antic schema (the key figure here is Heidegger, though neither Nietzsche
hefore him, nor Nancy after, for example, are exempt from the appellation)
art 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 specific condition and the others, as well as between each condition and
the abstract indifferent 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 meaningful parallels to be drawn
between what philosophy says about 'being', for example, and what art says
about 'being'. Badiou takes a somewhat different tack. For him, art is not
' innocent' of truth; there are truths specific to art, and they are always
immanent and singular. Art 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
p redicated upon the production of works (otherwise, art w'J:ld 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
of art 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' b etween philosophy and art that Badiou has b aptised as
' inaesthetics' , defining it as ' a relation ofphilosophy 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 strictly
intra-philosophical effects produced by the independent existence of some
works of art. ' 13
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

X X VI

X X V II

existence, divesting it of (almost) all order and ornament. Ultimately, however,

the simplification that defines Beckett's confrontation 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.

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L A lain Bad i o u On Beckett

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reading of Worstward Ho as a distilled ontology, whilst obviously indebted

to much of the work undertaken by Badiou in L '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 find 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 Worstward
Ho:

short. And therefore: To register truths, rather than producing them. Of

this wandering at the edges, Worstward Ho remains the most accomplished
witness. 14

'i'

,I' ,

efficiently 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

XXIX

but to wallow in the apparent purity of the concept. To philosophise, in

"

has already come, when language is most efficiently used when it is most

XXVIII

literature exposes itself to: No longer to produce unheard-of impurities,

"

I . . . ] Let us hope that time will come, thank God that m ain circles it

[ . . ] more and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must

. .

."ngness) behind it.

be torn apart in order to get at the things (or the No

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
o r language (which would amount to the annihilation of humanity and the
imperative to speak that defines it) but in its subtraction and supplementation
t 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 fully
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
in 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 capacityfor thought, and specifically
around the capacity for thinking through the radical consequences of
cncounters and events that defines the very being of thinking humanity.
Whilst Badiou is explicit in his affirmation 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

Samuel Beckett [ . ] loved to gnaw at the edges ofthat peril which all high

i:
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l Alai n Bad i o u :On Beckett

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 determinants 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 confrontation 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' :
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Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

l Alai n -I3ad i o u On Beckett

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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

':l I l l 1lhow remain entirely faithful to the anti-humanist legacy of Althusser

for thinking and which, whilst never reducible to its linguistic inscription,

i 1 l 1 d hllicault, among others

moves through a resolute confrontation between subj ects and their

I I ; ,

enunciations. Whether such a capacity is itself open to a formalisation

I I l Iguistic and cognitive determinants of humanity on its own cannot but lead

equivalent to that provided for the event is of course a matter that can only be

1 1 .',

addressed elsewhere in a critical engagement with the resources of Badiou's

l l llT. 1 / Or: To produce a radically egalitarian notion of the human that would

this is what Beckett allows us, or rather forces

t o do. 1 8 Whilst Beckett shows us that an inquiry into the atemporal

i nt o the ordeal of the subject and the impasse of fiction, into the wretched

\ I i I t i I ism of annihilation or (worse) the pieties of humanism, he also manifests

t h e i nescapable demand that ' thinking humanity' find its fictional and

own thought.

I I I I i losophical determination, even if this means moving beyond the boundaries

o r la nguage into the realm of the incalculable, moving beyond the 'on' of

IV.

spL'cL'h to the invention of operations capable of affirming new beginnings.

We have seen, briefly, how Badiou can argue that Beckett is a writer of
hope, but a hope based on nothing. 'Nothing', because the event or encounter

I I I t h is light, if we must 'shelter and retain' the truth that arises from 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 .

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

Nina Power and Alberto Toscano

ultimate resource from which generic humanity draws its cognitive and
practical capacity for novelty, as well as its courage to confront the torture of

,
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1 An English translation of the entirety of the Petit manuel d 'inesthetique (Paris:

the cogito and the indifference of the dim, is the void, and the way its pure

SL'uil, 1998) is forthcoming. See Alain Badiou, Handbook ofInaesthetics, translated

inconsistency can burst through the partitions of apparent order, to reveal the

hy Alberto Toscano (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).

most radical, and most generic, equality. In this regard, it is indicative that

2 See Andrew Gibson's postface for a critical comparison ofBadiou's work on Beckett

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' .

I() that of recent Anglo-American commentators.

:l Again, see Gibson's essay for an analysis ofBadiou's implicit decision not to engage

Badiou is clear: We cannot simply rest content with an exploration of Beckett's

with other critics and commentators. See also Dominique Rabate's stimulating essay

work that colludes with the sophistical obsession with language. The major

. Continuer- Beckett' in a recent collection of essays on Badiou entitledAlain Badiou:

shift in potential that Badiou sees with the encounter fromHow it Is onwards,

J>enser Ie multiple, ed. by Charles Ramond (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002), pp. 407-420.

provides Beckett's characters with the only 'way out' of the perpetual linguistic

4 Jacques Derrida, Acts of Literature, ed. by Derek Attridge (London: Routledge,

oscillation between the solitary cogito and the grey-black of being . Ultimately,

1 991), p. 60.

it is this incalculable encounter that frees generic humanity from the relentless

S Regarding this question of the 'grey black' lying beyond the solitary subject, it is

and aporetic contortions of language and subjectivity. Though Beckett allows

interesting to note that Beckett has so many words in English for this 'nothing' -

Badiou to consider the ' figural preparation' of this event, or even the quasi

among them 'half-light', 'dim' (Worstward Ho) and ' gloom' (The Lost Ones) whereas

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

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

that has arisen between Badiou and Beckett: To think the entanglement and

effect, a term to designate being ' in its localisation, empty of any event'.

reciprocal determination of a thinking of the human as pure capacity, on the

6 Beckett shares his identification of a method of subtraction or reduction (Beckett's

one hand, and a thinking of the incalculable novelty of the event, on the

'leastening') with two of the 20th century's great philosophical readers of Beckett:

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l Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett

Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett ,-----

Theodor W. Adorno and Giles Deleuze. In 'Trying to Understand Endgame' (1958),

in Notes to Literature, vol. 1 (New York: Colombia, 1 991 ), Adorno 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 irrationality
of bourgeois in its late phase' (p. 244) and the 'pathogenesis ofthe false life' (p. 247),
Adoorno's reading of Beckett is, to use Badiou's terminology, strictly 'anti
philosophical' ; Adorno refuses to see in Beckett any concession to the speculative
drive and also discounts a priori any reading of him as an affirmative or hopeful
thinker (Adorno concludes that in Endgame ' [h]ope skulks out ofthe world' [po 275]
back to death and indifference). In Adorno's estimation, Beckett's 'metaphysical
negation no longer permits an aesthetic form that would itself produce metaphysical
" II

affirmation' , his 'anti-art' culls 'aesthetic meaning from the radical negation of

I %X), p. 66.

I I ) l Iadiou will write of the manner in which Beckett's 'anti-phenomenological' or

IIl illlentional reduction allows us to grasp the moment when 'movement becomes
\ lcrnally indiscernible from immobility' , that is, when movement becomes nothing

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I I I"' than a differential of rest, expressing a sort of minimal and ideal mobility. It is
IV' II lh noting that Beckett himself draws on this theme from the calculus in his ' Joycean'

dlSl'ussion of the thought of Giordano Bruno and its influence on Vico. ' [N]ot only do
l i lt' Illinima coincide with the minima, the maxima with the maxima, but the minima
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, 1983),
work,
I ' ' I Arguably the irreducibility of the 'functions' allows Beckett, in his later
IV i I

Ih" vent, is far more prominent in the first two essays in this collection than in 'Being,

'modem ontology' and the 'poverty of philosophy' , as revealing 'an existence that is

1 ' \ islence,

acumen and eloquence, Adorno ultimately retains the category of the absurd as the

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Thought: Prose and Concept' . This is explained by the fact that the

kpendence of the theory ofthe event on a philosophy ofthe name has been the object

..

r a self-criticism on the part of Badiou - on the basis both of Lyotard's doubts about

Ihe theory ofthe two names of the event inL 'etre et l 'eVl?nement and ofthe immanent

of concepts of eternal novelty or generic humanity (see 'Trying to Understand

Ikillands of Badiou's own thinking of subjectivity, especially as it has come to

Endgame' , p. 246). In this respect, Deleuze's study of the stepwise, combinatory

i l lcorporate a thinking of appearance (see the preface to the English edition of the

'reduction' of language in Beckett's television plays (,The Exhausted', in Essays

Fillies, the forthcoming Angelaki interview with Bruno Bosteels and Peter Hallward

with Badiou's depiction of Beckett as a rigorous thinker of formalising procedures.

Nevertheless, Badiou's preoccupation with the place of 'thinking humanity' in
Beckett's work - together with its Cartesian and Husserlian echoes - has no counterpart
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

' I kyond Formalisation' , and the forthcoming maj or work by Badiou himself, Logiques

.It'S 111 0ndes).

'
I 2 See her fine essay on the novel, L 'ecrivain pensif (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1998), pp

-" )-62.

1 3 Petit manuel d 'inesthetique, p. 7.

1 4 Petit manuel d 'inesthetique, p. 146.

Fihn Ever Made', also in Essays Critical and Clinical). Needless to say, these diffferent

1 5 Disjecta, pp. 1 7 1 - 1 72.

appreciations of reduction and formalisation find their deeper reasons in Badiou's

1 6 See Conditions, p. 1 4 1 .
1 7 This link between a capacity for thought and the event (of the Two) is one of the

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 from the domain ofmathematical thought, operations such asforcing,
intervention, avoidance, subtraction, connection . The very process of evental

principal objects of Badiou's essay ' Qu' est-ce que I ' amour?', from Conditions. It is
a I so a crucial materialist postulate of Badiou's that we cannot consider thought outside

of its inscription in bodies and places (i.e. in appearance) and that any straightforward

identification of a transcendental subjective capacity (one unhinged from the irruption

subjectivation is eminently operational in character, a trait clearly attested to by

of the event and the procedures that can ensue in its wake) would merely occlude the

Badiou's recurrent references to the production (rather than intuition) of truths.

ordeal of the cogito for the sake of a meta-head, thereby ignoring the seriousness of

8 See Conditions (Paris: Seuil, 1 992).

Beckett's impasses, as well as their singular resolution.

XXXII

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key to Beckett's worrk, and is impervious, in Badiou's terms, to the aesthetic relevance

Critical and Clinical [London: Verso, 1997], pp. 1 52- 1 74) bears far greater affinity

l IIove beyond this identity of contraries.

I I I I i s worth noting that the problem of the name, and specifically of the naming of

pp. 348, 271). In this light, Adorno reads Beckett's method of subtraction against
shut up in itself like a mollusk, no longer capable of universality'; despite his somber

"

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metaphysical meaning' (Aesthetic Theory [Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 1997],

,
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Ma r l i n Esslin (ed.), The Theatre of the Absurd (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,

l)

XXXIII

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Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

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1 8 In this respect, it would be interesting to measure and interrogate the gap that
separates the dictum from The Unnamable of which Badiou is so fond - 'I alone am
man and all the rest divine' - from the classically humanist pronouncement from
'Dante . . . Vico. Bruno . . . Joyce' : 'Humanity 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

A u thor's Prefa ce

into philosophical anthropology also signals a caesura within man separating him, as

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rare but Immortal subject ofthe event, from a 'nihilistic' substrate of corporeality and

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animality - whence the emblematic nature of Pozzo's exhortation: 'Think, pig ! ' .

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! !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 capture of this immense
writer of 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
( I Wn French, which amount to something quite different than translations.
W ho 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
short, more empiricist. French served Beckett as an instrument for the creation
( 1 f an often very solemn fonn of distance between the act of saying and what
i s said. The French language changed the paradoxes of the given into
metaphysical problems. It inscribed into verdicts and conclusions what, in
I hc English, led to irony and suspension. French - the language of Descartes,
Beckett's great philosophical referent - changed picaresque characters into
the witnesses of the reflexive Subject, into victims of the cogito. It also
permitted the invention of a colder poetics, of an immobile power that keeps
the 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 ornament
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 learned 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 returns 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 Fournier). 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.

The Writing of the G eneric1

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1 . T h e I m p e ra ti ve a n d its D esti n a t i o n

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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
w ith Heraclitus the Obscure:

flux cause
que toute chose
tout en etant
toute chose
donc celle-la
meme celle-la
tout en etant
n est pas
parlons-en

XXXVI

flux causes
that every thing
while being
every thing
hence that one
even that one
while being
is not
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 flux 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 confused 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 rfleau 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)5

The three-fold interrogation bears on going, 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.
U ntil 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).
I laving grasped this triplet of elementary situations of the subject, we

' : 1 1 1 immcdiately pinpoint what I will call Beckett's fundamental tendency

l o w a rds the generic. By ' generic' desire I understand the reduction of the

" 'lllplcxity of experience to a few principal functions, the treatment in writing

" I I hat which alone constitutes an essential determination. For Beckett, writing
I : : a l l act governed by a severe principle of economy. It is necessary to subtract
I l lorc and more everything that figures as circumstantial ornament, all
I 'lTiphcral distraction, in order to exhibit or to detach those rare functions to
which writing can and should restrict itself, if its destiny is to say generic
h IIl1lanity. Initially, at the beginning ofthis prodigious enquiry into humanity
I ha I Bcckett' s art constitutes, these functions are three in number: going, being,
a l id saying.
In Beckett's 'novels' , this subtraction of ornaments has an inner
I l l daphor: the characters, who realise the fiction of generic writing, lose their
i lll;sscntial attributes in the course of the text: clothing, objects, possessions,
hody parts and fragments of language. Beckett often lists what must be lost
so that the generic functions may emerge. He does not miss an opportunity to
(';Ist unpleasant epithets upon these pointless ornaments 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:

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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 'disaster s' 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 function 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 ofbeing 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 ornamentations 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 from everything that distracts it, so as to
examine the intimate articulation of its functions.
The fictional device of destitution is, first ofall, a progressively purified
operator for the presentation of 'characters' . It is also, in the flesh of the
prose, an altogether flagrant process that moves, from Beckett's first 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
finite 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 functions 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 's Sophist. 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 functional 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 fiction 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 identify itself?
3) That of 'what happens' [ce qui se passe] and of 'what takes place'
4

I , , ' IllIi advient] . How is the event as a supplement to immobile being to be

I hollght? For Beckett, this problem is closely related to that of the capacities
, " lallguage. Is it possible to name what happens or what takes place, inasmuch
, IS i I lakes place?
4) That of the existence of the Two, or of the virtuality of the Other.
T h i s is the question that ultimately ties together all of Beckett's work. Is an
, . l'ii:etive Two possible, a Two that would be in excess of solipsism? We might
: i l so say that this is the question of love.

2 . T h e G rey B l a c k a s t h e P l a c e of Be i n g

I,

Since the originary axiomatic is that of wandering, immobility and the

vo ice, can we, on the basis of this triplet, grasp any truth whatsoever [une
I ','Tite quelconque] 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 dispositijdefictions] , 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 dispositijfictionnant] in such a way that the very
h e i ng 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 first 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 Inder the sign of the closed. This is obviously the case for the room in which
t he characters 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
of the cylindrical arena of The Lost Ones. These are some instances of closure,
of which many other examples could be given. In the text entitled Fizzle 5
/Closedplace}, 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 fiction with regard to the question of the
5

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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 of localisation.
But there is also a completely different 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, though it tends towards a
uniform abstraction, in the expanse of black mud on which the larvae of
essential humanity crawl in How It Is. Or in the beautiful Scottish or Irish
mounds, covered with flowers, where the old couple ofEnough wander around
in happiness.
Both in the spaces of wandering and in the closed places, Beckett tends
to suppress all descriptive ornamentation. This results in a filtered image of
the earth and sky: 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
purification 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
grey 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 fictive purification, 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 suffice.
What is the grey black? It is a black such that no light can be inferred to
contrast with it, an 'uncontrasted' black. This black is sufficiently 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
from all contradiction with light. The grey black is a black that must be grasped
in its own arrangement arid which does not form a pair with anything else.
In this grey black that localises the thought of being, there operates a
progressive fusion of closure and of open (or errant) space. Little by little,
Beckett's poetics will fuse 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 figure that goes
and the one remaining at rest will become superimposed at the place of being.
6

1 1 1 1:; slIpl:rimposition is achieved in How It Is, where the journey and fixity

; 1 1 \' I w o major figures of generip humanity. However, these two figures are in

II, , "'"11/(' place, whereas earlier, wandering and closure remained disjoined

split between Molloy, the novel ofthe journey, and

A '"/0111' Dies, 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 1dn thc 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 ka l articulation. In Molloy, we find this peremptory anti-Cartesian utterance:

I I Il'iaphors oflocalisation,

I I hink so, yes, I think that all that is false may more readily be reduced, to

Ilotions clear and distinct, distinct from all other notions

('I', p. 82; TN, p. 82),u

I[ere the Cartesian criterion of evidence is reversed, and we can see

w h y : if the grey black localises being, reaching the truth of being requires
I hat onc think the in-separate, the in-distinct. By contrast, what separates and
d l st ing uishes - what separates dark from light, for example - constitutes the
p l acc nf non-being and of falsehood.
The localisation by the grey black ultimately entails that the being of
i w i ng cannot be said as an isolatable singularity, but only as void. When the
I ll'I ion that fuses the darkness of wandering and the darkness of immobility
( Iperatcs, we notice that what this place presents as the form of being can
oilly be named ' the nothing', or 'the void', and has no other name.
This maxim, which from the localisation of being in the grey black
' I ITivl:s at the void as the name of what is located, is basically established as
('arty as Malone Dies. Malone's voice begins by warning us that we are dealing
w i 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 ; TN, p.
I ()2),'1

This cardinal statement about being pollutes the entirety of language

w i 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
li)II()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
7

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Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett r-----
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This is the ultimate point that the fictionalisation 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 from language that
arranges it between its first two categories, movement and rest, and the third
one, speech [la parole] or logos.
That being qua being is subtracted from 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; TN, p. 1 1 6).1 4
The main effect 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 from 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 true fictional
operator (the grey black), it dates far back in Beckett's work. In First Love,
from 1 945, we already find the following:
But I have always spoken, no doubt always shall, of things that never

"

: 1 : ;.

,I, I ,

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. 3 5).1 5

\\' I wle existence 'indistinguishes' itself, we can stipulate that this Presence is
I i t ' i l h er an illusion (the sceptical thesis) nor a truthful and sayable
t t ' 1 1 Iprehension (thedogmatic thesis), but rather a certainty without concept.
l i ne i s what Beckett has to say in this regard:
So I shall merely state, without enquiring how it came, or how it went, that

i ll 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 w i l lg [donation d 'etre] from what is not in a position to exist, is itself not an
I 1 I I Is i on. Secondly, that it is distributed both within and without, but that its
prl'il:rred place is no doubt rather the 'between', the interval. And, thirdly,
t h a i i t is impossible to say more about it than that it is a subtraction from
l'\islence, and, consequently, that presence entails no meaning whatsoever.
I k s 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
p l l rcly a proper name: 'void' or 'nothing' . This name is the beam lfleau] in
I lIe I I eraclitean balance. Beneath its absence of sense, it effectively proposes
; 1 veritable being which is not an illusion, but it also proposes a non-being,
s i l lee it refers to the inexistence of being, which is precisely its unsayable
" ,i ll.
If there were only the fictional set-up of the grey black, whose virtues
we h ave exhausted, we would be forced to agree that we are very close to the
vmious negative theologies, a point that is often made about Beckett. But
I I l erc is something that comes before this localisation of being, something
I hat cannot be reduced to the being of the inexistent, and which is reflection
as slIch, the cogito. Because the onefor whom there is the grey black and the
I I l 1sayable presence does not stop reflecting and articulating both the
local 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 (concerning 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,

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
8

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Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r----

l A l a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

and it is set out in an entirely rational manner - albeit with an ironic grasp of

, d ' I I I I ',hkrhouse. This 'I' is doubly closed: in the fixity of the body and in the

this rationality - in the outline of Film.

1 ,, ' I : ; l s l l'llee of a voice with neither answer nor echo, it endlessly persists in

Film is indeed a film, a film whose only character is played by Buster

Keaton. It concerns a man - an object 0, says Beckett - who flees because he

I I V i l l I ', 1 0 find the path of its own identification.

What does it mean for this repetitious voice of the cogito to identify

film is the story of the pursuit of 0 by E,

1 1.';el l? It means - with the help of a vast array of enouncements, fables, fictional

and the pursued, of the eye and the man. When Beckett published the script,

,I:; :;l Ich. Of course, this pure point of enunciation, this 'I', is always antecedent

is pursued by an eye, named E . The

and it is not until the end that one is meant to grasp the identity of the pursuer
he introduced it with a text called Esse

est percipi,

where we can read the

1 I I I I Ia i i v es and concepts - producing the pure and silent point of enunciation

I I I pres upposed 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

following:

: l l I h l ractcd from all naming. The relentless aim of the solipsistic voice - or

All extraneous perception suppressed, animal, human, divine, self

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perception maintains in being.

(l)lIsl i tuted by its enunciation, and which is the SUbjective condition of all

Search of non-being in flight from extraneous perception breaking down

11 l0U IlCements. In order to identify oneself, it is necessary to enter this silence

in inescapability of self-perception
(CDW, p. 323; SP, p. 1 63). 1 8

I ha l supports each and every word. This will be the hope of the 'hero' of The

l il/I/amable:

'

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I he voice of the cogito - is to attain this originary silence, whose being is

This is the argument of the

cogito,

[ . J there were moments I thought that would be my reward for having

save for the ironic nuance which

. .

spoken so long and so valiantly, to enter living into silence [ . . . J

(T, p. 400; TN, p. 396).20

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

This entry into silence, holding death at a distance ('living'), has been

- appears here as a failure. The failure of what, exactly? Of the extension to

[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.

described perfectly by Maurice Blanchot as an ' endless recapitulation'

We are now appproaching our second question, after the one concerning

Beckett soon finds out, of course, that this point of identification - the

the place of being: namely, the question of the subject as it is caught up in the

si l ent being of all speech - is inaccessible to any enouncement whatsoever. It

the All

closure of the cogito, which is also the question of enunciation [I 'enonciation],

tortured by the imperative of the enouncement

I n s.I'assement]

of writing which simultaneously effectuates its point of

l'llunciation and wants to capture or signify it.

would be too simple to believe that this inaccessibility is the result of a formal

paradox: the necessity that the ontological condition of all naming be itself

[I 'enonce]. 1 9

I I llnameable. The figure of the impossible, or the unnameable, is trickier than

I h at it fuses together two determinations that Beckett's prose consigns to an

,

i l lsistence without hope.

3 . O n t h e S o l i p s i st i c S u bj e ct a s To rtu re

The first determination is that the conditions of this operation - the

The fictional set-up that deals with the closure of the cogito is the one

conditions of the cogito considered through the sole resort of its capture by a

that structures the best-known part of Beckett's work. This is the set-up of

li xed voice - are, in a very precise sense,

the motionless voice - a voiceput under house arrest by a body [qu 'un

with anxiety and mortal exhaustion.

assigne a residence] .

corps

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

charged as they are

Under the second determination it becomes evident, upon closer

inspection, that the

cogito is a situation far more complex than simple self-

a hospital bed, or stuck in a jar that advertises a restaurant opposite the

10

unbearable,

11

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Al ai n Ba d i o u On Beckett r..----'

l Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

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reflection. Indeed, the cogito involves not two but three tel1lls
. The schema
of Film the eye and the objec t - is insufficient.
As for the conditions of the cogito, or of a thinking of think
ing [une
pensee de la pensee], they are terribly restrictive. This is beca
use speech is
never relentlessly repetitive or mobile enough and, at the sam
e time, it is
never insistent or immobile enough. It would be necessary
to find a vocal
regime that could simultaneously reach the apex of veheme
nce and of the
vociferating multiple and, in its restraint, be the almost-nothi
ng, on the edge
of breathing. The voice cannot maintain this tenuous equilibr
ium, and what
escapes it is the unnameable, which could be said to be locate
d 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 from it. Beckett underscores the fact tha
t if the '1 think '
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 Mallal1lle , in a paroxysm
of anxiety and
crisis, declares : 'My thought has thought itself, and I am pe
rfectly dead ' .21
Be ckett, on his part, points to the suffering rather than to de
ath itself. In the
words of the hero of The Unnamable:
-

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voice's obstinacy is also that of an unbearable torture.

1 1 1 I 1 I1 1 I , ho l i l the Unnamable, tears stream down the face of the speaker.
; l Ich heroism on the part of the cogito designates an impasse. Following
1 I 1 1 I 1 1I. ! I : l t Icy upon The Unnamable we have Textsfor Nothing, which occupy
1 1 1 1 1 t:;.-iy I he place of dying, where the temptation to abandon the imperative
I I I IV t l l l l l g . . to rest from the torture of the cogito - imposes itself. This is the
I I II I I I I ! ' I I I when the relation between the 'you must go on' and the '1 can't go
" I I ' \ " : :>0 tense that the writer is no longer sure he can sustain it.
' I ' he Textsfor Nothing proceed in a more theoretical way, since they are
j. " l I gaged in the terrifying fictional set-ups of the solipsistic subject. The
I l Ii l l l l d iscovery that these texts bear witness to is that the cogito, besides its
1 1 I 1 1 I H' l I t ing and unbearable conditions, is ultimately without finality, because
I t k i l l I lieation is impossible. The injunction that the 'I' addresses to itself
"lu'l"\'IIing the naming of its own founding silence is object-less: in effect,
I I I l ' ( 'ogito is not a reflection, a Two (the couple of enouncement and
" l l l I l Ic iation), rather, it sketches out a three-fold configuration. 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 o l a l exhaustion, of the dissipation of all subjectivity.
The crucial text in this regard is the twelfth '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:
. .
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I only think, if that is the name for this vertiginous panic as

of hornets
smoked out oftheir nest, once a certain degree of terror has bee
n exceeded
(T, p. 3 5 3 ; TN, p. 3 50).22

I . . ] one who speaks saying, without ceasing to speak, Who's speaking?,

.

and one who hears, mute, uncomprehending, far from all [ . . . ] . And this

other now [ . . . ] with his babble of homeless mes and untenanted hims [ . . . ] .

The 'I think' presupposes terror, which alone compels the vo

ice 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 on
e is also given as
an imperative without concept, and it imposes an obstina
cy that gives no
quarter and allows no escape. This imperative, indifferent to
all po ssibility
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. 4 1 8 ; TN,

p. 4 14).23

Sin ce what is ne ed ed is pr ec ise ly that which is impo ssi

bl e, the

12

There's a pretty three in one, and what a one, what a no one

(eSp, p. 112; GSP, p. 1 50).24

How is this infernal trio distributed?

1) First, there is the 'one who speaks ' [Qui parle], the supposedly
1l" llexive subject of enunciation, or the one capable of also asking 'Who's
. speaking? ' [Qui parle], of enouncing the question concerning itself. It is this
s l Ibject whom the hero of The Unnamable seeks to identify beneath the terror.
2) Then there is 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

13

"
"

"
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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 torture.
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
,,11" " 1 1

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pure and simple, would turn the torture of identification into bitter buffoonery.

_
_
_
,

ace when
pl
a
or
e
tim
a
s
wa
r
ve
ne
ere
th
;
ck
bla
ey
gr
the
of
e
i l I I I 1 1I ' 1 I 101 'ia i peac
'.
ed
tch
ha
er
on
so
no
d
oo
br
e
ol
wh
e
th
d
ea
'd
re
we
s
1 1 1 1 ' J l ll' s l ion
ally
er
lit
is
to
gi
co
e
Th
e.
ss
pa
im
e
th
in
ed
pp
tra
ly
We are complete
to the
er
ov
en
giv
is
at
th
m
sis
lip
so
e
Th
le.
ab
vit
ine
o
als
I I I I I w ; l I ah l e but it is
ger sustain
lon
no
n
ca
it
s,
les
int
po
d
an
ble
ina
erm
int
is
n
tio
ca
ifi
1 11 1 1l 1';S of ident
's
ett
ck
Be
y
wh
is
is
Th
.
us
e
m
lco
we
g
in
be
of
e
ac
pl
e
II 1 1 1 1 l 1 g, but neither can th
ity, they
cid
lu
y
ar
din
or
tra
ex
ith
W
.
ing
th
no
or
tsf
tex
are
I . . I :, i'rom this period
e to the
m
co
ey
Th
.
ss
re
og
pr
in
pt
em
att
e
th
of
ss
ne
ing
I l ' i l l i S of the noth
t
tha
t
bu
t),
lis
hi
ni
a
be
r
ve
ne
ll
wi
tt
ke
ec
(B
ing
th
l I ' n l isa l ion , not that there is no
a
of
th
tru
e
th
l
us
tel
ts
tex
e
es
Th
.
elf
its
r
fo
ow
sh
to
\\' 1 I I i I Ig has nothing more
up to
en
itt
wr
s
ha
he
at
wh
:
ies
fift
e
th
of
d
en
e
th
at
ett
ii l i l ia l ion , that of Be ck
without any
,
ng
ati
ern
alt
on
go
to
e
bl
ssi
po
im
is
It
.
on
go
l l i a l p o i nt can 't
d
an
g
in
be
of
k
ac
bl
ey
gr
the
of
y
lit
ra
ut
ne
the
n
ee
I I ll'd iation whatsoever, betw
stain
su
r
ge
lon
no
n
ca
ing
rit
W
.
to
gi
co
tic
sis
lip
so
e
th
I I Il' en dless torture of
,

identity not reside in a pure and simple coincidence with the place of being,

,
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I I :w l r by means of this alternation.

s a matter of
wa
it
at
th
e
in
ag
im
e
w
s
les
Un
.
on
go
d
di
ett
ck
Be
And yet,
ity
cu
va
e
os
wh
e
tiv
ra
pe
im
an
to
ce
ien
ed
ob
sh
vi
sla
I I s i mp le obsession, or of a
inuation
nt
co
is
th
at
wh
gh
ou
thr
es
lv
rse
ou
k
as
t
us
m
we
d,
I ll' I acitly acknowledge
artistic and
al
re
a
gh
ou
thr
ed
en
pp
ha
it
at
th
d
ce
in
nv
co
I
am
r a l l l e to pass.
e
th
in
ge
an
ch
a
h
ug
ro
th
ly
ise
ec
pr
e
or
m
d
an
I I lte llectual transformation,

with the unquestionable grey black? Why wish for the silence of the point of

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this terrifying rambling of the question which, were it to issue into the void

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Every question implies a scale of values (what is the answer worth?), and if,
in the end, we find only what was there before every 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

,";entation of thought.

26

which all questions are absent, can it not desert and deconsecrate the dead
end of its own identity?
Well, the answer is no, it cannot do this. The question, because it is one
ofthe instances ofthe subj ective triplet, insists without appeal. Beckett, inIll

Seen III 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? 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).25

The idea of disarticulating the subjective trio by suppressing the

questioning instance cannot be put into practice. One cannot rejoin the

14

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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 from

'"

4 . T h e Tra n sfo rm a t i o n i n Beckett 's w o rk

a fter 1 9 6 0
It is not true that Beckett's enterprise develops in a linear fashion on
Ihe basis of its initial parameters. It is also utterly wrong to maintain, as

much critical opinion would have it, that his work drove itself ever deeper
into 'despair', 'nihilism' , or the defeat of meaning.
Beckett treats a set ofproblems 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

Textsfor 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

15

Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett

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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 from 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 internment of the cogito.
In order to remain adequate to the categories ofthought, the construction
of the texts also undergoes profound changes. The canonical form taken by
the fictions of the 'early' Beckett alternates - 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 thefigural poem
o/the subject 's postures. Beckett's prose is no longer able to retain its usual
'novelistic' functions (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
functions 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 effort which the monologue of The Unnamable had subjected to its own
brand of torture. Rather, Beckett's concern 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 shifting 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
'internal' monologue, not even when it produces fictions and fables. Neither
the technique ofMolloy nor that ofMalone Dies - both of which remain very
close to Kafka's textual procedures - suffice to submit the prose to what is
indiscernible in a generic truth??

In order to grasp the discontinuous interweavings [intrications

1. /. 'III/aires] of the subj ect (or of what is dispersed within the subject) the
I I lollologue/dialogue/story triad must be deposed. At the same time, we cannot
:q wak of a poem in the strict sense, since the operations of a poem, which are
a lways affirmative, do not involve fictionalisation. Instead, I would say that
I he prose - segmented into paragraphs - will come to be governed by a latent
II(ll'fI1. This poem holds together what is given in the texts, but it is not itself
I ', ivcn. The thematic recurrences appear on the surface of the text, characterised
by 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.
" or example, the poem is almost entirely exposed in Lessness, whereas it is
( kcply buried in Imagination Dead Imagine. Yet in all these texts there is a
k i!ld of subversion of prose and of its fictional destiny by the poem, without
I I IC text itself actually entering the realm ofpoetry. It is this subversion without
lransgression that Beckett was to refine after 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
progrannne of the One - obstinate trajectory or interminable soliloquy - to
I he pregnant 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 from 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 possible fortunes or misfortunes of
Ihe subject.
As far as the question of the Other is concerned, this new proj ect
oscillates between realisations of failure and flashes ofvictory. We could say
I hat in Happy Days, Enough or III Seen III Said, 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

16

17

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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 y aitpas 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; TN, p. 54).18 This 'partly' concedes a
point to the non-identity of the self, which is where the risk of a possible
freedom lies. This concession prepares the judgment ofEnough: ' Stony ground
but not entirely' (CSP, p. 1 40; GSP, p. 1 87).29 There is here a breach of being,
a subtraction from the indifferent ingratitude of the grey black. Or, to borrow
a concept from 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 from the predestination of
its own identity?'

,"

5 . Event, Mea n i n g , N a m i n g
The interrogation concerning 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 from 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 from 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.
In this sense, the role of the event is akin to that of woman in Claudel: a
promise that cannot be kept.
18

I II Watt, on the other hand, we encounter the crucial problem of what

lino calls 'incidents', which are themselves quite real.

/Vlltt provides the allegorical arrangement of a structural place: the
h"I I:;I' of Mr. Knott.31 This place is both immemorial and invariable, it is
\ "' 1 1 1 , ), a s All and as Law:

1 1 11

J nothing could be added to Mr. Knott's establishment, and from it

1 I(llhing taken away, but that as it was now, so it had been in the beginning,
. . .

alld so it would remain to the end, in all essential respects, any significant

presence, at any time, and here all presence was significant, even though
it 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 l e can do is to reflect the Law of invariance that governs the place ofbeing.
I l ow does the house function over time? Where is Mr. Knott, at any given
I I IOlllent? In the garden, or on the first floor? These are questions that relate
to pure knowledge, to the science of place; they are the rationalisations of
:;( li 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. 7 1 ; W US, p. 74).33 What are these incidents? Among the
1I10st 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 front of the door, a dog whose
origin is itself an 'impenetrable' 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
I he 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

19

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( ' 1 'oV: [Impatiently.] What is it?

captive to a problematic of meaning. We are still within the confines of an

"

I I A M M: We're not beginning to . . . to . . . mean something?

attempt ofthe hermeneutic type, in which one is supposed to bring the incident,

( ' I ,OV: Mean something ! You and I, mean something ! [Brie/laugh.] Ah

by means of a well-conducted interpretation, into agreement with the

I llat's a good one!

established universe of meanings. Here is the passage that lays out the
hierarchy of possibilities that are open to Watt as the interpreter, or hermeneut,

( '[)W, pp. 1 07-1 08; E, pp. 32-33)35

of the incidents:
Ultimately, Beckett replaces his initial hermeneutics - which attempts
[ . . . ] the meaning attributed to this particular type of incident, by Watt, in

I t ! p i n the event to the network of meanings - with an entirely different

'11\ Tat i on, that ofnaming. Confronted with a chance supplementation ofbeing,

his relations, was now the initial meaning that had been lost and then

recovered, and now a meaning quite distinct from the initial meaning, and

l Ia l i l i ng

now a meaning evolved, after a delay of varying length, and with greater

I l i vented name out of the very void of what takes place. Interpretation is

or less pains, from the initial absence of meaning

(W p. 76; W US, p. 79).34

I hncby supplanted by a poetics of naming that has no other purpose than to

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
(,after a delay of varying length'), and demands its labour ('with greater or
less pains ') . However, if this is all there is, if the interpreter is the giver of

sense, then we remain prisoners of meaning as law and imperative. The

interpreter 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

does not seek any meaning at all, but instead proposes to draw an

/1 \ I hc incident, to preserve within language a trace ofthe incident's separation.

The poetics of naming is central to III Seen III Said, starting with the
\,\,1 y title ofthe text. Indeed, what does 'ill seen' mean? 'Ill seen' means that
w h a t happens is necessarily outside the laws of visibility of the place of being.
W l lat truly happens cannot be properly seen [bien vu] (including in the moral

::,'nsc of the term), because the well-seen [bien-vu] is always framed by the

" .Icy 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 a m c ofthe ill seen - then this name cannot remain prisoner of the meanings
that are attached to the monotony of the place. It thus belongs to the register

" I ' the ill said. 'Ill seen ill said' designates the possible agreement between
t hai which is subtracted from the visible (the 'ill seen'), and that which is

';l I hlracted from 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 hI;

other,
Here is a decisive passage concerning this point:

postulates that the existence of an event does not entail that we are subj ected

During the inspection a sudden sound. Startling without consequence for

to the imperative of discovering its meaning :

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.

HAMM: What's happening?

When suddenly to the rescue it comes again. Forthwith the uncommon

CLOY: Something is taking its course.

common noun collapsion. Reinforced a little later if not enfeebled by the

[Pause.]

infrequent slumberous. A slumberous collapsion. Two. Then far from the

I IA MM: Clov!

still agonizing eye a gleam of hope. By the grace ofthese modest beginnings

20

21

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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 torture.
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 freedom - 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 from 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 interpolated 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 occurrences. 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.

6 . F i g u re s of t h e S u bj ect a n d Fo rm u l a s of

Sexuation

l A la i n Ba d i o u On Beckett
in
]
es
tag
on
[m
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I \ ' , L ( ' I I in his texts
ished in
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y
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, or
sts
re
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of
at
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no
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Th
le.
ib
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th
of
, :,Ia hli shed figure
e
Th
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m
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as
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in
om
ro
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of
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su
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th
of
or
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e
on
at
th
rs
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ev
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Su
.
ce
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s allows
es
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Th
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ern
Inf
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nt
Da
all
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ey
th
t
bu
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gy
,I I II Ickct cosmolo
.
ct
bje
su
e
th
of
s
on
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os
sp
di
al
ur
fig
e
th
on
up
s
cu
fo
, t i l a l lention to
in
r
de
lin
cy
er
bb
ru
nt
gia
a
is
n
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es
qu
in
e
ac
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th
,
In The Lost Ones
ous
or
rig
by
ed
lat
gu
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e
are
tur
ra
pe
tem
d
an
d,
un
so
,
ht
lig
of
wl lic h the variations
known.
un
y
all
tu
ep
nc
co
t
ye
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an
le
ab
rv
se
ob
y
all
ric
pi
em
e
ar
s
law s. These law
d
an
re
su
clo
of
ex
pl
m
co
a
to
d
ce
du
re
d
an
ed
rifi
pu
Tl iis is a simple cosmos,
gle
sin
a
g
in
ey
ob
th
wi
elf
its
s
sie
bu
'
le
op
pe
tle
lit
'
a
I " ! ',a l i ty. Within it,
ger
lon
no
is
e
tiv
ra
pe
im
te
na
sti
ob
is
Th
.38
es
on
t
los
eir
th
r
fo
1 l l lpcrative: to look
of
n
tio
es
qu
a
r
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lon
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is
It
e.
bl
ma
na
Un
e
Th
1 1 t : 1 1 of identification, as in
e
Th
.
ce
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sil
of
t
in
po
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pu
e
th
at
elf
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on
g
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rej
of
::p ca king one's self or
ch one
ea
to
up
is
it
,
ise
ec
pr
e
or
m
be
to
,
or
r,
he
ot
e
th
r
fo
ok
I I I I pe rative is to lo
ere lost
wh
de
bo
'A
le:
ta
e
th
of
ng
ni
gin
be
ry
ve
e
th
is
re
He
er.
In look for its oth
p. 20 2) .39
P,
GS
;
59
1
p.
,
Sp
(e
e'
on
st
lo
its
r
fo
g
in
ch
ar
se
ch
ea
i >nd ics roam
u,
yo
s
ise
lar
gu
sin
e,
on
st
lo
ur
yo
g
in
be
by
o,
wh
e
on
e
th
The lost one is
ly to
on
g
in
be
ve
ha
o
wh
e
os
th
of
s
tu
sta
s
ou
ym
on
an
e
th
m
ka rs you away fro
st
lo
e's
on
d
fin
To
.
rs
he
arc
se
of
le
op
pe
e
th
g
on
I lie extent that they are lost am
e
th
in
il
so
a
nir
ve
[ad
elf
es
on
to
e
m
co
to
be
d
ul
nll C [etre 'depeupl t!'] wo
\Il counter with one's other.
n around
ru
le
op
Pe
d.
rie
va
d
an
t
tan
ns
co
th
bo
is
r
he
ot
e
th
r
fo
The quest
e
th
if
e
se
to
rs
de
lad
e
th
ng
bi
m
cli
e
pl
am
ex
r
fo
r
lvcrywhere in the cylinde
s
nt
ou
am
is
th
of
l
Al
s.
ht
ig
he
us
rio
va
at
d
lle
sta
in
es
ch
ni
lost one is in one of the
king
sta
in
pa
its
of
all
in
es
rib
sc
de
ett
ck
Be
at
th
e
cis
er
ex
ted
1 0 a very complica
t,
es
qu
e
th
of
es
ur
fig
ur
fo
sh
ui
ng
sti
di
ss
ele
rth
ve
m inutiae. In the end we can ne
ch
ea
'
r
fo
ns
io
sit
po
e
bl
ssi
po
ur
fo
t,
ec
bj
su
e
th
of
an d therefore four figures
on e' who searches for its lost one.
logy of
po
ty
is
th
up
ng
tti
se
r
fo
ria
ite
cr
o
tw
e
ar
e
er
th
,
ng
ki
ea
sp
Roughly
ligures.
up
en
giv
ve
ha
o
wh
e
os
th
d
an
ch
ar
se
o
wh
e
os
th
sts
ra
The first one cont
rative
pe
im
e
gl
sin
e
th
th
wi
ce
an
rd
co
ac
in
e
liv
ll
sti
ho
w
e
on the search; thos

The fabulation of the figures of the subject will persistently occupy

22

23

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Al a i n B a d i o u On Beckett r-------------.....
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 finding 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 in the Platonic categories ofmovem
ent "
and rest, whose importance for Beckett's thought I have already
indicated.
There are searchers who circulate without stopping, there are oth
ers who
sometimes stop, and then there are those who stop often - and eve
n some
who no longer move at all.

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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, excep
t the eyes,
ceaselessly turning in all directions.
4) The non-searchers, the vanquished.
Those who are immobile, either constantly or for a long time, are cal
led
the sedentary. By combining the criteria of the imperative (to sea
rch) and of
movement, we can fundamentally distinguish two ' extremal' po
sitions: the
absolute nomadic living beings, on the one hand, and the vanquis
hed, on the
other. Between these two figures lie partial and total sedentarity.
The principl e underlying this distribution of figures is the fol
lowing :
since the law of desire is the search for the other, this search can
never be
interrupted, except in that approximation ofdeath constituted by irr
eversibility.
The moment when one gives up on the imperative is a point ofno
return. The
one who stops circulating becomes sedentary, thereby entering int
o the figure
of the vanquished.
This is if we view things from the side of life, from the side
of the
imperative ofthe lost one. But, from 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 mi
racle, which

24

l A l a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett
1 0 . 1 1 hOl l rs

all of Beckett's paradoxical optimism: the return (which is rare,

, 1 1 1 1 I t ,sl n e ver takes place, but there are cases . . . ) of a vanquished one to the
, I I " 1 1 : 1 o r the search. Here the set-up involves a certain torsion: giving up on
I i i,' l i l lperative is irreversible, but the result of (or the punishment for) this
. I , k :l l , which is apathetic immobility, is not irreversible . Or again:
I l l l 'vlTsibility is a law of choice, a law of the moment; it does not govern a
' : I : i I (' of affairs. Grasped in all its consequences and figures, and not in its
I 'l l n' moment, irreversibility is not irreversible.
The subject's maxims are therefore as follows: to give up is irreversible,
1 ," 1 1111 possibilities exist even where nothing attests to them, in the midst of
I I ll' ligures of sedentarity. Beckett says as much in an extraordinarily succinct
1 ':lssage, which presents a very abstract and profound insight into the link
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. 2 1 1 -2 1 2).40

t'

I
I

!I'

I
1,
;

.'

The slightest failure is total (because less nothing) but no possibility

I ; annihilated (because not-possible
provisionally no longer possible).
The ethics of the cylinder knows no eternal damnation, but neither
docs 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 ofthe subject's figures 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
arc 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,
i t can only be half-said.40 When it comes to the truth of subjective figures,
I he proportion that Beckett proposes is somewhat different. Of the four figures,
only three can be named, so that in this case speech can reach three quarters
of the 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)42

25

.1

A l a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

, , , "

',",

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26

. -------

L Al a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

r-----

These are the four figural 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 concerning the relationship
between truth and speech.
These are the generic figures 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 particular 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 careful to warn 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 ofexistence;
they are equivalent to one another, 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 concerns only the intrinsic ontological
equality of the figures of the subject.
Within this typology, we can nevertheless group the figures of solitude,
on the one hand, and the figures of the Two, on the other.
The figures 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 finds 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

-----

, "" ' p l icated.

are
I ,ct us note that, as figures of solitude, the journey and immobility

ns her
I h, res ults of a separation. The joumey is that of a victim who abando
entor.
I", " Iel ltor, whilst immobility in the dark applies to the abandoned torm

s
doe
tt
cke
Be
r.
nne
ma
nt
late
a
in
but
ed,
uat
sex
are
res
figu
se
t
the
tha
r
dea
I:;
I
I

pro nounce the words 'man' and 'woman', precisely because they refer
pending as it does
1 1 1 1 1 00 comfortably to a structural and permanent Two. De
ir
the
of
r,
nto
me
tor
and
tim
vic
of
o
Tw
the
ter,
oun
enc
the
of
nce
hc
I
l
l
cha
i
t
duality.
'I 1II II Ieys and immobilities, is not the realisation of any pre-existing
I n fact, the figures of solitude are sexuated in accordance with two
tted out by How It Is:
I " ('al exi stential theorems , whose evidence is plo
- first theorem: only a woman travels;
second theorem: whoever is immobile in the dark is a man.
note
I will let you reflect upon these theorems. What we should
g
rin
nde
wa
t
tha
es
stat
ich
wh
es,
sex
the
of
e
trin
doc
this
t
tha
is
ly
iate
I I l 1 l l 1ed
be
st
mu
he
k
dar
the
in
bile
mo
im
l
rta
mo
a
is
ere
t
ifth
tha
and
n
ma
a
wo
lies
'{" /i
li l lian - this schema of sexuation, in brief- is in no sense either empirical or
hio logical. The sexes are distributed as a result, on the basis of an encounter
one
e
siv
pas
the
and
'
r's
nto
me
tor
e
'th
led
cal
n
itio
pos
ive
act
the
ich
I I I wh
es
sex
e
Th
.
e'
lov
ic
'sto
h
oug
thr
er
eth
tog
nd
bou
are
's'
tim
vic
'the
led
cal
rtal crawling
h, '/ 'pen when a mortal crawling in the dark encounters another mo
Of
d.
foo
of
s
tin
of
l
ful
k
sac
her
or
his
h
wit
e,
els
ne
ryo
eve
e
lik
k,
I I I the dar
k
sac
r
the
ano
day
one
but
ut,
abo
s
tin
er
few
and
er
few
ays
alw
are
re
the
,
('ourse
w i l l be found - as long as we don't stop crawling, God wilIling.
Active and pa ssive positions, however, are not the last word on
ne
mi
exa
st
mu
we
,
tter
ma
the
n
upo
t
ligh
re
mo
d
she
to
er
ord
In
scx uation.
that
t
ugh
tho
the
is
is
Th
.
ms
ter
n
ow
its
on
t
ugh
tho
l'
na
mi
'ter
tt's
cke
Be
eSl ablishes the power of the Two as truth.

1 , , ,1

7 . Love a n d its N u m e r ica l i ty : O n e , Tw o , I n fi n i ty

Whilst Beckett's fables are subject to a number ofvariations, one feature
remains unchanged: love begins in a pure encounter, which is neither destined
nor predestined, except by the chance crossing of two trajectories . Prior to
I his meeting, only solitude obtains. No Two, and in particular no sexual duality,
exists before the encounter. Sexual difference is unthinkable except from the
point ofview ofthe encounter, as it unfolds within the process oflove. There

27

>:1
,
,
r

t
,
.1

..,

I
,

"

"

Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

l Al a i n B a d i o u On Beckett

r----

is no originary or prior difference that conditions or orientates this encounter.

The encounter is the originary power ofthe Two, and therefore of love itself.
This power, which within its own domain is not preceded by anything, is
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 '
the thirties, in Murphy, that Beckett asserts this excess without measure of . . ..
.
the encounter:
i

And to meet [ ...] in my sense exceeds the power of feeling, however tender,

.d "

Ihat the Two of love elicits the advent of the sensible. The truth of
I I , , ' I WI) gives rise to a sensible inflection ofthe world, where before only the
, ' I . V hlack of being had taken place. Now, the sensible and the infinite are
I I h l l l i c a l , because the infinity of the world is, together with the One of the
. , , : II, Ihe other coherent thesis. Between these two presentational positions,
1 1 11 Two of love functions 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
,

.-:;IY

"

1 "l l ow i ng:

and of bodily motions, however expert (M, p. 1 24; M US, p. 222).44

II " , , I ' 1 1
,I" " "

"
I"I"II I' II "I' ",I
II:: ' I '
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.

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Beckett never reduces love to the amalgam of sentimentality and

sexuality endorsed by common opinion. Love as a matter oftruth (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 figure
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 of love that Beckett
never ceases to deride. Love is never either fusion or effusion. 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 bashful fumblings,
of which only this, that they gave Macmann some insight into the meaning
of the expression, Two is company (T, p. 2 6 1 ; TN, p. 260).46

The Two, which is inaugurated by the encounter and whose truth results
from 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 first datum) to
the infinity of beings and of experience. The Two of love is a hazardous and
chance-laden mediation for alterity in general. It elicits a rupture 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

28

in other words in simple words I quote on either I am alone and no further

problem or else we are innumerable and no further problem either

( l 1 lI, p. 1 3 5 ; HII US, p. 1 24f7

>;!
,
,
r
,
,

The Two of love deploys the sensible version of this abstract axiom,
w h i c h jointly validates the thesis of the One and the thesis of the Infinite.
I l I ve offers beauty, nuance, colour. It presents what one might call the other
I II .-;e c ond nocturne - 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
I " );ed by the encounter and the ensuing toil, the Two of love operates the
:.I i ssion of the dark into the grey black of being, on the one hand, and the
I I I Ii 11 itely varied darkness of the sensible world, on the other.
This explains why in Beckett's prose one often chances upon these
: ; w l den poems where, under the sign of the inaugural figure of the Two,
';Ililicthing unfolds within the night of presentation. This something is the
I l l I d tiple as such. Love is, above all, an authorisation granted to the multiple,
I I lade under the ever-present threat of the grey black in which the original
( )lIe undergoes the torture of its own identification.
I would now like to quote three such poems that are latent within the
plOse, so that another Beckett may be heard - a Beckett who gives voice to
I I Ie gift and the happiness of being.
The first poem is taken from Krapp s Last Tape, at the moment in which
I he hero of the play, a man nearing his end and launched into interminable
a l 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 of love had re
I )pcned the multiple:
-upper lake, with the punt, bathed off the bank, then pushed out into the

29

I
,.

I
..,

..

'

,,

( )n

under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze,

was due I cannot say. To love of the earth and the flowers' thousand scents

water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked how she

:lI1d hues. Or to cruder imperatives of an anatomical order. He never raised

came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was

I he question. The crest once reached alas the going down again.

Illirror. Having misted it with his breath and polished it on his calf he

after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I

looked in it for the constellations. I have it! he exclaimed referring to the

bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. [Pause. Low.]

Lyre or the Swan. And often he added that the sky seemed much the same

Let me in. [Pause.] We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they

(CSP, p. 142; GSP, p. 190).50

[Pause.]

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.
,

I:

"

"

"

II

But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side
to side. [Pause.]
Past midnight. Never knew

"

:I

"

"
"

I n order from time to time to enjoy the sky he resorted to a little round

[Pause.] I asked her to look at me and after a few moments

"

a gradient Of one in one his head swept the ground. To what this taste

stream and drifted. She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands

hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her eyes.

"

l Al a i n B a d i o u On Beckett

Al a i n B a d i o u On Beckett r-----

"
"
"

,,
,

"
,

(CDW, p. 221 ; SP, p. 6 1 )48

As you can see, this is the poem ofthe opening ofthe waters, the multiple
of the absolute moment, when love, even if it is in the statement of its own
end, brings forth the infinity of the sensible world.
The second quote comes from Enough, a short text entirely devoted to
love. This text establishes precise connections between love and infinite
lmowledge. 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:

I , IVC is when we can say that we have the sky, and that the sky has nothing.51

I I i s then that the multiple of Constellations is held in the opening of the

Two . 52
The last poem is taken from Company, and it is doubtless the one most
" It IScly bound to the metaphor of a division of the dark and of the advent of
l l il second nocturne:

three miles per day and night. We took flight in arithmetic. What mental
calculations bent double hand in hand! Whole ternary 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 4 1 ; GSP, p. 1 88) .49

Here is another very beautiful passage, once again fromEnough, when

the figure of the beloved man becomes this instance of lmowledge through
which the sky is presented in its proper order:

30

,
,

.'

,
,

I
,

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

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

(j

All of these quotes show the Two of love as the passage lPasse] from
I he One of solipsism to the infinite multiplicity of the world, and as the
nocturnal fissure of the grey black of being.
But there is also a conspiring of the Two - an insistence that takes the
ligure of fidelity. This fidelity organises four functions in Beckett, which are
a lso four figures of the subject within love. It is my conviction (for which I
a m unable here to adduce proof) that these functions have a general value, in
I he sense that they are the organising functions of any generic process. They
relate to the duration of love, of course, but also to scientific accumulation,
artistic innovation, and political tenacity.
The first of these functions is wandering [l 'errance] or the journey,
with or without the benefit of a sack: a journey in the dark, which presents
31

" ,

Ala i n B a d i o u On Beckett

,,

II
,

"

:I

"
"

! 'I

,I

"
I'

l Al a i n B a d i o u On Beckett

r-----

the infinite chance of the faithful journey of love; the endless crossing of a
world henceforth exposed to the effects of the encounter. This function 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 function is exactly the opposite, that is, immobility, which
watches over, guards or maintains the fixed point of the first naming, the
naming of the event-encounter. We saw that this naming pins the ' incident'
to its lack of meaning, and permanently fixes that which is supernumerary
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 first time. This immobility is that ofthe second nocturne,
of the small craft caught in the flags, of gazes absorbed by the eyes of the
other.
The third function 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 ofpointless torture from it, thereby imposing
the strict law of happiness, whether one is a victim or a tormentor.
The fourth function is that of the story, which, from the standpoint of
the Two, offers up the latent infinity 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. 153; 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 functions: 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 functions 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 function is missing, this prescriptive immobility
remains mute. In the case of love, a 'man' is the name's silent custodian. And
because the function of wandering is missing, to be a man within love is also

, I, . I H lthing 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
i l l t . rd with the fixity of the name, but with the infinity of its unfolding in the
\\ l Il ld, the narrative of its unending glory. It does not stick to the sole
1 ' 1 ',<;niption without proof, but organises the constant inquiry, the verification
I I I : 1 capacity. To be a 'woman', in the context of love, is to move about in
i l l t 'ordance with a custody of meaning, rather than of names. This custody
I I l 1 pl ies the errant chance of inquiries, as well as the perpetual depositing of
1 1 1 1,'; chance into a story.
Love exists as the determination of this polarity, supporting the four
I l I l Ictions and providing them with a singular distribution. This is why love
il lolle calls for the observation that there is indeed 'man' (immobility of the
I I l 1perative, the custody of the name) and 'woman' (wandering of a truth,
t ( ) l Isequences of the name within speech). Without love, nothing would bear
w i l iless to the Two of the sexes. Instead there would be One, and One again,
hili not Two. There would not be man and woman.
These reflections open onto an important doctrine that concerns all
1 ',l'lleric procedures, which is that of their numericality.
In love, there is first the One of solipsism, which is the confrontation
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
( one, two, infinity) is specific to the procedure oflove. We could demonstrate
I hat the other truth procedures - science, art, and politics - have different
I l limericalities, and that each numericality singularises the type of procedure
i I I question, all the while illuminating how truths belong to totally
I lderogeneous registers.
The numericality of love - one, two, infinity - is the setting for what
I 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 of truth. In art there is pleasure, in science joy, in politics
enthusiasm, but in love there is happiness.
Joy, pleasure, enthusiasm, and happiness all concern 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-

32

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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 fusion. Rather, it is the
subjective indicator of a truth of difference, of sexual difference, a truth that
love alone makes effective.
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 4 1 ; GSP, p. 1 88).55 In fact, the masculine polarity supports a desire
for scission. This is not at all a longing to return 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 [principe 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 ofEnough. 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 narrative of wandering:

nocturne (ci limbo between life and death), at the end there arises a kind
" I l ra nsparent void, which is laid out in the second nocturne. What more is
I l ine to do than to listen to what is happening?
What follows is the opening passage - in my view one of the most
I wa lltiful texts in the French language - which captures the brilliance of
I I I is fortune:

"

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

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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 often she freezes on the way. Unable till long after to move on not
knowing whither or for what purpose. Down on her knees especially she

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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.

,
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, There then she sits as though turned to stone face to the night. Save for the
J

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

mounds. Nothing but the two of us dragging through the flowers. Enough
my oid breasts feel his old hand (eSp, p. 144; GSP, p. 192).56

Decision no sooner reached or rather long after than what is the wrong
word? For the last time at last for to end yet again what the wrong word?

34

From where she lies she sees Venus rise. On. From where she lies when

Now I'll wipe out everything but the flowers. No more rain. No more

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: immobility and
wandering, imperative and story.
This happiness is basically all that takes place between the beginning
and the end of III Seen III 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

, ' l l' Y

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

This notion of calm comes from him. Without him I would not have had it.

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 enough
remain to devour all. Moment by glutton moment. Sky earth the whole kit
and boodle. Not another crumb of carrion left. Lick chops and basta. No.
One moment more. One last. Grace to breathe that void. Know happiness
(ISIS, p. 59; NO, p. 86).59

35

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lA_I_
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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 of life and of the visible to the
happiness of a truthful 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 turn 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

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1 . A ' Yo u n g C reti 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' rry 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

36

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Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r----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 from 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 difficult to notice the fact that this very wish could end
up as the material for the forms of perpetuation 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 from nostalgia.
When I discovered Beckett, some years after the beginning ofhis 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
else did. A writer of the absurd, of despair, of empty skies, of
incommunicability and of eternal 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 function ofwords - was entirely captured
by the prose at a distant remove from 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 myselfwith 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 fundamentals, I think I have nothing to
learn, and indeed I confuse them with accidentals (T, p. 80; TN, p. 80).61

I should have concentrated my attention on the irony that charges this

nihilistic verdict with a bizarre energy. All the same, when I delighted in
reading (from Malone Dies):

38

:\

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; TN, p. 259).62
I d i dn't pay enough attention to the denial that this affirmative, almost violent,

:;Iyle brings to the commonplace (and sub-Kafkaesque) thesis of universal

l " I II pability.

In my eyes all of this remained the literary allegory of a conclusive

:;Iatement 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
(lrder to support my conviction that the decisive philosophical task, which I
considered my own, was to complete the Sartrean theory of freedom by means
( 1 I" a careful 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 ofthe striking mixture
o f hatred and saving familiarity that the ' speaker' of this novel lavishes upon
h i s linguistic instrument.

...

, I
.

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; TN, 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; TN, 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 The 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

39

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Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett

l Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

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 enterprise 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, theatre,
prose, poetry, cinema, radio, television, and criticism, is not this gloomy
c orporeal immers ion into an abandoned existence, into hopeless .
relinquishment. Neither is it the contrary, as some have tried to argue: farce,
derision, a concrete flavour, 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 born, 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:

\ /1

Iii/' Nothing ( composed between 1 950 and 1 953), the writer is overcome

I !. ' I I '

/1 Is ( 1 959- 1 960), a text that introduces a clean rupture in the themes as

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loy ; I I \'d ing of impasse and impotence. He comes out of this impasse with
-II

The work of Beckett, which is often 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 discern in Beckett a central oscillation between
philosophical abstraction (an abstraction that is entirely purified in Worstward
Ho) and the strophic poem. The latter describes a kind of picture through the
incessant repetition ofthe same groups ofwords, and through minute variations
which, little by little, displace the meaning ofthe text (a technique pushed to
its extreme in Lessness).
We can also identify two major periods within Beckett's work. After

in the conduct of the prose.

The effect 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 is still perceptible in Molloy, but in The Unnamable it is exhausted,
' 1 l l IlIgh it is not possible to say that the poem prevails - even if the cadence,
l i l t ' disposition of the paragraphs and the intrinsic value of the visions indicate
I I l a l t he text is governed by what could be defined as a 'latent poem'.
In truth, the scraps of fiction or spectacle that Beckett employs attempt
' I I ,'x pose some critical questions (in Kant's sense) to the test of beauty. These
qllestions are very few in number. To Kant's famous 'What can I know?
W hat 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
t Olild be? What would I say, if! had a voice? ' After 1 960, one can add: 'Who
, / 11/ I. 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
dealing with an enterprise of meditative thought - half-conquered by the
p()cm - which attempts to seize in beauty the non-prescriptible fragments of
txistence.
We should also refrain from the belief that Beckett sinks into an
I I ltcrrogation that is sufficient unto itself, solving none of the problems that it
has posed. On the contrary, the work of the prose is intended to isolate and
a l 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
Il:nds towards affirmation. He is no stranger to the maxim, which always
carries with it a principle of relentlessness and advancement.
Let us take just one maxim amongst many others, a conclusion: ' Stony
ground but not entirely. '66 Ah! One really should speak of the stoniness, of
t he ingratitude 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 often 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 century an ersatz of spirit - why he wrote, he telegraphed back:

40

41

I alone am man and all the rest divine CT, p. 302; TN, p. 300).65

2 . B e a uty

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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

--

l Al a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

r------

' 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 truly 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 from the mother,
from the mother-tongue), he called upon the services of a secondary and
learnt 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 rectify their precision
within the phrase, adding epithets or repentances. Thus we read, in III Seen
III Said:

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
(e, pp. 66-67; NO, p. 35).68

And also by means of a declarative tone that establishes the splendour

( ) f the universe and the apparent misery of its immobile witness as a spectacle
Ihat is unveiled through prose, as in III Seen III 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

And also by way of falls and halts in the action that indicate, in the
prose of Enough, a tenderness 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 from Rough for Theatre II), which annul
any loftiness in the tone of the prose:
and nature, heart and

With not being able. No. Never. A dream. Question answered

Work, family, third fatherland, cunt, finances,

(ISIS, p. 37; NO, p. 70).67

conscience, health, housing conditions, God and man, so many disasters

(eDW, p. 238; SP, p. 78).71

art

And finally - against the grain of the brevities and caesurae that
elsewhere dominate - by means of length, that extreme flexibility which
permits the withdrawal ofpunctuations, when Beckett wants all the data of a

You are on your back at the foot of an aspen. In its trembling shade. She at

42

, i

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).69

answering. With not being able. With not being able not to want to know.

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
nocturne of reminiscence. From Company:

43

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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:

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l i e down); being (what there is, the places, the appearances, as well as

vacillation of any identity whatsoever); language (the imperative of saying,

problem or else we are innumerable and no further problem either

(HIl, p. 1 3 5 ; HII US, p. 1 24).72

1 1 1['

impossibility of silence). A ' character' is never anything but the assemblage

I I I a journey, an identity, and a cruel chatter. Fiction, which is always presented

I I l l1ctions are what cannot be abolished.

comedy. Elongation, or the phrased embodiment of variants. These are, in

by little, from all apparent sense, but since it is a matter of presenting

I he essence of movement - the movement in movement - Beckett's advance

w i l l bring with it the destruction of all the means, outside supports, and

the Earth, and to isolate, according to its proper density, that which exceeds

perceptible surfaces of mobility. The ' character' (Molloy, or Moran) will

it.

I l l i siay his bicycle,

a

injure himself, no longer know where he is, and even lose

l a me,

a nd the impotent, and, in the end, those bodies that are reduced, little by

To separate appearance, which it both restores and obliterates, from the

I i I tie, to a head, a mouth, a skull with two holes to ill see and an oozing of

moment in which movement becomes externally indiscernible from

must disregard in order to face up to what may be of worth.

i mmobility. This is because movement is no longer anything but its own

w hich we could say - so exhausted is the prose - that it is brought back to a
point of movement.
,

Immobility would thereby find its complete metaphor in the corpse:

In his own way, B eckett rediscovers an inspiration belonging to

' dying' is the conversion of all possible movement into permanent rest. But

Descartes and Husserl: if you wish to conduct a serious enquiry into 'thinking

here again, the irreducibility of the functions means that 'dying' is never

humanity' [l 'humanite pensante] , it is first of all necessary to suspend

death. In Malone Dies, one sees how movement and language ultimately

everything that is either inessential or doubtful; it is necessary to reduce

infect both being and immobility, so that the point of immobility is constantly

humanity to its indestructible functions. The destitution ofBeckett's characters

deferred; it does not allow itself to be constructed otherwise than as the

- their poverty, their illnesses, their strange fixity, or indeed their wandering

unattainable limit of an increasingly diminishing network of movements,

without any perceptible finality, in other words, everything that has so often

memories and words. Beckett's poetics is thus constituted by a progressive

been taken as an allegory of the infinite miseries of the human condition - is

alleviation of constraints, a demolition of that which delays the moment of

nothing other than the protocol of an experience which deserves comparison

immobility. If movement is undone, so as to be no more than a difference of

with the doubt by means of which Descartes reduced the subject to the vacuity

rest, rest itself is presented as the integral of movement and language, as a

of its pure enunciation, or Husserl's epoch!!, which reduces the evidence of

the world to that of the intentional fluxes of consciousness.

44

,
'I:

,,

words for ill saying. In this dispossession, the 'character' reaches a pure

the word of beauty. In this separating function, the word declares what we

3 . Asce s i s a s M e t h o d

the paralytic, the old who have lost their walking sticks, the helpless

ideal mobility, testified only by a minute tension, a sort of differential of

.' I I

good part of his body. Innumerable in Beckett's prose are the blind, the

of beauty, and in particular of the beauty that Beckett aims at, is to separate.
universal core of experience. It is indispensable to take Beckett at his word:

!tlile

at one and the same time, to speak unrepentantly of the stony ingratitude of

that tells us what it is that Beckett wishes to save. This is because the destiny

w h ich is not reducible to these three functions and to demonstrate that these
Such is the case with movement: not only must wandering be detached,

This is why we must begin with the beauty in the prose. It is this beauty

I,

mbitrary, as an aleatory montage, tends to set out the loss of everything

Declension, or the tender cadence of disaster. Interruption, or the maxims of

my opinion, the principal operations through which Beckett's writing attempts,
"I , '

functions: movement and rest (to go and to stall, or to collapse,

1 1 1['

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__
__
__

in other words in simple words I quote on either I am alone and no further

poetic incision of memory. Declaration, or the function of emergence ofprose.

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the first part of his French oeuvre, Beckett's methodical ascesis

1 ' . I . l a l es three
1.111,

Rectification, or the work on the isolation of terms. Expansion, or the

'il"

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strange mix of the deceleration of prose and the acceleration of its dispersal .
When Beckett wishes to concentrate his attention on one of thc

45

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Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett r------

--------

functions, he makes sure that the others are blocked. It thus that the 'speaker'
of The Unnamable, trapped in a jar at the entrance to a restaurant, is rendered
immobile, and the subject matter of his gigantic monologue is nothing more

I" "
"
:II

passivity (the one on whom the other falls: the victim). The existence of the

II

possessions that would have diverted him from what it is his destiny to

( ) 1 her is not in doubt, but its construction and identity refer back to an evasive

I I.

',I "

circularity; it is possible to occupy successively the position of the tormentor,

1 I H.;n that of the victim, and nothing besides these positions can serve to specity

a itcrity.

between this methodical ascesis - staged with a tender and voluble humour

In Company, the problem is inverted, since this time the Other is

and some sort of tragic pathos of the destitution and the misery of man has

assigned to the third function, language. It presents itself as a voice reaching

distracted our contemporaries from any deep understanding of the writings

()ut to someone in the dark. The singularity of this voice is not in doubt; it

of Beckett.

relates childhood stories of a rare poetic intensity. But since no real movement

the dejections no they are me but I love them the old half-emptied tins let

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).

limply fall no something else the mud engulfs all me alone it carries my

Just as movement, purified by a methodical literary ascesis, is a

four stone five stone it yields a little under that then no more I don't flee I

difference of the immobile, and the immobility of being, or death, is never

am banished (HII, p. 43; HII US, p. 39)13

anything but the inaccessible limit of movement and of language, so the

other, reduced to its primitive functions, is caught in the following tourniquet:

We cannot understand the text ifwe immediately see it as a concentration

camp [concentrationnaire] allegory of the dirty and diseased human animal.
"" . " "

I'

II

I
,

L
,

'"

()r corporeal encounter bears witness to it, its existence remains suspended: it

Beckett says, in How It Is:

.. .

I I I Ihe black night - where, like everyone else, it crawls with its sack - the

actually succeeded in losing all the secondary ornaments, all the dubious

One can never emphasise enough the degree to which the confusion

"I"'

In How It Is, the Other is assigned to movement and to rest: sometimes,

whose proper name is effaced or undecided and who is utterly destitute, has

are: going, being and saying.

,',

I I I I Le primitive functions.

lis immobility, by the reptations of a subject. This accounts for the derived
f U llctions of activity (the one who falls on the other: the tOlmentor) and of

experiment, and which concerns generic humanity, whose essential functions

:11'
HI : " , I ,

:,1
..

what requires thinking in the beauty of prose, we will say that this ' character' ,

., , I I
II"
," ' " I
,ii '

tt___.,
k_
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.:. I..
. a..:..:
..::: i nB---.:.a---.:.d_io__
u O
_n_B_e_c_

( ) I her encounters an immobile entity; sometimes it is encountered in tum, in

than the imperative to speak. This is not a tragic image. In fact, if we consider

,., I .. I "

----.,-- . .

i f he exists, he is like me, he is indiscernible from me. And if he is clearly

identifiable, his existence is uncertain.

On the contrary - admitting that we are indeed animals lodged upon an earth

In all these cases we can see that the ascesis - metaphorically enacted

which is insignificant and brimming over with excrement - it is a matter of

as loss, destitution, poverty, a relentlessness based on almost nothing - leads

establishing that which subsists in the register of the question, of thought, of

to a conceptual economy of an ancient or Platonic type. If we disregard (and

the creative capacity (in this case, the will to movement, as opposed to flight).

Beckett's prose is the movement of this disregard, of this abandon) what is

Thus reduced to a few functions, humanity is only more admirable, more

inessential, what distracts us (in Pascal's sense), we see that generic humanity

energetic, more immortal.

can be reduced to the complex of movement, of rest (of dying), of language

From the sixties onwards, a fourth function takes on a more and more

(as imperative without respite) and of the paradoxes of the Same and the

determining role: that of the Other, ofthe companion, of the external voice. It

Other. We are very close to what Plato, in The Sophist, names as the five

is not by chance that the three parts ofHow It Is relate to the three moments

supreme genera: Being, Sameness, Movement, Rest, and Other. If Plato the

that are named by the following syntagms: 'before Pim', 'with Pim' and 'after

philosopher uses these to determine the general conditions for all thinking,

Pim'; or that a later text is called Company. The 'with the other' is decisive.

then Beckett the writer intends, through the ascetic movement of prose, to

But here too, it is necessary to isolate the essential nature of this 'with the

present in fiction the atemporal determinants of humanity.

other' by means of a montage that eradicates all psychology, all evidence,

This humanity, which has been called 'larval' or 'clownish', and which

and all empirical exteriority. The Other is itself a knot tying together the

in Worstward Ho in fact comprises nothing but skulls oozing words, must be

46

47

I,:'I"Ii
Ii,

III,I'.
'

j'

II

I
I

Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett

r------

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 'ily 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?

4 . Be i n g a n d La n g u a g e
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:

I
----1---1
Beckett
i o u On
i n Bad--Ala-------

"--

i tl 'l'kett devotes many of his inventions to the following task: to name the
I h i io nal place of being.
There are two places of being in Beckett's first fictions, 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 I I heing and nothingness - because the set of its components is denumerable
; 1 1 11 1 the components themselves can be named exactly. The aim of the fictions
I I I closure is that the seen be coextensive with the said. Beckett fixes this
I Ihjective in a short text, Fizzle 5: Closed Space:
Closed place. All needed to be known for say is known
(CSP, p. 199; GSP, p. 236).75

On this basis, how can the imperative to speak, which governs in

particular the imperative of the writer - and above all of the one who is 'good
for' nothing else - attune itselfwith being? Have we some hope that language
could stop the flux 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 from 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.

This same tendency is exemplified by the room where the two

protagonists of Endgame are enclosed, by the room where Malone dies (or
rat her moves indefinitely 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 fiction [Ie dispositij de fiction]
('stablishes a strict control upon place, constructing a universe sufficiently
till 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 ofpaths; it extends
I he dissipation and tries to maintain itself as close as possible to the flight of
a ppearances. What is in question is a wholly other equality between language
and being: the flexibility of the first 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
t he labyrinth of streets of The Expelled, and it is even present in the corridor
o f black mud where the torturers and the victims ofHow It Is crawl, since, as
we will later learn, this corridor is infinite. In these open places the arrangement
of the fiction seeks to capture in language the 'conversion times' of being
into nothingness. Therefore, 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 of the closed

48

49

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

I <: '
---j I I

;
,

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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, p . 1 53 ; GSP, pp. 1 97-1 98).76

"", I !

, I

,,,

,,'" I I

"

In this kind of passage, it is a question for Beckett of fixing the scene

ofbeing, 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. Often Beckett typifies this with the names gloom, half-light, or dim.77
Thus in The Lost Ones:
What first 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. 2 1 3).78

-----

Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

1 11 1 1 11 '" or

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,
fil l i l n l i-dialectical black. It is here that the closed and the open become
II I,hsl i nguishable, and that voyage and fixity become the reversible metaphors
" I I l la l 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
1 1" ,', ssary to reverse the Cartesian equivalence between the true and the clear
illid d istinct. Thus in Molloy:
.

"

r---

space or of wandering, the suppression of any descriptive particularity ends

up with a uniform 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 modifies its components - represents in my view the successful realisation
of Beckett's poetic effort to assign being a place:

------

Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

." "

" '

In Worstward Ho, the question ofthe prosodic construction 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 unknown. Know minimum. Know nothing no. Too much
to hope. At most mere minimum (WH, p. 9; NO, p . 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, p . 97).80

[ think so, yes, I think that all that is false may more readily be reduced, to

notions clear and distinct, distinct from all other notions

(T, p. 82; TN, p. 82). 8 1

I l lhe 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
" I I he in-separable, of the indistinct. Prose alone can reach the exact point
where being, far from letting itself be thought in a dialectical opposition to
l Ioll-being, stands towards it in a relation of unclear equivalence. This is the
point where, as Malone says (not without warning us that one could thus
' pollute the whole of speech'): 'Nothing is more real than nothing (T, p.
I In; TN, p. 1 92).
It is far from being the case that employing the resources of the latent
pocm allows Beckett to surmount all the obstacles before him. This is because
I IlCre is not just the place; or, as Mallarme said, it is not true that 'nothing will
lake place but the place' [rien n 'aura lieu que Ie lieu]. In effect, all fiction, as
I levoted 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 tum
excludes itself from the place simply by the act of naming it, whilst at the
same time holding itself at a distance from this name. The one for whom
Ihere is the grey-black does not cease to reflect and recommence the poetic
work oflocalisation. In so doing, the subject advenes as an incomprehensible
supplement of being; it is borne by a prose whose entire energy, inasmuch as
it seeks to make the real and the nothing equivalent, is expended in trying to
Icave no room for any supplement whatsoever.
Whence the torture of the cogito.

At the end of this fictive simplification, one could call the place of
50

51

"

"

-----

'I
,
.. _---,--- ,

n Bad i o u On Beckett

Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett r-------

5 . T h e S o l ita ry S u bject

" I

" I'
"

" I '

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 effort 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 functions 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 returning 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 fundamental hope of the 'hero' of
The Unnamable:

i ",

lai-------------A

, k::lroys 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
,, :i/() in a state of genuine terror. In the words of the hero of The Unnamable:
,

I!'
l

:, i
..
"

I only think, if that is the name for this vertiginous panic as of hornets

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

t i t pos ited in the voice, does not possess the simple structure that one may at
I l lsl 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
I kckett's work - so that the title must be taken, as always, to the letter (these
i t " , I s are written for nothing, nothing results from the artist's thought) - Beckett
::liows that the subject is not double (the thought and the thought ofthought),
I li i t t riple, and that it is is absolutely impossible to try and reduce this triplicity
I t l t he unicity of silence is impossible. In Texts for Nothing, we find the
I " I lowing decomposition of the cogito into three:

"
,, ,I,
I I

:,
,

Ii

I, ' '
,
i'
I ,

[ . . . ] one who speaks saying, without ceasing to speak, Who's speaking?,

and one who hears, mute, uncomprehending, far from all [ . . . J . And this

" I I

[ . . . ] perhaps it's a dream, all a dream, that would surprise me, I'll wake, in

other now [ . . . ] with his babble of homeless mes and untenanted hims [ . . . ]

the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again,
dream of a silence, a dream silence [ . . . ] (T, p. 4 1 8 ; TN, p. 414).82

There's a pretty three in one, and what a one, what a no one

(eSp, p. 1 1 2; GSP, p. 1 5 0).84

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 insufficient 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 worn out language, an original silence is to suddenly emerge.
This oscillation between, on the one hand, an excess so violent that it

Let us note carefully the components of this 'pretty three in one'.

First of all, there is the subject who speaks, the subject of saying, who
IS equally supposed to be capable of asking 'who speaks?' at the same time
:IS he speaks. Let us call this the subject of enunciation.
Then there is the 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 h i 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
:lttain this knowledge, subjects himself to torture. Let us call this the subject

52

53

I
1 ,1
I
!,I

,
,
.

IiI

''
.

II

II
I,

------

Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett r-------..;

"I ' "

" , I

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 torture of thought? As
we've already said, the dim - the grey-black that localises being - is ultimately
nothing but an empty scene. To fill it, it is necessary to turn towards this
irreducible region of existence constituted by speech - the third universal
function 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 interpreted 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?
After 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 indiscernible from 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 finds 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 return 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, after all, the conclusion of The Unnamable:
[ . . . J you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on (T, p . 4 1 8; TN, p. 414).86

The cogito of the pure voice is unbearable (stricto sensu: in writing, it

can be borne 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 Textsfor Nothing,
this was indeed Beckett's own feeling. It was a question of knowing if one
54

----,

--

A la in Ba d io u On Beckett

1 1 11 1 1 < 1 go on, and the response was negative. How could one continue to

1 1.':( , 1 1 late - helplessly and without result - between the grey-black of being

t he infinite torture ofthe solipsistic cogito? Which new fictions could be

1 ' 1 1 1 I,cndered within such an oscillation? Once being was named and experience
w a s had ofthe impasse of that subject which constitutes an exception within
I w i 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 alternation of neutral being and
vain reflection so that Beckett could escape the crisis, so that he could break
w i t h Cartesian 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 teingfolded 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
t hc voice of the other (which interrupts solipsism).

"
,

!
I'
I'

IllId

,I
,

II

"

I,

I '
,

6 . T h e Event a n d its N a m e
Little by little - and not without hesitations and regrets - the work of
Beckett will open itself up to chance, to accidents, to sudden modifications
of the given, and thereby to the idea of happiness. The last words ofIll Seen
III Said are indeed: 'Know 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 freedom.
55

,
,

_.'

[ . . . 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

--

-------j ",
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Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett)r--Of course, as we shall see, the interrogation regarding the event is centra I
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 find his mother. Moran will not find Molloy. Malone
stretches ad irifinitum 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 indifferent being and the torture of a
reflection without effect.
In Watt, the place of being is absolutely closed; it validates a strict
principle of identity. This place is complete, self-sufficient, and eternal:

_
_

I I I I I I I ) , I J I wil l therefore seek to bring its knowledge of the 'indeterminable

'
lliance ' . This formal
1 ' 1 1 ' 1 " I I I of incidents to the height of their 'formal bri
I I I o I l idl lcc designates the unique and circumscribed character, the evental
I d i l l y, lhe pure and delectable 'emergenc e', of the incidents in question.
Si nce it is a question of the event, Beckett must take a further step.
1 1 1 1 : ; i s the step that takes us from a will to find a meaning for the event (a
d l ';,o tJ ruging path, precisely because the event is what is subtracted from any
the event a
I I I '. I I I IC of meaning) , to the entirely different desire of giving
I

1 I i 1 1 1 1t'.

,
,

':

'
'"

,.
,

1, ',
: ,
1'1'

I I,

1'1

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I,

I n Watt, we still possess only the first figure of the event, so that the

Ill lvl'I is not entirely detached from a religious symbolism (I call 'religion'

l i l l' dcsire to give meaning to everything that happens). Watt is an interpreter,

"

'r

..

Ill'rmeneut. Even the hypothesis of meaninglessness is the prisoner of a

',l l I ilhorn will to give meaning, and even more of a will to link this meaning
I I I : 1 1 1 original meaning, a meaning lost and then found again (this is the
1I Il'Iuctable tendency ofwhat I call 'religion' : meaning is always already there,
1 11 1 1 man has lost it):

,I

[ . . . 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 from the initial meaning, and

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 functions ' 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
purport' (W, p. 7 1 ; 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 ofhypotheses and variations,

I I I Watt, thought is therefore granted the following opportunity: that the event
ex ists. But, once awoken by incidents, the movement of thought turns back
1 0 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
of linking incidents back to the supposed core of all signification.
Almost at the other extreme of Beckett's trajectory - inIll Seen III Said
or in Worstward Ho - we encounter once again the central function of the
cvent, but here thought's awakening operates in a thoroughly different manner.
I 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)90 one must
conclude that there is meaning:

56

57

now a meaning evolved, after a delay of varying length, and with greater

I
,

, !
I

!I
I
, I'
,
'

. I

I'
,

"

,
,

or less pains, from the initial absence of meaning.

(W p. 76; W US, p. 79).89

, I,

I,
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Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r----

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Ala
i n Bad i o u On Beckett
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We must carefully note the stages whereby Beckett fixes 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'

hausts itself(as Beckett says, the eye is ' still agonizing') in the consideration
" I what there is, of the neutral abode of being.
2) Reduced to a simple trait by the method of ascesis, the event is a
Ii(lise, constituting an exception ('sudden') to the monotonous and repetitious
1 I 1 spection.
3) 'The mind awakens' . This confirms that thought is only diurnal and
v lj',ilant under the effect of an event.
4) At first, the question that constitutes the awakening of thought is
PIl:occupied with explaining ('How explain itT). This is the dominant figure
I I I Watt. But the subject renounces explanation at once, in favour of a
('( llllpletely different question, the question of the name: 'How say itT
5) This name is doubly invented, doubly subtracted from the ordinary
laws oflanguage. It is constructed from the noun 'collapsion' of which it is
lIoled 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
:all'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
illvention 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
1I0t 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
the event 'recedes' and finally disappears. The name will
i f - inevitably
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

58

59

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

good one! (CDW, p. 108; E, p. 33)91

What does 'ill seen ill said' mean?

!'
:!
,,
"

Ii :

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 indifference ofthe 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 surprise 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
significations 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 from III Seen III Said:
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 ofhope. By the grace of these modest beginnings
(ISIS, p. 55; NO, p. 83).93

'

IX

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'
old lovers, despite everything, share some mathematical ce
rtainties with each
other:
We took flight in arithmetic. What mental calculations bent double hand
in hand! (eSp, p. 1 4 1 ; GSP, p. 1 88)94

.
The poem of improbable names makes it possible to imag
ine an amorOUH
mathematics.

7 . Oth e rs
I'"'' I

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"

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Even though Molloy, Malone and the Unnamable seek ou

t and encounter
other suppos ed subjects, they move towards their own so
litude. The tone of
The Unnamable could even be described as starkly solipsis
tic. 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 for
e: the couple, the
Two, the voice of the other, and lastly, love. Both to de
fer and to beckon
death through distance, Malone recounts all the elem
ents that this love
contains:
[ . . . J what flutterings, alarms and bashful fumblings, of which only this,
that they gave Macmann some insight into the meaning of the expression,

------- .

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Ihil i l l /\ s though it were necessary, in order to guarantee prose's definitive

I' p i ural humanity, that prose establish an eternity 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 It i l lable that these laboratories clearly resemble Dante's settings. As we
k , I I '1\ . I kckett undertook painstaking studies of The Inferno, and of the fifth
, 1 1 1 1 " I I I particular.
i"

1 1 11 "

I I I The Lost Ones ( 1 967-70) the place is a huge rubber cylinder whose
I 'll \ : ; Il' a I parameters are subj ect to laws (light, temperature, sound, etc.) which
Ill ' ,I:; strict and contingent as the laws of physical science.96 The ' little people'
l i l i l l Ili habit the place have no other aim than to look for their lost one. This is
I h, ' vny start of the fable:

I
I

,
I
,

i!

"j

i\bode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one.
( 'SP, p. 1 5 9 ; GSP, p. 202).97

What is the ' lost one '? It is each one's own other, the one who
" I III',ularises a given inhabitant, who wrenches the inhabitant away from
ill I I l y mity. To find one's lost one is to come to oneself; to no longer be a
r , l l l Iplc element of the small group of searchers. It is thus that Beckett
';l l l lIIounts the painful antinomies of the cogito: one's identity does not depend
I IpOIl the verbal confrontation with oneself, but upon the discovery of one's
l'

, 00 1 ICr.

Nevertheless, being-two is inscribed into the many, int

o the bizarre
mUltiplicity of human animals. Always careful to bring
the proliferation of
details back to a few crucial traits, Beckett devotes
some of his texts to
arranging, on a background [fond] of anonymous being,
the bustle of plural
humanity, so as to classify its postures and inventory
its functions. These
texts are human comedies in which the diversity of so
cial and SUbj ective
figures is replaced by an enumeration of all the essen
tial po ssibilities 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 (alwa
ys, of course, under
the rule of the methodical ascesis) presupposes the exist
ence of a fixed place
far from any empirical reality, a sort of 'no-man's land'
between life and

On this simple basis, and through the meticulous description of the

\ Il'issitudes ofthe search (one must run around in the cylinder, climb ladders,
" ,plore 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
110m those who have renounced the search. The latter have given up on their
dcsire, since in the cylinder no other desire exists than that of finding one's
lost 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
; 1 rc called the vanquished. Note that to be vanquished is never to be vanquished
by the 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 IIovement 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

60

61

Two is company (T, p. 26 1 ; TN, p. 260).95

I
,

I
"

"

--'------- - - - - - - - - - - - -

---

, -----

---

--

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------

-------

Al a i n Ba d io u On Beckett r--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 from the coign they have won and
when driven off pounce on the first free one that offers and freeze again.
[ . . . J Fourthly those who do not search or non-searchers sitting for the
most part against the wall [ . . . J (CSP, p. 1 6 1 ; GSP, pp. 204-205).98

," ,

II, i
,

,,
I

I'

The absolute nomadic living beings (first category) and the vanquished
(fourth category) are extreme figures of human desire. Between the two we
find those that Beckett names the ' sedentary' (the second and third figures).
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 returns to the arena of
the search. This is what we could call the Beckettian conception of freedom.
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 return?), 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 eternal 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 B eckett 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:

o_
u_O
a_in_B_a_d_i_
nB
l_A_I_
_C
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__
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I " , ,'ahle (such as recommencing one's search if one has renounced it) is not
"" 1 1 1 1 1 ively and properly speaking impossible, but only temporarily

'no longer'
l 't I',:: ihle. That means that the choice of renunciation destroys everything,
I I lIt t l I e possibility that inheres in choice remains mysteriously indestructible,
;\ figure of plural humanity is always suspended between the
i l l t'versibility of choice and the maintenance - which is to say the reversibility
Ii possibles,
t

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

62

63

and in the least less the all of nothing if this notion is maintained
(CSP, p. 1 67; GSP, pp. 2 1 1 -2 1 2).99

,
e!

1" , ; , t here is 'the all of nothing'). On the other hand, however, what is not

In How It Is - without doubt the greatest of Beckett's prose works,

n i t I l i g with Enough and III Seen III Said- the distribution ofthe figures obeys
1\ t I i f'icrent principle.
The human animals crawl along through a sort of black mud, each one
t i l :Igging a sack of food. This imperative to travel harbours four possiqilities:
1) To continue crawling alone in the dark.
2) To encounter someone in an active position, pouncing upon them in
I I Il' dark. This is the figure that Beckett calls the 'tormentor ' , Note that the
prillcipal activity ofthe tormentor is to extort from his victim - if needs be by
plallting in his arse the sharpened top of a tin can - stories, fables from another
1 1 1l:, memories. This proves that the tormentor also wants to find his lost one,
It I hc wrested 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 lIains 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
Ilave to give him his due of fables. This is the position that Beckett calls the
' victim' .
The enumeration of the generic figures of humanity operates once again
hy combining the movement/rest couple and the self/other couple. One can
I ravel alone and one can be immobile alone; one can be either a tormentor or
a victim.
These figures are sustained by a rigorous principle of equality: none is
sliperior 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 warns, could easily be
exaggerated, since words always 'ring' too much for them to maintain the
:ll1onymity and the equality of the figures that the human animal can take. I t

[ . . . J in the cylinder what little is possible is not so it is merely no longer so

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is this equality of the figures that justifies this very profound statement:

If the question of the 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 Happy Days, in
which the figure of the couple is indisputable and gives rise to a strange and
powerful form of happiness).
The encounter brings forth the Two; it fractures solipsistic seclusion.
Is this primordial Two sexuated? We are not speaking here of the numerous
and mostly carnivalesque sexual scenes that can be found in Beckett's stories,

which the dilapidation of the elderly is regarded with tenderness and

l i pnscnted with j oy. Rather, we are trying to see if love and the encounter
I " I I V idc us with sexuated figures.
It has often been claimed that Beckett's 'couples' are in fact asexual or
I I I 1 Lcllline and that there is something interchangeable - or homo-sexual - in
1 I 1l' 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 1111 doing so; often, he makes careful use ofthe pronouns and articles so as
1 11 .1 10 permit a decision regarding the sex of the speaker or ' character ' . But
f llC effect of the encounter truly does fix two absolutely dissimilar positions.
( IIIC can therefore say that for Beckett the sexes do not pre-exist the amorous
" I I counter, being instead its result,
What does this dissimilarity consist in? We have seen that in How It Is,
; I licr a human animal has pounced upon another, there is the figure of the
I , 'Imentor and that ofthe victim. Let us agree to call the first 'masculine' and
I I I L second 'feminine' (though it is true that Beckett refrains from uttering
I hc se words). We must insist that this distinction is entirely unrelated to any
,' ;lIpposed 'identity' of the subjects. For all that, under the condition of an
ellcounter 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 from an encounter) there necessarily are these two figures.
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 firmly in mind.
For example, after 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
least can be said to stagnate in this position. We can therefore oppose the
l I10bility that defines 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 figure? It is
1 0 be found in the extraction from 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).102 We are therefore

64

65

[ . . .] 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 concerns the ontological equality of the figures taken by the generic
human subject.
Speaking of the moments in which one is either tormentor or victim and thereby concerned 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

I,
I,
,

II', I,
:

"

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; M US, p. 222).101

III

,1

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Al a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

"

In Enough, we find 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 4 1 ; GSP, p. 1 88).103

II I :

"! I,
I,

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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 functions: the force
of wandering, the pain of immobility, the enjoyment [jouissance] of the
imperative, and the invention of the story.
It is on the basis of these four functions 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' .

, 11 "

----)--

In Happy Days, it is evidently Willie who keeps himself aloof, invisible

and absent, whilst it is Winnie who proclaims the eternity - 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 returning 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' ,1 04 whilst the masculine is the perpetual
temptation to inquire about the exact location of the void that passes between
One and One.
But the most admirable part ofthe text is the examination of the relation
between love and knowledge [connaissance], between the happiness of love
and the joy ofknowledge. We have already cited the passage where the couple
sustain each other in their walk by means of vast arithmetical reflections.

66

l l i ls ligure of free knowledge [savoir], of the encyclopaedia - in which the

emerges upon the mirror of thought - is 'masculine', and as such it is

Il l ved by the woman. Thus we read in Enough:
, I .. V

In order from time to time to enjoy the sky he resorted to a little round

I
"

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 ' l i nfinity. Because in love knowledge [savoir] is experienced and transmitted
I let ween two irreducible poles of experience, it is subtracted from the tedium
o r objectivity 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
k nowledge that makes the universe ours.
Love then is when we can say that we have the sky, and that the sky has
lIothing. 106

9 . N o sta 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 concerns the treatment of memory. This conviction is
reinforced when one notes that in Beckett the emergence ofthe past presents
itself in blocks, episodes ofprosodic 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 function
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

67

,"

- ,--- - - - -- -

I"

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Al a i n B a d i o u On Beckett

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presented situation (the place of being) could harbour in terms of truth 01'
eternity. 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
from 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 from 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 concerning 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.

9
1
6
0
.
0)
p.
;
SP,
' I 'hen 'Krapp curses louder, switches off' (CDW, p. 220
at this voice is
I I 1 1 I we quickly realise that he is looking for a fragment of wh
this
I tl l i l lg him. This is a voice that only appears to be his, being that of
ltiplicity of
, " III T ' that he was, and thereby proving to him the irreducible mu
tible
I I I q"o [Ie Mo il This is a sublime fragment, composed of both percep
111111 verbal elements that are completely foreign to Krapp' s real situation.
l ' I('ll 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 fragment remains intact, saved by
,

hio
cus
iard
bill
of
d
kin
a
like
e
g
her
nin
ctio
fun
se,
pro
the
by
.
(i.e
tape
I I Il'
ty); it authorises Krapp to evaluate III
safe
al
gon
dia
or
t
irec
ind
an
g
idin
()v
II
I
at
iI " ,ap that is attributed to a scission in being rather than to temporality - wh
l end up letting
I : : t h i s 'other life ' borne by each and every one. Krapp wil
and nostalgia:
1 I I 1 I lseif go, listening to the fragment in complete absorption
,

to various stories and reflections recorded onto magnetic tapes. The voice
that reaches us is thus in general a 'Strong voice, rather pompous, clearly
Krapp s at a much earlier time' (CDW, p. 2 1 7; SP, p. 57).1 07 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 affable. This is especially the case when the tape's
prose appears to rise to the level of philosophical formulation, like in the
following:

"
,I,

Ii'

Ii
,

-upper lake, with the punt, bathed off 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
eyes. [Pause.] I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - [Pause.]
_

after 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),uo

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

- unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with

68

anyway (CDW, p. 222; SP, p. 62). 1 1 1

the light ofthe understanding and the fire - (CDW, p. 220; SP, p. 60).1 08

,I

'

it was hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her

Krapp s Last Tape ( 1 959) presents a ' character' - Krapp - who listens

II

__
_

But the remainder of the play shows that the insistence of the fragment
is not damaged by this abstract protest. The other life radiates beneath thc

69

):1

I'

"

.-

- - - -

_.---

- ----

---.----

-- -

-.._----A l a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r----

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).112 No true link is
established between nostalgia and the course of things. Memory is not a saving
function. 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 from a real Other - Pim,
the 'victim' - who gives the 'hero' his own life, whether real or invented it
does not matter:

--"

---_. _-------

-'-

-- - - - -

''

- ,
-

--

ck
e_
nB
o_
u_O
l_A_I_
a_in_B_a_d_i_
_e_t_t
__
__

.'1

I:

II"

_
_
_

\ ) I I " These are limpid storie s, whos e biographical dimension is underlined

ill l i rst in a parodic way, as in the paragraph that starts: 'You first saw the

!I'"

';1

11

7
I I I , h t in the room you most likely were conceived in' (C, p. 1 5 ; NO, p. 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 h a t fabulation may tum out to be nothing but a fictional rearrangement of
,;( )Iit ude. And it is still this tonality that here demands we imagine an eternal

",

: 'II
,

'!

1 1 1ht:

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

,,

" ," " "

that life then said to have been his invented remembered a little of each no

back to the wash. No sound but its. Ever fainter as it slowly ebbs. Till it

knowing that thing above he gave it to me I made it mine what I fancied

slowly flows again. You lean on a long staff. Your hands rest on the knob

skies especially and the paths he crept along how they changed with the

and on them your head. Were your eyes to open they would first see far

sky and where you were going on the Atlantic in the evening on the ocean

below in the last rays the skirt of your greatcoat and the uppers of your

going to the isles or coming back the mood of the moment less important

boots emerging from the sand. Then and it alone till it vanishes the shadow

the creatures encountered hardly any always the same I picked my fancy
good moments nothing left (HII, p. 80; HII US, p. 72)1 13

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). 118
"

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 from 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 function as a measure. This measure concerns 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:

, ,,

'III

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.
70

71

ABOVE long pause above IN THE 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 l4

In Company, the construction of the text is carried out on the basis of

"

1 0 . T h e a t re
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.

I nothing only say this say that your life above YOUR LIFE pause my life

,-

Nostalgia gives rise in the prose to fragments of beauty, and, even if

I he certainty always returns that the other life is separated, lost, a light from
elsewhere, 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 astonished gaze, in the nuances of the grey-black of being,
something will lighten.

r'
"

'I",

- -

- - -

-------

--

A la i n B a d i o u On Beckett r----------

-------"

l'-:...
Alai
n
Bad
i
o
u
On
Beckett
.=:..:.
.:.:. ::...:.:-=--=----=---------"

The assignation of the place of being, as in

this characteristic passage

is that not enough for you? [Calmer.] They give birth astride of a grave,

from Footfalls:

Faint, though by no means invisible, in a certa

in 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 of language, as in Happy Days:

Words fail, there are times when even they fail. [Turning a little towards
,I I '

the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more

(CDW, p. 83; WG, p. 1 03). 1 23

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
t h a l the duty of humanity is to hold onto an uncertain, but imperative,
Illjunction:

( )11

I I,
II

'I
,

What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this,

WILLIE.] Is that not so, Willie? [Pause. Turning a little further.] Is not

that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one

that so, Willie, that even words fail, at times? [Pause. Backfront,] What is
one to do then, until they come again? (CDW, p. 1 47; HD, p. 24)120

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

II
,II" i
!"I '

I'I'

I''
I

I'
'I

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.
4 1 ; WG, p. 28):

[ O o .] the beard the flames 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 left 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,
final vociferations] tennis . . . the stones . . . so calm . . . Cunard . . . unfinished . . .

(CDW, p. 43; WG, p. 47)1 22

The event is also central. It sets the framew

ork for Waitingfor Godot,
.
.
ill which two distinct vision
s are opposed to one another.
On the one hand, that of Po zzo, for whom
time does not exist, meaning
.
hat ife can be dissolved in an incessantly repeated and ince
ssantly self
identical pure point:

are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can
boast as much? (CDW, p. 74; WG, p. 9 1 )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 urns - it is only a question of their links, which become the
eternal material of these stereotypical stories that they ceaselessly lavish upon
us; stories that are borrowed, even in their style, from the repertoire of gutter
talk:
-

M: She was not convinced. I might have known. I smell her off you, she

kept saying. There was no answer to this. So I took her in my arms and

Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable!

W I : Judge then of my astonishment when one fine morning, as I was

When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day like any other

sitting stricken in the morning room, he slunk in, fell on his knees before

day, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf,

me, buried his face in my lap and . . . confessed

(CDW, p. 309; SP, p. 149).126

one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second,

72

swore I could not live without her. I meant it, what is more. Yes, I am sure
I did. She did not repulse me.

73

!i

Al ai n Ba d i o u On Beckett r---_
We have shown how nostalgia, which gives rise to calm blocks of
beauty within the prose, haunts Krapp s Last 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 turns himself into
children, two, three, so as to be together, and whisper together, in the dark
(CDW, p. 126; E, p. 70). 127

,,,,,,II

'I

"

I,

i"

:I

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 (flanked 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 theatre to the possible effects of the Two. The display ofthe 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 fundamental theatrical operations. If these duettists have often 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 powerfully 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 Without 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' outfits, bowler hats,
etc.), sequences of skits rather than the development of an intrigue, trivialities,
insults and scatology, parodies oflofty language (in particular philosophical
language) indifferent to any verisimilitude, and above all the relentlessness
74

-"

"----"'''--'''-

---

-- - - -

- - - -----

. -.

-------" ,, '

l Alain Bad i o u On Beckett

the characters in persevering in their being, in maintaining 1I1 1t: hell or high water - a principle of desire, a vital power that circumstances
.ITIIl to render illegitimate or impossible at each and every instant.
The handicap is not a pathetic metaphor for the human condition. Comic
I Ill'alre swarms with libidinous blind figures, with impotent old men
I ltt:ntlessly following their passions, with battered but triumphant maid-slaves,
IV i I h imbecilic youths, with crippled megalomaniacs . . . It is in this
'-;lI"Ilivalesque heritage that we must situate Winnie, buried up to her neck
alld singing the praises of the happy day; Hamm - blind, paralytic and mean
hi tterly playing out his uncertain part to the very end without faltering; or
I lit: duo 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
()f" the enduring variety of inherited theatrical types. It is only then that the
I rllc destination of the comical emerges: neither a symbol nor a metaphysics
I I I disguise, and even less a derision, but rather a powerful love for human
( )bstinacy, for tireless desire, for humanity reduced to its stubbornne ss and
malice. Beckett's characters are these anonymous figures of human toil which
I hc comedy renders at once interchangeable and irreplaceable. This is indeed
I hc meaning of Vladimir's exalted tirade:

'"

1 1 I : l l l i tested by

1 1

"

1, '1,
,
'
,

"

I,'
I"I
I,
I'!'

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):

75

I
I

"

A l a i n Ba d i o u On

Be ckett r-----"
"'''''

We are men (CDW, p.

76 ;

-----

A l a i n B a d i ou On Beckett

, :ack the little fables of above littIe scenes a little blue infernal homes.

W G , p . 54) .129

( 1 1 1 1 , p. 140; HII US, p. 128)132

.
out
with
e
I'D
[
I
I
.
a
0
a
n
te
e
m
tabl
accep
thiS
a
I ut when it is seized by beauty
.

. ?. ls lt such a godsend, meanIng?)

1 1 1 , - ; l I l ing (and why would hfe have a meamng
.
ss,
akne
we
h
the
h
f
0
t
.
I
h'
t
g
a
aXles,
1ll
IC
w
" I I . I i l lS a super-existence comparable to a
.
.
.
'
a
l I ' pt'l i tion and obstmacy of hfe, disappears, becommg nothOmg more man
.
the
esls,
asc
ical
th
d
en
o
meth
the
of
n
At
e
d
m
g.
I II I I l i t of light in the di of bei
the
I , . 1 1 ( )wing happens, which is entirely comp arable to the emergence of
( ; It 'at Bear at the end of Mallanne s Coup de des:
.

1 1 . B e a u ty, A g a i n
Despair, you say? I am rem ind ed of this Illagnific C:;<:::::-:: llt
pa ss ag e from
Malone Dies, in which pro se attains cadences that recal
I the writings of
Bossuet:

'

The horror-worn eye s linger abject on all they have

a last prayer, the true prayer at last, the o ne that asks
then a little breath of fulfillment revives

the

bes eec h.

:od so long, in
ing . And it is

for noth

dead longings a=-:3d a munnur

is born in the silent world, reproaching you

despaired too late (T, p. 278 ; TN, p. 277) .130

affectionately

vvith hav ing

c
a
l
e
p
tak
wlll
t
o
g
n
h
i
that
false
is
it
,
arme
n
For Beckett, like for Mall
'

But if it is best to de spair at the right m om en t, i s it n t

be caus e what
grants our wishes relieves us for an instant from the tiring co
c em of prayer?
Never to ask for anything , this is B eckett 's forem os t demarr..
] Th e beauty of
his prose com es from this motivation, that we not as k an
/thing frOID the
prose itself other than to remain as clo se as po ssi ble to that v
Thich, in the last
analysis, makes up each and every exi ste nc e: on th e one
and, the ellp
l ty
stage of being, the half-light where everything is pla ye d out"
but which i ts e lf
doe s not pla y a role; and, on the other, the events that sudde1:
e ly p opulate th e
stage ofb eing, like stars in anonymous place s, hol e s in the d __
stant canvas o f
the theatre of the world.
The enduring patience of life and pro se only exis t s Ie== r
the inunortal
arousal o f what fixes in be aut y the po ssi bil ity o f an en
<1 , b o th a s the
interruption of the half-light and as the conjoi ne d finalitie s
<> C e x is te n c e and
saymg.
These patiences are no t in themselves de serving of our ..;;
:=:;
;;:: ontempt . L ik e
in How It Is, there is always 'the blu e there was then the whit:
dust ' (HII, p.
78; HII US, p. 70),13 1 but there is also:
_

[ . . . ] the j ourney the couple the abandon when the

Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All
least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bouuosof
boundless void (WH, pp. 46-47; NO, p. 1 1 6). 133

whole tale

tonnentor you are said to have had then lost the journey you
have made the victim yo u are sai d to have had the n lost the 1

:is told the

said to

=--na ges the

76

' the anonymlty o[the dlnI. N

. Ived III
h i l i the place ' . Existence is not dlsso
the
to
ved
I
'
'
t
a
I
.
ens
"
IS
d
er
h
A
nelt
n
I l l ore does it coincide with sohpslsm.
'

d
ose
su
the
pp
rclationship with others and to imprescriptible laws be they
sa
a
ed
rd
'rega
s
s
be
,
t
i
ne
says
h
Malo
i
a
o
e,
Lov
.
wh
c
I ; I ws of desire or of love
-

k i nd of lethal glue' (T, p. 264; TN, p. 262).134

.
Art' s
s.
o
e
u
m
t
s
ns
p
a
g
eth
h
som
That
It happens that something happen .
p
.
eeds , to
.
proc
th
h
h'
fi
tru
w
IC
rom
n
exceptIO
of
1 1 1 ission is to shelter these po mts
.
of our
abnc
ted
nstitu
reco
the
i
r
a
f
ll
st
n
m
th
e
m ake them shine and retain e
patience.
sort
a
as
essary,
is
ty
ent
nec
f
o
beau
lem
The
This is a painstaking task. e
ed t e
nam
have
I
t
ting
t
h
ligh
ranean
subter
a
of diffuse light within words, a
m
ty
I
C
esS
nec
lied
e
0
tr
a
con
l aten t poem of prose. A rhythm, a lew rar coIours,
o
e
o
o
t
all
n
w
to
o
d
ione
as
fash
s
the images, the slow construction of a world
th
.
trU
le
ho
tfis
. hoIe th at saves us. through
see - in a far-away point - the pm
and courage come to us.
.re to
es
l
d
ess
tire
of
m
the
out
l
Beckett fulfilled his task. He set the poe
-

think.

.
so
al
bo
,
w
h
Without doubt this is because e was lIke Moran mMo/lo),
.
needed the element of beauty. Beauty, whose Kantian definition Moran IS
w e l l aware of, as the following remark amusingly testi fies:
'

For it was only by transferring it to this atmosphere, how shall I say, of

I
I
I.,II ,
II
I.
II
,

'

II
I' ,
I

.,

"

,
I

.,

'I

II I
'
I!

,I ,

I' ..
,

I .

"

77

,
I,
"

',I

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----.-. >=-

--

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A la i n Ba d i o u On

_
_
_
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-

Beckett r-

Alai n Bad i o u On
--

We are men (CDW, p. 76; WG, p. 54). 129

1 1 . B e a u ty, A g a 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-worn 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 fulfillment revives the dead longings and a murmur
is born in the silent world, reproaching you affectionately 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 from the
tiring concern ofprayer?
Never to ask for anything, this is Beckett's foremos
t demand. The beauty of
his prose comes from this motivation, that we no
t 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 play
ed out, but which itself
does not play a role; and, on the other, the events th
at 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 exist
s for the immortal
arousal of what fixes in beauty the po ss ib ility
of an end, both as the
interruption of the half-light and as the conj oined
finalities 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 ; HI I U S, p. 70 ), 1 3 1 but there is also:

[ . . . ] the journey the couple the abandon when the whole tale is told the
tormentor you are said to have had then lost the journey you are said to
have made the victim you are said to have had then lost the images the

76

Beckett

'

,ack the little fables of above little scenes a little blue infernal homes.

( l l ll, p. 140; HII US, p. 128Y32

But when it is seized by beauty this acceptable material of a life without

I I walling (and why would life have a meaning? Is it such a godsend, meaning?)
111 1 : 1 i liS a super-existence comparable to that of galaxies, in which the weakness,
H ' pdition and obstinacy of life, disappears, becoming nothing more than a
p i l i I I ! 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 Mallarrn6'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).1 33

For Beckett, like for Mallarrne, it is false that 'nothing will take place
hut the place' . Existence is not dissolved in the anonymity of the dim. No
I IlOre does it coincide with solipsism. And neither is it enslaved to the
rciationship with others and to imprescriptible laws - be they the supposed
laws of desire or of love. Love, which as Malone says, is to be 'regarded as a
k i nd oflethal glue' (T, p. 264; TN, p. 262).134
It happens that something happens. That something happens to us. Art's
Illission 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
o f diffuse light within words, a subterranean lighting that I have named the
latent poem of prose. A rhythm, a few rare colours, a controlled necessity in
the images, the slow construction of a 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 fulfilled his task. He set out the poem of the tireless desire to
think.
.
Without doubt this is because he was like Moran in Molloy, 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

77

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finality without end, why not, that I could venture to consider the work I
had on hand [Ie travail a executer] (T, p. 1 12; TN, 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 Beautiful.

II

, ,II

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,

Translated by Nina Power

Revised by Alberto Toscano

! '

B e ing, Existence, Thought:

P rose a n d C o n ce p t1 36

,I',l

C ri t i ca l B i b l i o g ra p h y to 'Ti re l ess D e s i re '

BATAILLE, Georges, 'Le silence de Molloy', Critique 5 8 ( 1 95 1 ) ['Molloy's
Silence', in Samuel Beckett 's Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable,
ed. by Harold Bloom (London: Chelsea House Publishers, 1 98 8), pp.

:i
" I'

"

1 3-2 1 ] .
BECKETT, Samuel Cahiers de I 'Herne (Paris: Livre de poche, 1 976).
BLANCHOT, Maurice, 'OU maintenant? Qui maintenantT ,NR.F. 1 0 ( 1 953),
reprinted in Le Livre a venir (Gallimard) [The Book to Come, trans. by
Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002)].
DELEUZE, Gilles, 'L'Epuise', introduction to Quad (Paris: Minuit, 1 992)
['The Exhausted', inEssays Critical and Clinical, trans. 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 Vivantspiliers (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-

"

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9 1 ].
SIMON, Alfred, Samuel Beckett (Paris: Belfond, 1 983).

f
o
d
n
a
h
rt
o
h
S
e
h
t
d
n
a
s
e
g
a
u
a ) T h e B e tw e e n - La n g
,
Bei n g
Samuel Beckett wrote Worstward Ho in 1 982 and published it in 1 983.
I t is together with Stirrings Still, a testamental text. Beckett did not translate
it in o 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 translated by Beckett himself into English.137 There are mst ad
some texts written in English that he did not translate into French, and WhICh,
for this exceptional artist of the French language, are akin o t e remnants of
.
something more originary within English. Nevertheless, It IS Said that Samuel
Beckett considered this text 'untranslatable ' . We can therefore say that

II
,

78

I
,

Al a i n Ba d i o u On

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c".41'

...

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, WI.)
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. II
belongs in part to Edith Fournier, the translator. We cannot immediately
approach the signification of this text by way of its letter, for it really is a
translation. 1 3 8
In Beckett's case, the problem oftranslation 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 from one language to another a 'translation', even
if, upon closer inspection, there are significant differences between the French
and English 'variants' , differences 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 softened 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 finding support for our
argument in the meaning rather than the letter.
A second difficulty derives from 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 returns to their theoretical hypotheses to be re
examined, possibly contradicted or modified, and refined - and, moreover,
that it functions as a sort of filter through which the multiplicity of Beckett's
writings is made to pass, thereby reducing Beckett's work to its fundamental
hypothetical system.
Having said this, if we compound these two difficulties, it is entirely
.
pOSSIble to take Worstward Ho as a short philosophical treatise, as a treatment
in shorthand ofthe question ofbeing. Unlike the earlier texts, it is not governed
by a sort oflatent poem. It is not a text that penetrates into the singularity and
power of comparison that belong to language - like III Seen III Said, for
example. It maintains a very deliberate and abstract dryness, which is offset,
especially in the English original, by an extreme attention to rhythm. We
could thus say that as a text it tends to offer up the rhythm of thought rather
_

80

Beckett

This is
configuration, whilst, for III Seen III Sa id, the opposite is true.
g
yin
tra
be
y
reb
the
ut
tho
wi
lly
tua
ep
nc
co
Ho
rd
wa
rst
Wo
ach
i i I wc can appro
of
ety
tir
en
the
for
nts
nte
co
of
le
tab
a
er
eth
tog
t
pu
to
us
s
ow
i I : ; l l Ioe it all
above all,
re,
we
it
if
as
t
tex
s
thi
at
tre
to
e
sit
po
ap
ely
tir
en
is
it
,
rk
wo
I I " l et L's
ll
wi
we
t
ha
W
.
ing
be
of
ion
est
qu
the
of
d
an
rth
sho
a
or
rI Iw l work of thought
ion
ns
sca
of
ure
fig
the
is
m'
yth
'rh
the
d
lle
ca
1
at
wh
n
tio
I"" ,' i ll this opera
that
s),
rd
wo
few
a
st
ju
:
ief
br
ly
me
tre
ex
ly
ral
ne
ge
are
nts
me
seg
( I I ,,' l i nguistic
glish, is
En
in
,
ich
wh
d
an
t
tex
the
to
g
gin
lon
be
e
ur
fig
ic
ph
gra
no
ste
1 ' 0 . I he
e.
iqu
un
er
eth
og
alt
is
ich
wh
e
ag
gu
lan
the
n
thi
wi
n
tio
lsa
pu
1 1 1; l lc hed by a kind of

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b ) S ay i n g , B e i n g , T h o u g h t
Cap au pire (an admirable French translation for the title of Worstward
" ) 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
l our central conceptual themes into their respective questions (I will explain
I I I a moment what must be understood by 'question').
The first 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
o r his themes. The imperative of saying is the prescription of the 'again',
II 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 ofre
commencing, under the supposition of a commencement that itself never
commenced. We can thus say that the text is circumscribed by the imperative
o f saying. It begins by:
,,

,,

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--

On. Say on. Be said on. Somehow on (p. 7; p. 89).139

And ends by:

,,
!

Said nohow on (p. 47; p. 1 1 6). 1 40

Therefore, we can also sunnnarise Worstward Ho by the passage from

'Be said on' to ' Said nohow on'. The text presents the possibility ofthe 'nohow
on' as a fundamental alteration ofthe 'on'. The negation ('nohow') attests to
the fact that there is no more 'on'. But in truth, given the 'be said', the

81

,,

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I II
I, '

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A l a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r--- .
..
.
'nohow on ' is a variant of the 'on ' and remains constraine
d by the imperativll
of saying.
The second theme - the immediate and mandatory corre
late 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 tha
t 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 ju
st one: the void
and the dim. This is a problem of considerable importa
nce. Let us note at
once that with respect to these two names - void and dim
- we discern, or at
least appear to discern, a subordination: the void is subord
inated to the dim in

the exercise ofdisappearance, which constitutes the essen

tial testing ground
[plan d 'epreuve] of Worstward Ho . The maxim is the follo
wi
ng:

Void cannot go [Disparition du vide ne se peut] . Save dim go. Then all go
(p. 1 8 ; p. 9 7). 1 41

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 the 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 from 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 corruption 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

82

O
e
_
c
_
k
i
n
i
e
n
u
B
o
a
B
d
a
l....:.A
I
tt
_
_
_

=. :..:...:...-.:
.: :..::..::.:.. =---:
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of what appears, as follows: a void infested by shades. This manner

1 1 1 ; l l l il void has of being infested by shades means that it is reduced to being
I I II ' figure 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 returns
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 HIamental theme in Beckett. What is not being as such, but is instead
I II ' Iposed or inscribed in being, is what lets itself be counted, what pertais to
p i mality, what is ofthe order of number. Number is obviously not an attnbute
, 1 1 1 he void or the dim: void and dim do not let themselves be counted. Instead,
I I is the inscribed in being that lets itself be counted. It lets itself be counted
pri Illordially: 1 , 2, 3 .
A last variant: the inscribed in being is what can worsen. 'Worsening' ; 1 1 1 essential theme in W
orstward Ho, where worsening is one of the text's
I adieal operations - means, amongst other things, but above all, to be iller
:::Iid than said before [etre plus mal dit que deja ditl
Under this multiplicity of attributes - what is apparent in the dim, what
n Hlstitutes an interval with respect to the void, what lets itself be counted,
wllat 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
IItc dim. The shades are the exposed plural of the 'there is' , which manifests
it sclf here under the name of dim.
In Worstward 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 first shade is the standing shade, which counts as one. In truth, 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 - from page 34 ( 1 08) on - that it is an old woman:
, 1 II I I d y

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Nothmg to show a woman' s and yet a woman'S .1 42

And Beckett immediately adds (this will be clarified later):

.
Oozed from softenmg soft the word woman s.1 43
'

83

,
I

I
,

----- - - - ----- ------ ---

---

These are the fundamental 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 free 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 tha nothing 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 'man', 'woman', ' child' - nothing provides proof, and yet it
IS the case. SImply put, the modality of saying is not the same for the one
woa and 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 (old a-chtld); the crucial statement returns: nothing proves that,
.
and yet. ThIS mdlcates that the masculine sexuated position is evident and
t at the impo ssibility of proving it is difficult to understand. On the con rary,
.
.
1ce the femmme sexuated position is not evident, the impossibility ofproving
It IS.
In the pair it is obviously a question of the other, of 'the-one-and-the'
other' .
Th other is here designated by its internal 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 turns 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 i thought - as is to be expected. In and by
.
thug t the configuratlOns of vIsIble humanity and the imperative of saying
eXIst sImultaneously.
T ought 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:

84

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e_
On_B
_t-t___";I/
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o_
_e
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_
I a_in_
lA__
,

n
io
ct
lle
co
re
e
th
or
t
in
po
l
ca
fo
e
th
is
e)
" I I I I \\! i ng that thought (the fourth them
e
bl
si
vi
of
t
en
em
ng
ra
ar
e
th
of
d
an
e)
em
th
st
I I I I I IC imperative of saying (the fir
out
ab
y
sa
t
gh
ou
th
n
ca
t
ha
w
e)
em
th
ird
(th
h l l l ll: lI1 ity - that is, of the shades
e
th
es
id
ov
pr
s
hi
T
g?
in
be
of
n
tio
es
e qu
1 1 1 1 ' second theme, that is , about th
al
ic
ph
so
ilo
ph
e
Th
.
le
ho
w
a
as
xt
te
e
th
I I I < ladest possible organisation for
t
ou
ab
ed
nc
ou
on
pr
be
n
ca
t
ha
w
:
is
th
e
lik
go
I I I 1st ruction of the question will
the
ch
hi
w
in
t,
gh
ou
th
of
t
in
po
e
ag
nt
va
e
th
om
t i ll' ' there is ' qua 'there is ' fr
n
io
at
ul
rc
ci
e
th
.
.e
(i
es
ad
sh
e
th
of
n
tio
I I l 1 perative of saying and the modifica
ously?
"I vi sible humanity) are given simultane
by a
d
te
en
es
pr
re
is
t
gh
ou
th
o,
H
d
ar
stw
or
W
In the figural register of
atedly
pe
re
is
ad
he
he
T
.
'
ll
sku
e
'th
of
or
'
ad
he
1 1(' ad . One will speak of 'th e
e
us
ca
be
is
it
,
ay
w
is
th
in
to
ed
rr
fe
re
it
is
( ai led the ' seat and germ of all.' If
e
th
in
is
it
d
an
,
ad
he
e
th
r
fo
t
is
ex
es
ad
sh
e
th
I H It h the imperative of saying and
e.
ac
pl
s
ke
ta
g
in
be
of
n
tio
es
qu
e
th
at
th
lilad
lutely
so
ab
s
it
to
d
ce
du
re
If
t?
gh
ou
th
of
on
ti
What is the composi
ch
hi
w
n
tio
ca
ifi
pl
m
si
of
e
ur
ed
oc
pr
e
th
to
pr imordial constituents - according
the
is
e
er
th
d
an
e
bl
si
vi
e
th
is
e
er
th
d
ho
et
('o nstitutes B eckett' s organic m
seen ill
l
'il
t:
gh
ou
th
is
s
hi
T
'.
id
sa
ill
en
se
ill
'
is
i I Ilp erative of saying. There
sentially
es
be
ill
w
ad
he
e
th
of
n
tio
ta
en
es
pr
e
th
at
th
sa id ' . It follows from this
e
th
on
,
ds
or
w
ng
zi
oo
n,
ai
br
s
it
to
d
an
,
nd
reduced to its eyes, on the one ha
ot her: two holes on a brain, this is thought.
ng of
zi
oo
e
th
of
at
th
d
an
es
ey
e
th
of
at
th
:
es
em
Hence two recurrent th
e
ur
fig
l
ia
er
at
m
e
th
s
is
hi
T
n.
ai
br
e
th
of
r
words, whose source is the soft matte
of spirit .
Let us be more precise.
ent' of
em
ov
'm
e
Th
.
g'
in
ar
st
d
he
nc
le
'c
e
ar
es
ey
e
It will be said that th
s
hi
T
.
ch
su
as
ng
ei
se
es
at
gn
si
de
It
o.
H
staring is es sential to Worstward
ely
is
ec
pr
es
at
gn
si
de
on
iti
os
ap
xt
ju
pt
ru
ab
'clenched staring' - obviously an
ntly
ue
eq
ns
co
d
an
,
ng
ei
se
ill
an
s
ay
w
al
is
ng
ei
the emblem of the ill seen. Se
.
g'
in
ar
st
ed
ch
en
cl
'
is
ng
ei
se
of
e
ey
the
ill
w
e
on
ng
ei
se
r
te
af
t
gh
ou
th
of
e
ut
ib
tr
As for words - the second at
the
s,
im
ax
m
o
tw
se
he
T
.
'
ze
oo
ey
th
d
in
m
say ' somehow from some soft
from
ow
eh
m
so
'
ds
or
w
at
th
ct
fa
e
th
d
an
'
es
ey
g
existence of 'clenched starin
e
th
in
t
gh
ou
th
,
is
at
th
e,
em
th
th
ur
fo
e
th
some soft mind [ . . . ] ooze' , determine
l.
ul
sk
e
th
by
d
te
en
es
pr
re
e
nc
te
is
ex
modality of
tary
en
m
le
pp
su
a
is
l
ul
sk
e
th
at
th
te
no
to
ce
It is of capital importan
e
th
d
an
n
io
at
in
cl
in
e
in
in
m
fe
of
e
on
e
shade. The skull makes thre e, besides th
s
ay
w
al
ht
ug
ho
T
.
ild
ch
e
th
d
an
an
m
d
ol
e
other - in the guise of the pair - of th
I

85

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Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r--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' .146
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 itselfexposed. It is not subtracted from 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 infinity.
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 from 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 ofthe 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 of the 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

88

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On_
ou__=_:.
_t_t___!ili'
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_k
_
l AI a i
n B a d i

-------'

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:...::...:::..:

',ncs, woman and man.

, 1 1 11 1 infest the void.

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These are the constitutive relations of the shades that populate the dim

, ",,

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A parenthesis: there is a point, only alluded to in Worstward Ho, which

I : ; I levertheless crucial; it is that, as we have seen, the sexes are without proof.
Morc specifically, they are the only thing to be without proof. The fact that
I h is shade turns 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 I Terentiation of the sexes is, at one and the same time, absolutely certain
;Illli 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
, !llan' - in this case the old woman and the old man - but this certainty does
l Iot let itselfbe deduced or inferred on the basis of any particular predicative
I ra it. It is therefore a pre-linguistic certainty, in the sense that it can be said,
hilt that this saying does not in turn have any other saying as its source. It is
a lirst saying. One can say that there are woman and man, but at no time can
(mc infer this from another saying, and in particular not from a descriptive,
( l r empirical, saying.

e ) Be i n g a n d Exi ste n ce
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 ofwhat is capable of worsening. What
can worsen exists. 'Worsening ' is the active modality of any exposition to
the seeing of the clenched staring eye and to the oozing of words. This
exposition is existence. Or, perhaps at a more fundamental 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.

89

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Ala i n Ba d i o u On Be cke tt r-------------_

----=-:

Therefore, the minimal set-up will also be referred to as follows: being,

thought, existence. When one possesses the figures 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 posse sses the minimal and experimental set-up
of saying - one can construct questions, one can set the -ward.

f ) T h e Ax i o m o f S a y i n g

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tl__
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--

--

is
it
.,
etc
,
'
re
ilu
'fa
,
'
ing
say
ill
'
as
ch
su
ms
ter
ett
ck
Be
g
When readin in
icist
pir
em
an
th
wi
ng
ali
de
we
ere
W
.
nd
mi
in
ll
we
s
thi
of
all
ep
I I " , Ts sary to ke
th various
wi
s
ng
thi
to
s
ck
sti
e
ag
gu
lan
ich
wh
to
ing
rd
co
e
ac
ag
gu
lan
of
di ll'! ri ne
elf
its
t
tex
the
r,
ve
eo
or
M
st.
ere
int
no
e
us
aro
uld
wo
h" ',rees of adherence , this
nt
me
mo
the
m
fro
s
on
cti
fun
ly
on
t
tex
e
Th
.
ble
ssi
po
im
be
to
wO llld tum out
on of the
ati
rm
ffi
f-a
sel
the
'
say
ill
'
or
il'
'fa
s
ion
ess
pr
ex
the
in
ars
l l ial one he
y indicates
arl
cle
ett
ck
Be
le.
ru
n
ow
its
by
ed
rn
ve
go
as
ing
say
of
ion
I llt:seript
l l i i s from the start:

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p. 89).147
7;
(p.
id
ssa
mi
be
for
say
w
no
om
Fr
id.
ssa
Mi
d.
sai
be
Say for

The text will therefore organise itselfby way ofhypotheses concerning

the -ward, that is, the direction of thought. These hypotheses will concern
what binds, unbinds, or affects the triad of dim-being, shade-existence, and
skull-thought. Worstward H will 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 formulating 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 fully 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 sayin g'? 'Well saying' constitutes a hypothesis ofadequation: the saying
IS 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 authority 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 governed by saying, then ill saying is the free essence of saying,
or the affirmation 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.

d
lle
ca
is
ing
say
of
rm
no
e
th
t
tha
is
is
th
all
of
e
The strict consequenc
es
us
aro
ing
say
of
rm
no
the
s
ide
ov
pr
e
lur
fai
t
tha
ct
fa
, failure' . Of course, the
y:
ctl
rfe
pe
es
ifi
nt
ide
ett
ck
Be
t
tha
pe
ho
a
t,
jec
sub
the
n
thi
; 1 fallacious hope wi
have the
uld
wo
t
tha
e
lur
fai
e
lut
so
ab
an
of
e,
lur
fai
al
xim
ma
a
I hc hope of
is
is
Th
.
all
for
d
an
ce
on
g,
yin
sa
d
an
e
ag
gu
lan
th
bo
mcrit of turning you off
e
th
m
fro
elf
es
on
g
tin
ac
btr
su
of
on
ati
pt
tem
e
th
,
on
ati
I he shameful tempt
r to
ge
lon
no
;
'
'on
the
th
wi
ne
do
ve
ha
to
n
tio
pta
tem
e
Th
.
ing
imperative of say
suffer the intolerable prescription of ill saying.
ain
att
to
l:
ya
tra
be
in
s
lie
pe
ho
ly
on
the
,
ble
ssi
po
im
is
Since well saying
n
tio
rip
esc
pr
the
of
t
en
nm
do
an
ab
al
tot
a
cit
eli
uld
wo
it
e
it failure so complet
return
the
an
me
uld
wo
is
Th
e.
ag
gu
lan
of
d
an
ing
say
of
t
en
hm
itself, a relinquis
the end, the
In
n.
tio
rip
esc
pr
all
of
ied
pt
em
,
ied
pt
em
or
id
vo
be
to
to the void
s
urn
ret
e
on
e
lur
fai
of
m
for
is
th
In
.
be
to
r
de
or
in
ist
ex
temptation is to cease to
on,
ati
pt
tem
al
tic
ys
m
e
th
ll
ca
d
ul
co
we
at
wh
is
is
Th
g.
in
be
to the void, to pure
of the
on
iti
os
op
pr
t
las
e
th
in
n,
tei
ns
ge
itt
W
in
s
ar
pe
ap
it
ich
wh
in the sense in
e
on
k,
ea
sp
to
e
bl
ssi
po
im
is
it
ce
sin
,
ich
wh
at
int
Tractatus . To reach the po
is
it
t
tha
ss
ne
are
aw
the
ich
wh
at
t
in
po
the
ch
rea
To
t.
can only remain silen
ely,
lut
so
ab
led
fai
s
ha
at
it'
'
th
s
es
en
ar
aw
the
is,
t
tha
,
it'
'
y
impossible to sa
ger the
lon
no
is
t
tha
e
tiv
ra
pe
im
an
of
ay
sw
the
r
de
un
u
yo
firmly places
imperative of saying but the imperative of silence.
ing
go
,
ell
W
?
ere
wh
ing
Go
'.
ing
go
'
d
lle
ca
is
is
th
y
lar
bu
ca
In Beckett's vo
e nevcr
on
t
tha
s
ink
th
ett
ck
Be
ud
ba
m
Ri
e
lik
th,
tru
In
y.
nit
away from huma
the
,
ity
an
m
hu
ng
vi
lea
of
on
ati
pt
tem
e
th
y
tel
leaves. He recognises absolu
To
st.
gu
dis
of
int
po
the
to
ing
say
d
an
e
ag
gu
lan
th
temptation of failing bo

90

91

' il '
l il,' I'

g ) T h e Te m pt at i o n

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A la i n B a d i o u On Beckett

Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett ,---'--- "

leave existence once and for all, to return to being. But Beckett corrects 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 from 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).1 48

re
pu
e
th
t
bu
,
m
di
r
no
id
vo
r
he
it
ne
is
at
L l k l' pl ac e. This would be a nothing th
.
ng
yi
sa
of
n
tio
ip
cr
es
pr
e
th
of
on
iti
ol
, I lid s imple ab
usively
cl
ex
es
ak
rt
pa
ge
ua
ng
la
g:
in
w
llo
fo
e
th
n
We must therefore maintai
g.
in
th
no
e
th
of
ty
ci
pa
ca
e
th
of
e
ak
rt
not pa
. . l l h c capacity of the least. It does
ne
O
.
t]
en
is
du
re
i
qu
s
ot
m
es
[d
'
ds
or
w
I I ha s, as Beckett will say, 'leastening
which
to
ks
an
th
e
os
th
e
ar
n
te
as
le
at
th
ds
or
ha s words that leasten, and these w
.
re
ilu
fa
of
ng
ri
nt
ce
a
of
n
io
ct
re
di
e
ho, that is , th
, I I l C can hold the worstward
's
tt
ke
ec
B
d
an
'
ds
or
w
ve
si
lu
al
,
ct
re
Between Mallarm e' s 'never di
be
to
is
at
th
g
in
th
e
th
ch
oa
pr
ap
o
T
t.
en
id
, kastening words ' , the filiation is ev
or
ng
yi
sa
of
e
te
an
ar
gu
e
th
r
de
un
id
sa
be
::a id in the awarenes s that it cannot
.
ng
yi
sa
of
on
ti
ip
cr
es
pr
e
th
of
n
io
at
is
m
o r the thing leads to a radical autono
, it
ry
la
bu
ca
vo
's
tt
ke
ec
B
to
g
in
rd
co
ac
,
or
rect,
' I 'h is free saying can never be di
, that worsens .
I S a saying that leastens
,
se
or
w
st
be
e
th
of
um
um
in
m
e
th
In other words, language can expect
on
si
es
pr
ex
e
th
ch
hi
w
in
e
on
e
th
,
xt
te
l
ia
hi lt not its abolition. Here is the essent
' I castening words' also appears:

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, further 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:

,'I

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,

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.1 49

The fundamental 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 ofa radical departure that would subtract us from 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 sufficient 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 ) T h e La ws of Worse n i n g
From this point onwards, the fundamental law that governs 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

92
----- -------- -- ---

"

Worse less. By no stretch 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
of worser worst. Unlessenable least best worse (pp. 3 1 -32; p. 1 06).1 50

'Least never to be naught' is the law ofworsening. ' Say that best worse'
is the 'unnullable least' . The 'unlessenable least best worse' can never be
confused with abolition pure and simple, or with the nothing. This means that
the 'one must remain silent', in Wittgenstein's sense, is impracticable. We
must hold the worstward 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 ofworsening, presented as a figurc
of the self-affirmation of the prescription of saying. Worsening is a sovereign
procedure ofnaming in the excess offailure; it is the same as arousing thought
by 'never direct, allusive words', and carries with it the same impassablc

93

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Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

--

o,, ' ,..

void. Better worse so. Pending worse stilU5 1

The deployment of names that marks out this first shade with a great
I H I mber of subtractive attributes is, at the same time, its leastening or reduction.
l i s reduction to what? Well, to what should be named a mark of the 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
alone 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:

i ) E x e rc i s e s i n Wo rse n i n g

- worsening the head, or, worsening the eyes, the oozing brain, and the
skull.
These are the three shades that constitute the 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 hindtrunk. Dim black. On unseen knees. In the dim

94

,
,
"

i,

I'
"I

'I
,

Next two. From bad to worsen. Try worsen. From merely bad. Add -.

The text lavishly multiplies worsening exercises over the entire

phenomenal field of shades, over the configuration of generic humanity. These
can be briefly 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;

I
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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.

II'
I
I
II'"
I'

Add? Never. The boots. Better worse bootless. Bare heels. Now the two
right. Now the two left. Left right left right on. Barefoot unreceding on.
Better worse so. A little better worse than nothing so (p. 23; p. 100).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 an object (swan, star, rose . . . )
whose arrival imposes its own tennination. Beckett's 'boot' is the support
tenn of such an act.
Finally, worsening the head. This passage concerns the eyes (rc(;al l

95

'i'

--

- -

--

---

- -

Al a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

r-----

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).1 53

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, from 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 ofblack holes as blind seats ofvisibility.
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.

I'
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For Beckett, the courage oftruth could not come from the idea that we
w i l l be repaid by silence or by a successful 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 from
tile fact that words have the tendency to ring true. An extreme tension, which
perhaps constitutes Beckett's vocation as a writer, results from the fact that
courage pertains to a quality of words that is contrary to their use in worsening.
' I 'here is something like an aura of correspondence in words from which
( paradoxically) we draw the courage to break with correspondence itself,
that is, to hold worstward.
The courage of effort is always drawn out against its own destination.
I ,et us call this the torsion of saying : the courage of the continuation of effort
is drawn from words themselves, but from 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 from a fortunate disposition
of language: a sort of phantasm of correspondence that haunts language and
to which one returns 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 Worstward Ho this tension gives rise to some very beautiful
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 [Etprendre courage] (pp. 202 1 ; p. 99). 154

j ) H o l d i n g 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?

96
-

---

----

-----

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. To

last unlessenable least how loath to leasten. For then in utmost dim to

97

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unutter leastmost all (p. 33; p. 1 07).155

dimmer still [plus obscur encore]. To dimmost dim. Leastmost in dimmost

dim. Utmost dim. Leastmost in utmost dim. Unworsenable worst (p. 33;
p. 1 07). 156

Everything here shows to what extent one is 'loath to leasten' , to what

extent this effort is barren. One loaths to leasten because words are 'all but
uninane', because the word sounds true, because it rings clear and it is from
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 summons 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
difficult: 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 difficult. As if the experience of being were witness, not to an
impasse of worsening, but to a difficulty, 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 furthest 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
from 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
the obscure, the absolutely dark. The text makes several hypotheses concerning
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' :

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 fundamental axiom once again: 'least never to be naught'. The argument
is 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) T h e U n wo rs e n a b l e Vo i 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 [fond] 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 figure 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 it
cannot even be ill said. This point is a very subtle one. The void 'in itself' i s
what cannot be ill said. This is its definition. The void cannot but be said. In
it, the saying and the said coincide, which prohibits ill saying. Such a
coincidence finds its reason in the fact that the void itself is nothing bu t its
own name. Of the void 'in itself' you have nothing but the name. Within
Beckett's text this is expressly formulated in the following form :

98
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. .

99
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o r language. It is this experiment that the continuation of the text describes:

That the void is subtracted from ill saying means that there is no art of
the void. The void is subtracted from 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. In 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 figure of an
ontological desire that is subtracted from the imperative of saying: the fusion
in nothingness of the void with the dim. It will also be remarked that, in a
manner resembling the functioning 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 function 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 ofvariability, and therefore of metaphor or metamorphosis, because,
within it, the 'maximum' and the ' almost' coincide absolutely. Here then is
the great passage on the void:

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

,
,
,1:,

The experiment, as one can see, fails. The void qua pure nomination
remains radically unworsenable and thus unsayable.

Ii:,I
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I ) A p p e a ri n g a n d D i sa p pe a ri n g . M ov e m e nt
,

,
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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 man/child-two. The
question is that of knowing what becomes of movement and rest, the last two
categories in the five primordial genera of The Sophist.
The question of movement and rest presents itself in the form of two
interrogations: 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,

All save void_ No. Void too. Unworsenable void. Never less. Never more.
be gone.
Say child gone [ . . . ] (p. 42; p. 1 1 3).158

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Never since first said never unsaid never worse said never not gnawing to

I' "

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,
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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
'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

There always remains the possible hypothesis of an abso l u te

disappearance that would present itself as the disappearance of expos it ion
itself, and therefore as the disappearance of the dim. But one must not forget

100

101

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Alain Badiou

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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 indifferent 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 ofmovement. The figure 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.
Sec?nd statement: thought (the head, the skull) is incapable of
.
dISappearIng. There are a number of texts concerning 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
(p. 1 9 ; p. 9 8). 1 6 1

This ' Oh dim go' remains without effect. 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' . Parmenides designates

1 02

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the
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in
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co
nd
A
g.
in
be
d
an
t
gh
ou
th
I I Il" es sential ontological pairing of
ing
be
of
al
de
or
or
st
te
ry
ve
e
th
is
ch
q l le st ion of disappearance - whi
.
gn
si
e
m
sa
e
th
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de
un
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ts
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pp
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th
ly
T h is means that ultimately on
I l lo vement: this is the third thes is .
t but of
en
em
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m
no
is
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he
T
.
is
es
th
ek
re
G
a
This is a classical thesis,
.
on
od
pl
ho
w
k,
al
w
ho
w
ey
th
is
It
e child.
Ih e pair, i .e . of the old man and th
to
ed
k
n
li
ly
al
ti
an
st
ub
ns
co
is
on
ti
ra
te
a al
T hi s is the idea that movement qu
certain
a
in
is
t
en
em
ov
m
is
th
at
th
is
re
he
t
I he ' other' . But what is significan
a
is
is
th
d
il
ch
e
th
d
an
an
m
d
the ol
,ense immobile. When speaking of
say:
ly
nt
ta
ns
co
ill
w
xt
te
e
th
iv
ot
itm
le
e
ve ritabl
-

62
1
9
.
3)
p.
;
3
1
.
(p
de
ce
Plod on and never re

t.
en
em
ov
m
is
th
to
ty
ili
ob
m
im
al
rn
te
in
There is movement, but there is an
means
is
th
e,
rs
u
co
f
O
n?
ea
m
is
th
es
do
t
ha
They plod on and never recede. W
ation of
tu
si
e
on
ly
on
is
e
er
th
at
th
t
bu
),
on
that there is movement (they plod
is
e
er
th
:
y
sa
so
al
l
il
w
e
n
O
.
n
io
at
tu
si
l
heing, that there is only one ontologica
:
im
ax
m
e
th
by
on
y
rl
ea
ry
ve
ed
but one place. This is what is declar
63
1
9
.
2)
p.
;
1
1
.
(p
e
on
e
No place but th

re of
gu
fi
e
on
ly
on
is
e
er
th
;
se
er
iv
un
e
There is but one place, or on
going,
in
de
ce
re
to
it
r
fo
,
de
ce
re
to
y
el
iv
ct
being, not two. For the pair effe
s
as
p
to
le
ab
be
to
ve
ha
ld
ou
w
ir
pa
e
, th
there would have to be an other place
. In
'
e
on
e
th
t
bu
e
ac
pl
o
'N
e:
ac
pl
r
he
into another place. But there is no ot
. This
on
ti
sa
li
ca
lo
s
it
in
ne
O
is
ng
ei
B
g.
in
other words, there is no duality in be
be
t
us
m
e,
m
ti
e
m
sa
e
th
at
t,
bu
,
ed
is
cogn
is why movement must always be re
e
th
of
y
it
un
e
th
e
av
le
to
s
u
w
lo
al
not
grasped as relative because it does
e pair.
th
by
ed
rm
fi
n
co
is
t
ha
w
is
is
h
T
.
ce
pla

, m ) Lo v e
kcd hy
ar
m
ly
ep
de
is
o,
tw
e
th
of
at
th
is
ch
hi
This immobile migration, w
it
t
bu
d,
il
ch
e
th
d
an
an
m
d
ol
e
th
it is
Beckett's conception of love. Here,
i g i ol l s
od
pr
at
th
in
d,
an
o,
tw
e
th
of
im
ax
m
matters little. For what we have is the
as a so rt
ve
lo
of
o
tw
e
th
h
it
w
s
u
ts
en
es
pr
t
text on love that is Enough, Becket

103

-- ----- --

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_
_

n
tio
ip
cr
es
pr
e
th
by
to
ed
itt
bm
su
be
n
ca
it
n
tio
ria
i!sel ffrom the hypothetical va
o f saying.
type two
d
an
)
an
om
w
e
(th
e
on
pe
ty
of
es
ad
sh
to
rd
ga
re
In the end, with
s
ar
be
ir
pa
e
th
of
n
tio
ra
ig
m
ile
ob
m
im
e
th
ly
( the old man and the child), on
witness to a movement.
pe three
ty
e
th
of
s
ge
an
ch
e
th
of
n
tio
es
qu
e
th
to
d
le
ly
al
Thus we are fin
hich the
w
m
fro
l
ul
sk
e
th
,
ze
oo
ds
or
w
ch
hi
w
m
fro
l
ul
sk
shade, the skull, the
e
th
s
ne
ve
ter
in
ly
ar
cle
e
er
th
,
re
tu
nc
ju
is
th
t
A
prescription of saying oozes.
y
er
Ev
.
to
gi
co
e
th
of
re
tu
uc
str
e
th
e:
ov
ab
e
ok
sp
e
halting point of which w
ocked
bl
is
l
ul
sk
e
th
of
n
io
at
er
alt
or
ce
an
ar
pe
ap
re
e,
nc
ra
modification, disappea
e
th
in
elf
its
es
iz
se
ch
hi
w
at
th
as
ted
en
es
pr
re
by the fact that the skull must be
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:

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 from one place to
another. Instead, it is a delocalisation internal 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 Worstward Ho: the immobile migration designates what
could be called the spatiality of love.
Here is one ofthese texts, in which a powerful and abstract tenderness
- echoing Enough - can be heard:
Hand in hand with equal plod they go. In the free hands -no. Free empty
hands. Backs turned 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 turned. Both bowed. Joined by held holding hands.
Plod on as one. One shade. Another shade (p. 1 3 ; p.93).I 64

n ) A p p e a ri n g a n d D i s a p pe a r i n g . C h a n g e . T h e
S ku l l

, i

"

'

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 (pp. 25-26; p. 102).1 66

-;- . i

I
,

,-

,; i
I
,

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 skull all
save the skull gone'. I think, therefore I am a shade in the dim. The skull i s
the shade-subject, and cannot disappear; it cannot 'go ' .

1
I

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 (p. 14; p. 94). 165

That there can be real changes, that is, changes caught between appearance
and disappearance, is not a hypothesis liable to affect the being of a shade;
rather, it is a hypothesis that the prescription of saying might formulate. 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

0 ) O f t h e S u bj e ct a s S ku l l . W i l l , P a i n , J oy
,

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the stare. In the skull all save the skull gone. The stare. Alone in the dim

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then but the two gone. In the skull one and two gone. From the void. From

,I

In the skull all gone [disparu]. All? No. All cannot go. Till dim go. Say

1 04

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A hypothesis accessible to the skull would be that the shades - between

a disappearance and a reappearance - have been modified. This hypothesis is
evoked and worked through, but it is expressly presented as a hypothesis of
.
saymg:

The subject as skull is fundamentally reducible to saying

105

and seeing;

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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).1 67

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 ground. No ground but say ground.

I,

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. Extreme joy is precisely what possesses few or no words
to speak itself. Whence the fact that in the figure 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 ofjoy.
I am thinking, in Richard Strauss 's Elektra, o f 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 internal
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 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 ofpain. Here ofbones. Other examples ifneeds must. Of
pain. Relief from. Change of (p. 9; p. 90).1 68

Joy, in the end, is on the side of words. To rejoice is to rejoice that there

106

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Remains ofmind then still. Enough still. Somewhose somewhere someho
t
enough still. No mind and words? Even such words. So enough still. Jus
enough still to joy. Joy! Just enough still to joy that only they. Only!
(p. 29; p. 104)1 69

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 ) H o w c a n a S u bj ect b e T h o u g h t?

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

'1,,'"

--I,,,
I

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' :

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 turned upside down. Husserl's epoche consists in
subtracting the thesis of the world, in subtracting the 'there is' in order to
then turn towards the movement or the pure flux of that interiority which i s
directed at this 'there is' . Husserl's lineage originates in Cartesian doubt.
The thetic character of the universe o f the intentional opera t i o n s o r

107

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A I a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r---- """'"

---,

_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_

of
e,
tim
of
e
in
ctr
do
e
tir
en
an
is
e
er
th
o,
H
d
ar
ho st of other things . In Worstw

consciousness is retracted in order to try to apprehend the conscious structure

that governs these operations, independently of any thesis concerning 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:

:;pace, of variations . . . we could go on forever.

ething
m
so
s,
rd
wa
on
t
in
po
is
th
m
fro
e
us
ca
Be
.
5)
1
1
(
45
ge
At least until pa
still be
ld
ou
w
s
se
aly
an
g
lon
at
th
ch
su
is
ity
ex
pl
m
co
se
ds e happens, who
ial
nt
se
es
e
th
te
ca
di
in
y
pl
sim
e
m
t
Le
it.
of
m
tto
bo
e
required in order to get to th

,I ,'I
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points.

q ) T h e Eve nt

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 soft when from it ooze again. In it ooze again. Ooze
alone for seen as seen with ooze. Dimmed. 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

dealin with 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, from ill seeing.
.1 shall not develop these experiments any further. 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
. . A name commands a saying, but an experience is an ill saying and not
bem
a saymg proper.
S con ly, the skull or subject cannot really be subtracted from 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
. .
.
artIstIc exposItion.

A l a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

'

t-up
se
al
im
in
m
e
th
of
rs
ete
m
ra
pa
e
th
in
th
wi
ain
m
re
e
Until page 45 , w
e
th
s
es
tn
wi
e
w
at
th
t
in
po
is
th
at
is
It
t.
gh
ou
that links being, existence and th
ed
ar
ep
pr
t
en
ev
an
,
ty
ui
tin
on
sc
di
a
e
ns
se
ict
str
e
production of an event in th
ve
ha
e
w
at
wh
do
mo
so
os
gr
is
te
sta
st
la
e
Th
.
te
sta
st
by what Beckett calls a la
te of
sta
st
la
e
th
te,
sta
e
th
of
te
sta
st
la
e
th
as
te
sta
st
la
e
just described: it is th
ssibility of
po
im
e
th
by
ed
iz
se
is
te
sta
is
Th
.
gs
in
th
of
te
sta
the saying of the
l
1
7
.
ng
yi
sa
nd
yo
be
pothesis
annihilation - ' save dim go ' , which remains a hy
ange,
arr
ill
w
e
or
m
y
sa
to
ve
ha
all
sh
e
w
ry
to
jec
tra
se
ho
The event - ofw
tement of
sta
e
th
to
)
d'
ne
ste
ea
(,l
d
ce
du
re
ng
yi
sa
of
e
tiv
ra
or expose, an impe
in
t
en
ev
e
th
by
d
an
in
ed
ifi
od
m
be
ill
w
s
on
iti
its own cessation. The cond
ow
oh
'n
e
th
to
d
ite
lim
ly
ict
str
be
ill
w
n'
'o
e
th
of
t
such a way that the conten
ore to
m
g
in
th
no
is
e
er
th
at
th
be
y
pl
sim
ill
w
id
sa
be
to
on' . What will remain
absolutely
an
d
he
ac
re
s
ha
at
th
ng
yi
sa
a
ve
ha
all
sh
e
w
be said. And thus
maximal degree of purification.
t state :
las
e
th
of
n
io
lat
tu
pi
ca
re
e
th
ith
w
ns
gi
be
ng
hi
yt
er
Ev

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Same stoop for all. Same vasts apart. Such last state. Latest state. Till
,
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somehow less in vain. Worse in vain. All gnawing to be naught. Never to

be naught (p . 46 ; p. 1 1 5) . 172

109

108
,,

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le.
ab
in
m
ter
in
as
ng
ni
se
or
w
of
s
es
oc
pr
e
th
als
se
The last or latest state
cre
th
e
et
pl
m
co
is
n
io
lat
tu
pi
ca
re
e
th
ce
on
t,
Bu
.
'
in
va
Its maxim is: 'Worse in
nc in g
sta
di
of
rt
so
a
'
en
dd
su
'
by
d
ce
du
tro
in
t
en
om
m
brusquely occurs - in a
r
rio
te
in
e
th
to
in
at
tre
re
te
lu
so
ab
its
e
lik
is
ch
hi
of this state to a limit position, w
sa id i n
be
to
le
ab
g
in
be
by
,
id
sa
en
be
d
ha
at
th
of language. As if everything
l11 th e
fro
e
nc
sta
di
al
sim
ite
fin
in
an
at
f
el
its
d
un
fo
its last state, suddenly
imperative of language.
rru pt io ll
i
e
th
to
l
lle
ra
pa
ly
te
lu
so
ab
is
t
en
em
ov
m
It must be noted that this

Here is what is exposed, said and outlined in the text, together with a

"

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----

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Beckett
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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 ofbeing' (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 rupture, and takes
place on a scene situated at a remove from the one at hand, a scene in which
a metamorphosis of exposition is presented - a sidereal metamorphosis, or a
'siderealisation' [sideration]. It is not a question of the disappearance of the
dim, but of a retreat ofbeing to its very limit. Just as in Mallarme the question
of the dice-throw results in the appearance of the Great Bear, likewise what
was counted in the dim will here be fixed in pinholes - a closely related
metaphor. Here is the passage introduced by the clause of rupture, ' Enough' :

!,

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,

Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All

Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.

Said nohow on (pp. 46-47; p. 1 1 6). 1 73

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 fuse with the
beyond . . . a constellation. ' 1 74 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, an overall 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.

1 10

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111

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loving memory some old gravestones stoop. In that old graveyard. Names
gone and when to when. Stoop mute over the graves ofnone (p. 45; p. 1 1 5).1 75

boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther. Nohow less.

Nothing and yet a woman. Old and yet old. On unseen knees. Stooped as

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 ofthis 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.
In Coup de des, it is because the element of the place has managed to
metamorphose into something other than itselfthat the evental rupture ofthe
constellation is possible.
In Worstward 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 given
from the moment that the shades become the symbol of being of an ex istel1cc.

'

-____""_1 ,I ,

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 of the poetics ofthe text, we
would need to demonstrate that this evental configuration - this ' sudden' - is
acsthetically or poetically prepared by a specific figure. In Mallarme, the
Constellation is prepared by the figure of the master, drowning himself on
the surface of the sea. In Beckett, this figural 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:

least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of

,
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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 his mother. Ad
.
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 0 1
suddenness that seizes the prose, disrupting both its rhythm and its image?
Why not begin with the link between the impatience ofthe 'Enogh ! ' and the
caesura of the ' sudden', of which Rimbaud was the foundmg poet ,? A
.

112

',I,

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 internal 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 supernumerary 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 [fond]
ofnothing or ofnight: the saying of the 'on', ofthe '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'.1 76 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, after the work
of poetry one can also return 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

Translated by Alberto Toscano

Revised by Nina Power

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suddenness that also summons the distant, that constitutes the dis
appropriation of our enslavement to the monotony ofthe near. Let us listen to
the almost stellar ending of Worstward Ho:

But the whole problem is that this failure ofprose is by no means given.
I t is an 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. 20-2 1 ; NO, p. 99).183
Artistic or poetic effort 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
lortunate disposition oflanguage, a sort ofaura of correspondence that haunts
language, and which is where - in a figure 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 effort 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 find three regimes of prose, three configurations
of beauty.
The first comes forth when words settle upon the inertia ofbeing, upon
the still surface of what there is, respecting the countours of thought whilst
modifying its colour, like a golden dust spread upon the gray rock of the
planet. Let us listen to Lessness:

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).179

Alternatively, we could begin with the naming of what happens. After

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 find the name of what
happens demands an invention within language, a poetic forcing. Like when
- in III Seen III 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 ifnot enfeebled by the infrequent slumberers. A slumberous collapsion
(ISIS, p. 5 5 ; NO, p. 83).1 80

And having matched - in order to name what happens - the uncommon to

the infrequent, 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. 83).181
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 function 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:

11

,'11

_
_
_

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 refuge sheer
,
,

white blank planes all gone from mind. All sides endlessness earth sky as
one no sound no stir (eSp, p. 1 56; GSP, p. 201).184

Say that best worst. With leastening words say least best worse. For want
ofworser worst. Unlessenable least best worst (WH, p. 32; NO, p. 1 06).182

But we also find it - this prose brought to it greatest calm - when what.
remains of humanity walks the world without pain, benefiting from a grace
compatible with the surest of maladies. Such is the case with the two loyers
in Enough, as she who renders their chronicle declares:

1 14

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the
d
an
ds
or
w
of
ss
ce
ex
l
fu
it
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de
e
th
I <" IISC and volatile fault-line, between
not
,
on
ti
ua
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n
pu
d
an
ax
nt
sy
ds
in
b
un
I I l 1possibility of silence. This prose
l
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er
v
e
th
m
se
u
ca
be
t
bu
,
ty
el
ov
al n
rm
fo
h
it
w
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ti
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pr
a
of
se
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ca
he
e
th
th
bo
t,
an
st
in
y
er
ev
at
t
os
m
al
,
llow
ar ks that are thereby opened one can fo
the
of
ce
en
in
m
im
e
th
to
s
ad
le
h
ic
h
w
:;l Ibtractive counter-path of thought
e of
u
pt
ca
e
th
to
s
ad
le
ch
hi
w
ds
or
w
.
Ilothing and the radiating path of
n
10
1t

am
e
th
is
ch
Su
s.
es
in
pp
ha
of
form
what happens, as well as to a singular
e
gl
sm
a
e
m
ow
ll
A
.
Is
It
ow
H
of
at
rose, th
of Beckett's worst understood p
ates
in
lm
cu
,
et
u
ss
o
B
s
ll
ca
re
h
ic
h
w
,
ce
en
quote, where a long affirmative cad

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):

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111 sarcasm:

f
o
e
im
g
re
e
th
ty
u
ea
b
d
an
se
ro
Let u s call this third regime o f p
metamorphoses.
ter of
as
m
ic
hm
yt
rh
e
th
s,
es
dn
il
m
of
t
oe
p
Behold Beckett: the confident
hose s.
orp
am
et
m
of
or
ct
ru
st
n
co
e
.
th
,
m
as
sarc
a
ul
rm
fo
t
n
ce
fi
m
ag
m
e
th
of
se
n
se
g
akin
It will always be a question of m
TN ,
;
2
30
.
p
,
(T
e'
in
v
di
st
re
e
th
l
al
d
an
an
from The Unnamable: ' I alone am m
to
n
g,
in
y
sa
f
o
y
er
ph
ri
pe
e
th
to
e
rs
cu
s
p . 30 0 ). To relegate the divine and it
g,
m
lv
rv
su
s,
es
tl
n
le
re
s,
es
sn
es
el
op
e or h
op
h
er
th
ei
t
u
ho
it
w
,
ed
ak
n
an
m
e
ar
cl
de
e.
ir
es
d
is
h
f
o
e
ag
gu
n
la
e
iv
ss
ce
ex
e
.
and consigned to th
ithful
fa
e
b
to
ry
sa
es
ec
n
is
it
at
th
w
no
k
e
But also to let each and every on
'But at
:
ot
od
G
or
f
g
in
it
a
W
in
ce
n
te
n
se
's
ir
_ which is not so easy - to Vladim
or
it
e
k
li
e
w
er
eth
h
w
s,
u
is
d
in
k
all man
e,
m
ti
of
t
en
om
m
is
th
at
,
ce
la
p
is
th
not' (CDW, p . 74 ; WG, p. 5 1) .

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 5 9). 186

':11'I,,

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correction no
ng
vi
sa
d
an
re
he
w
no
g
in
ad
le
xt
ne
e
from the next mortal to th
up
n
ai
tr
e
m
na
a
m
hi
ve
gi
m
hi
to
ve
ea
other goal than the next mortal cl
r life
fo
ite
un
es
bl
fa
s
hi
on
e
rg
go
ls
ta
pi
ca
blooody him all over with Roman
Il US p.
H
;
.
69
p
,
Il
(H
er
ng
lo
e
tl
lit
a
d
an
p
m
in stoic love to the last shri
62)187

Ah my father and mother, to think they are probably in paradise, they were

116

--!-l 1 ,

_
_

I don't know what the weather is now. But in my life it was eternally mild.
As if the earth had come to rest in spring (CSP, p. 143; GSP, p. 1 9 1).185

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
nocturnal embers of prose, on the one hand, and there is the dry fire of
incinerating sarcasm, on the other.
Finally, where can we find 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
terms, 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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Badiou , B e c kett and

Con te m pora ry C ri t i c i s m
A n d rew G i b s o n

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Alain Badiou's work on Beckett radically takes issue with what he

takes to be a distinct and coherent tradition running through Beckett criticism.
Badiou argues that the tradition has too often made of Beckett an absurdist or
existentialist, a nihilist or tragic pessimist. In doing so, it has effectively always
contemplated Beckett as its own opposite, as the negative to the unrel en t i n g
positivity of its own discourse. For it has invariably adopted the point o f

- -------

- - . .

,i

Al ai n Ba d i o u On Beckett r---_
view of the proprietor, for whom possessions are 'the only proof of bei
ng and
sense' . In its very admiration ofBeckett, the tradition has declared its dis
tance
from him. That distance is also the measure of its own worldliness . Ba
diou is
opposed to the view that Beckett moved towards 'a nihilistic destitu
tion,
towards a radical opacity of significations '. The criticism that produ
ces this
insistence can understand Beckett only as inverting what it takes to
be its
own fullness. For Badiou, however, from a philosophical perspecti
ve, that
fullness - ofbeing and meaning - is no more sel f-evident than is the sup
posed
'poverty' of Beckett's art. From the philosopher 's point ofview, what pri
marily
commands attention, in Beckett's work, is not a condition of exi
stential
deprivation. It is the evidence of labour, unremitting effort and, abo
ve all,
thought: 'Beckett speaks to us ', Badiou writes, with existentialist cri
ticism in
mind, of something 'far more thought out than this two-bit, dinner-pa
rty 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
r ther
dated. It has been superseded by the theoretical tum in Beckett stu
die s: the
various theoretically informed, sophisticated and sometimes brillia
nt studies
of Be ckett that have been appearing since the late eighties. Mu
ch of that
criticism has also taken issue with the tradition described by Badio
u. Thomas
Trezise, for examp le, has called what he refers to as 'the pervasive ass
ociation
of Beckett's work with the ideology of existential humanism' into
question,
. .
prIncIpally because it ' derives from a phenomenological understa
nding of
the humn subjec t' which Trezise is concerned to interrogate (Trezi
se, p. 5).

.
.
WrItmg III 1 996, RIchard Begam suggests that readings of Beckett
as either
' a itic nihilist' or an 'existential humanist' are being fast outstr
ipped by
a CrItlcIsm that reads Beckett 'through the discourse of po ststructu
ralism'
and drastically reconstitutes our understanding of his treatment
of ' such
fundamental issues as the subject-object dialectic, the metaphysics of
presence,
and the correspondence theory of truth' (Begam, p. 8). Badiou's wr
itings 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 Becke
tt
'
not in relation to those commentaries he in some small measure add
resses
but in relation to a critical tradition with which he might appear more
strikingl
o compete for a contemporary terrain. This seems all the more appropriate
.
n t at BadlO
u 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 reconfiguratio
n of po st-

120

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war French thought which would place him on one side, perhaps surprisingly,
ill the company of Sartre 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
Manifestofor Philosophy, he calls 'the sophists'. I shall proceed by identifying
what I take to be five principal concerns in the dominant discourses in Beckett
eriticism over the past fifteen years. I call these concerns: the logic ofreversal;
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 from 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 simplify 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 five 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 postmodern 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 significant contribution to Beckett studies,
they are not themselves immune to question and - more importantly - neither
is the overall philosophical structure 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 as a
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, impl ode, cannot be kept apart . The

121

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Al ai n Ba d i o u On Beckett r---architecture that once cemented them in place, baldly confronting 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; alternatively, he sees it - and articulates it - with special penetration.
Leslie Hill in particular has meticulously traced the logic of reversal through
a range ofBeckett's works. Indeed, I have borrowed the term from him. Beckett
is committed to defending the autonomy of literary texts, says Hill. His
commitment leads him to define fiction ' as an activity of language in which,
paradoxically, the foundations of meaning are attacked by the uncontrollable,
self-inverting character of meaning itself' (Hill, p. 6). Beckett is concerned
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 ofMurphy, 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 indeterminate, significant
yet devoid of meaning' (Hill, p. 62). The significance of that great Beckettian
figure, aporia - partiCUlarly in the Trilogy - 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 further away from 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 afflicts the difference-indifference 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 indifference,
' engulfment and indeterminacy, apathy and invisibility' (Hill, p. 27) . At the
same time, however, indifference in Watt becomes an uncontrollable
proliferation of difference: B eckett 'dramatises the threat of engulfment by
indifference by multiplying all manner of differences, contrasts, distinctions
in his own text' (Hill, p. 34).
In effect, 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 ofrecent Beckett criticism. Here the gap between that criticism,

122

Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

" "

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"

and the existentialist and humanist criticism that preceded it, looks narrower
than it may initially have appeared to be. Where Beckett's concern 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.
I n either instance, the question of an already existent meaning is of cardinal
importance. By contrast, Badiou has been much concerned to turn philosophy
dccisively away from 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 functions, 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 deconstructionists appear to, and understands Beckett as labouring
under the same oppression. In Badiou's terms, Beckett 'makes holes' in
knowledge. In contradistinction to contemporary Beckettians, Badiou stresses
historicity on the one hand and a principle of antagonism on the other. Here
the cardinal sentence appears on the first page of Tireless Desire: 'thought
only subtracts itself from 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, after all, might make him finally
seem closer to Sartre than to Derrida, he rather commits his art to opposition,
a scrupulous but fiercely 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 deconstructive 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 from 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 brcak with

123

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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 indiscernible
to them. They appear as a subtraction from the particularity of what is currently
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 truth is always distinct from 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 from 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 scientific 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 concerned 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 subtraction. 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 subj ectivity. But the structures that B eckettian self
impoverishment itself is concerned so rigorously to undermine are arguably

1 24

those of selfuood than of the delusive cornucopia of extant knowledge.

1 1 1 any case, as we shall shortly see, Badiou's account ofBeckett's development
does not precisely correspond to his own very specific conception of
slIbjectivation. There is a sense in which, unlike what we might term Badiou's
paradigmatic subject - Cantor would perhaps be the most obvious example
h i s Beckett never decisively moves beyond 'working with impotence,
ignorance ', in Beckett's own famous phrase. In any event, in his suspension
o f 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 from 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 shift in recent Beckett
criticism away from a Beckett understood in terms of a restricted economy
towards a Beckett whose work refers us to the general economy. The shift is
evident, above all, in Trezise's book Into the Breach, which is where these
terms chiefly figure. For Trezise, the general economy - as opposed in
particular to the restricted economy ofphenomenology - 'produces the world
. . . and exceeds it' as a ' strangeness constitutive of all familiarity' (Trezise, p.
30). Since phenomenology conceives of subjectivity as a 'separation from
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 of the 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 signification; 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, as
speaking subjects, they articulate themselves only on the basis of a more
fundamental intersubjectivity that they cannot articulate. In this manner,
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125

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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 ofwhat 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 concerned
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 internal 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 affirmation (which is
how Badiou can claim that 'in an almost aggressive way, all of Beckett's
genius tends towards affirmation' , and yet, in doing so, mean something quite
different by affirmation to what the existential humanists meant). This is
generic work, in Badiou's understanding of it: Beckett reduces experience to
a set of significant minima, 'to certain major functions or axiomatic terms'
(Movement, Rest, the Same and the Other, the Logos); to certain questions
about these functions (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 ofhumanity.
Like Rimbaud and Mallarme, Beckett decides a universe into existence, and

1 26

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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 ofthe Generic'
i n this volume). This 'determination' is neither an objective essence nor
established in its right to existence. It proceeds axiomatically, on the basis of
a 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
a thought 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
concern 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 returns 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 significant and influential study of repetition in
Beckett has been Steven Connor's Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory 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 interrelationship. Repetition does not necessarily have a
stymying effect on Beckett's world. It is not an index of an essential paralysis.
Nor does Connor read it as a centring or unifying force in Beckett's work.
Indeed, he suggests that Beckett's practice 'instances the powerful possibilities
of reproduction over the sterile compulsions of replication' (Connor, p. 20 1).
He argues that repetition brings with it ' a principle of difference' , in Beckett,
that it even activates a 'perverse dynamism of difference' (Connor, p. 1 3).
This is hardly surprising, 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 a

127

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doubleness , asserting both the freedo

m of the language from referentia l
constraints and its internal emptines
s and exhaustion' (Connor, p . 2 3) . 1
11
Krapp s Last Tape, as Krapp listens to hi
mself, repetition opens up possibilities,
in that he recognises his ' ironic non-c
oincidence with himself ', the truth o f
self-difference (Connor, p . 1 28 ). On
the other hand, it closes p os sibilities
down, in that the play also demonstra
tes the Derridean principle of the graf
t,
according to which ' every utterance
can be taken up or enveloped by som
e
other occasion' (Connor, p . 1 30 ). The
effects of repetition thus also tend
towards inertia, a reminder o f 'the de
ath into writing of every living word'
(ibid.).
As Connor describes it, the ineluctabl
e ambivalence of repetition in
Beckett thus traps him, again, in the en
dlessness of Hill 's 'purgatorial cycle'
.
There is no exterior to this purgatory.
There cannot be, because the power of
the relationships between repetition an
d difference transcends time and history.
For Badiou, however, this is not the case
, because there is always the possibility
of an event. The event is an 'extra-b
eing '. 'Every singular truth ', writes
Badiou, 'has its origin in an event. So
mething must happen, in order for ther
e
to be something new. Even in our pers
onal lives, there must be an encounter,
there must be something which cann
ot be calculated, predicted or managed
,
there must be a break based only
on chan ce '. An event is a substanceles
s
fragment of pure fortuitousness . It is al
so 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 'r ul es ' ,
constraining us to decide on a new w
ay of being which conservatism would
decree to be impossible. O f course,
no newness is absolutely new: the even
t
must compose with elements o f the si
tuation as given. In this respect, Badio
u
does not so much oppose the very term
s in which Begam and Connor construc
t
their B ecketts as alter the proportio
ns o f those terms. Nonetheless, wha
t
ist nguishes Badiou's account ofthe 'p
urgatorial cycl e' - which he interprets
,
III h IS own way, as a seem
ingly interminable oscillation betwee
n the dim or
grey-black ofbeing and the solipsistic
torture of the cogito - is that it ultimately
presents Beckett with an impasse from
which he gradually recognises that he
must work his way free. Thus, from
Texts for Nothing onwards, Beckett's
work begins to open itself up to the
event: to chance, the incident, ' sudden
modifications of the give n ', even to
the p ossibility of happiness and lov
e.
Becktt effects this, not least, to return
to an earlier point, by abandoning the
questIon of meaning. This is evident
in later work from The Lost Ones to
Enough to III Seen III Said. Worstwar
d Ho even presents us with a kind of

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';l I l 1 l1nary of Beckett's trajectory, in this respect, tracing the course of a long
lahour that 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,
Ii( )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,
ill Beckett's later work, the activity of naming becomes very important. Here,
again, Badiou seems at odds with recent critics, who have repeatedly inisted
on 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 Western 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 after', to have a secondary or subordinate function.
'There exists a realm of the thinkable', he asserts, 'that is inaccessible to the
so-called total jurisdiction oflanguage'. As Badiou affirms the sheer radicality
of the event in its rarity, so too he also affirms 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 from any and every regime of sense. It
must therefore be named; in effect, it calls for a name, and this namc serves

1 29

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--

Ala i n Ba d io u On Beckett

Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r------

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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 differently,
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 specific 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 c onstructed in a process o f
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 ofthe flux 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 refuses 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 fidelity is therefore crucial to Badiou's thought. The
subjects of a truth remain faithful 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. Subj ectivity is
perseverance in what has broken one's perseverance in being. In a phrase of
Lacan's that Badiou returns to repeatedly, the imperative undergone in
subjectivation is 'nepas 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

I rue to the shock of an event that came to me from beyond the terms of my
knowledge? How am I to remain true to 'son desir', one s desire, my desire

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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 fidelity, 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 refuses 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 impass e. But it is also at the
very heart of the 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 finally contrasts a vigilant Beckett with
Mallarme , the Irish insomniac with the French faun. For Mallarme, says
Badiou, it is always possible to break from the poetic endeavour, to relinquish
the effort, to suspend activities, to cease to pose the poet's question. Mallarme
can always return 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 intrans igent, not only in his asc etic ism , but in his injunction to
watchfulnes s.
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
the particularity ofwhat is currently known. Initially, this commitment appears
only in negative form, in the austere operations of subtraction and the
singularity of 'restricted action' . After Textsfor 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 faithful. Indeed, Badiou has preferred to speak of
Beckett's courage, rather than his fidelity. One might propose of course that

133

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L Ala i n B a d i o u On Beckett

Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r---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 exemplification of
a prior set of decisions. The very rift between Badiou's philosophical system
and his version of Beckett's art helps to preserve an aesthetic practice in its
specificity, as a procedure whose truth is sui generis, both immanent and
singular. This would be consistent with Badiou's assertion, notably in 'Art
and Philosophy', from 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. 1 90
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 trouble
is that the second narrative does not conform to the first. Furthermore, the
narrative of Beckett's career will hold good only if modified to the point
where it hardly looks like a plausible narrative 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 modernism. For all Badiou's claims that, in How It Is and The Lost Ones,
we find a Beckett concerned to tum away from 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 Trilogy. 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 contradictory?
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
after 1 960) and modality (the event happens, and is named). Is there no sense
of events in the Trilogy? If not, is that just the case because Badiou can only
understand 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, ' eventfulness', a version or, better, an equivalent

of Heideggerian Ereignis? Might not Beckett be concerned with this play,
and thus with other kinds of event, as well as the one that interests Badiou?
Might he not be much concerned, 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 from 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 2 1 ). For all his own distrust
ofteleological assumptions, it seems to me that Badiou has not been altogether
successful 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 effectively successfully 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 fidelity
or courage - seem to me to offer an important new framework for
understanding Beckett. This framework is ethical. Recent Beckett criticism
has found in Beckett a writer concerned 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 concerned with the conditions
ruptured by truths, or upon which truths supervene, as in the case of the
Beckettian concern with the reduction of experience to a set ofmajor functions.
They are also much preoccupied with the formal criteria for the appearance
of truths. But the postmodern 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 'indiscernible' before their emergence, if
universal in their trajectory in so far as they are available to all. This conviction
categorically determines Badiou's reading of Beckett. Beckett's art is founded
on a fierce resistance to doxa. It opens up a space for a different construction
ofthe world through an axiomatic procedure whose mode is hypothesis. Whilst
failure never ceases to haunt this project, tentatively, contradictorily, fitfully,

135

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I
I

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IC

Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

L Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

r-----

and by a variety of different means, Beckett edges towards a faith in possibility.

This is also a faith in transformation whose token is the transformation of
language itself. To return to the Sartre with whose project Badiou partly
identifies his own, one might think of Badiou's Beckett as granting at least a
kind of minimal credibility to the assertion, in the Critique of Dialectical
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.

N otes

B i b l i o g ra p h y
BEGAM, Richard, Samuel Beckett and the End ofModernity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1 996)
CONNOR, Steven, Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory and Text (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1 988)
HILL, Leslie, Beckett 's Fiction: In Different Words (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1 990)
KATZ, Daniel, Saying 'J' No More: Subjectivity and Consciousness in the
Prose ofSamuel Beckett (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1 999)
LOCATELLI, Carla, Unwording the World: Samuel Beckett 's Prose 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)

,I . :

I,
I I!:
"

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 of lectures 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
that, since this lecture was given, Samuel Beckett has died. And that Worstward Ho
has been admirably translated into French by Edith Fournier, under the title Cap au

"

I
,

, .,

pire (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1 991).]

2 [Mirlitonnade is a Beckettian neologism used as the title for a set ofpoems written
for the most part between 1 976 and 1 978, which Beckett himself described as 'gloomy
French doggerel' (quoted in James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life o/Samuel

136
,

I
,

Ala i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

---_._
-

----_._-- ----

--

--

r-

Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett

---

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 Archaeology ofKnowledge (London: Routledge, 1989) p. l 07.]

scxuation, see Jacques Lacan, Seminar XX: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits ofLove
and Knowledge, 1972-1973, ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. by Bruce Fink
( London: w.w. Norton, 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.]

20 [ . . .]je croyaispar moments que ce serait la ma recompense d 'avoir si vaillamment

parte, entrer encore vivant dans Ie silence [ . . . ] (p. 1 83).
2 1 Ma pensee s 'estpensee et [ .. . ]je suis parfaitement mort [letter to Cazalis, May 14,
1 867].
22 Moije ne pense, si c 'est la cet affolement vertigineux comme d 'un guepier qu 'on
enfume, que depasse un certain degre de terreur (p. 1 06).

, i

23 [ . . . ] ilfaut continuer, je ne peux pas continuer, je vais continuer (p. 2 1 3).

33 [ . . . ] brillants de clarteformelle et au contenu impenetrable (p. 75).

24 [ . . . ] un qui parle en disant, tout en parlant, Quiparle, 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 unjoU trio, et dire que tout 9a nefait
qu 'un, et que cet un nefait que rien, et quel rien, il ne vaut rien (p. 199).

.f

25 Fut-il jamais un temps ou plus question de questions? Mort-nees jusqu 'a la

derniere. 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 (p. 46).
26 [For a meta-ontological presentation ofBadiou'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.]

28 [ . . . ] on est ce qu 'on est, en partie tout au moins (p. 8 1).

29 Terre ingrate mais pas totalement (p. 35). [This can be translated literally as
'Ungrateful earth but not entirely.']

34 [ . . . ] la signification attribuee a cet ordre d 'incidents par Watt, dans ses relations,
etait tantot la signification originaleperdue etpuis recouvree, et tantot une signification
tout autre que la signification 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 (p. 80).

"

"

35 Hamm: Qu 'est-ce qui se passe? / Clov: Quelque chose suit son cours. /Un temps.
/ Hamm: Clov! / Clov (agace): Qu 'est-ce que c 'est? / Hamm: On n 'est pas en train de
. . . de . . . signifier quelque chose? / Clov: Signifier? Nous, signifier! (Rire brei) Ah
elle est bonne! (p. 49)

' !

36 Pendant l 'inspection soudain un bruit. Faisant sans que celle-la s 'interrompe

que I 'esprit se reveille. Comme l 'expliquer? Et sans allerjusque-la comment Ie dire?
Loin en arrit'!re de I '(Ril 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 croulement. Renforcepeu apres sinon affaiblipar 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 (p . 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, 1982).]

' ,'1

,
"I
I"
,

27 [On the relationship between the concepts ofgeneric and indiscernible, a crucial
feature of Badiou's philosophy, see Manifesto for Philosophy, ' Conference sur la
soustraction' in Conditions, and L 'etre et l 'evenement, Meditations 33 and 34.]

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 la fin, sous tous les rapports essentiels, et cela parce qu 'ici a chaque instant
toute presence significative, et iei tout presence etait significative, meme si l 'on ne
pouvait dire de quoi, impliquait cette meme presence a tout instant [ .. ] (pp. 135136).

I' i

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30 [For Lacan's concept of the 'Not-All ' , originating in his mathemes of (feminine)

140

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Al a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett r------------_
-----

Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

_
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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 lii,
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)

8 [In the lines that follow, Badiou plays on the French title ofthe text Le Depeupleur,
lIterally, ' The Depopulator' . ]
,

39 Sejour ou des corps vont cherchant chacun son depeupleur (p. 7).

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
efJectues de concert plies en deux! Nous elevions ainsi a la troisieme puissance des
nombres ternaires entiers. 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 auraitfait son oeuvre (pp.
38-39).

40 [ . . . ] dans Ie cylindre Iepeu possible la ou it n 'estpas n 'est seulementplus 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 XXIII.]
42 [ . . . ] la voix etant ainsifaiteje 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 con. traire (p.
1 93 )

,,

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 desfleurs. Ou
plus betement a des imperatifs d 'ordre anatomique. Il n 'ajamais souleve la question.
Le sommet atteint helas it faUait redescendre. / Pour pouvoir de temps a autre jouir
du ciel il se servait d 'une petite glace ronde. L 'ayant voitee de son souffle 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 ajoutait que Ie ciel n 'avait rien (p. 42).

44 [ . . . ] la vie dans I 'amour stoique [ . . . ] (p. 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
(p. 1 59). .
46 [ ... ] que de marivaudages, de frayeurs et de farouches attouchements, dont il
importe seulement de retenir ceci, qu 'ilsfirent entrevoir a Macmann ce que signijiait
l 'expression etre deux (p. 1 44).
47 soit en clairje cite ou bien je suis seul etplus de probleme ou bien nous sommes
en nombre infini et plus de probleme non plus (p. 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 dufond, 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
de ande comment elle se l 'etait faite. En cueuillant des groseilles a maquereau,
m a- -elle repondu. J'ai dit encore que c,:a me semblait sans espoir etpas 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
desfentes a cause du solei!. Je me suispenche sur ellepour qu 'i!s soient dans I 'ombre
et i!s se sont ouverts. M'ont laisse entrer. Nous derivions parmi les roseaux et la

,:

!.

"

5 1 [Badiou's statement resonates far more with the last line in the French version (Et
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 sky) 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 shift in emphasis
could be summarised 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 89-2 1 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

142

143

l Al ai n Ba d i o u On Beckett

Ala i n Bad i o u On Beckett r-----ecoutez les feuilles. Dans leur ombre tremblante (p. 65-66).

;.

79 Penombre obscure sourcepas suo Savoir Ie minimum. Ne rien savoir non. Serait
trop beau. Tout au plus Ie minime minimum (p. 1 0).

::

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).

80 Disparition du vide ne se peut. Saufdisparition de la penombre. Alors disparition

de tout (p. 22).
8 1 Je Ie crois, oui, je crois que tout ce qui estfaux se laisse davantage reduire, en
notions claires et distinctes, distinctes de toutes les autres notions (p. 1 1 0).

,
,

70 Je m 'en vais maintenant tout effacer sauf les fleurs. Plus de pluies. Plus de
mamelons. Rien que nous deux nous trafnant dans les fleurs. Assez mes vieux seins
sentent sa vieille main (p. 47).

82 [ . . . ] c 'est un reve, c 'est peut-etre un reve, c;a m 'etonnerait, je vais me reveiller,

dans Ie silence, neplus m 'endormir, ce sera moi, ou rever encore, rever un silence, un
silence de reve [ . . . ] (p. 2 1 2).

7 1 Travail, famille, troisieme patrie, histoires de fesses, finances, art et nature, for
interieur, sante, logement, Dieu et les hommes, autant de desastres (Fragment de
thM.tre II, in Pas, p. 39).

83 Moije ne pense, si c 'est la cet affolement vertigineux comme d 'un guepier qu 'on
enfume, que depasse un certain degre de terreur (p. 1 06).

72 soit en clairje cite ou bien je suis seul et plus de probleme ou bien nous sommes
en nombre infini 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 c;a puis ne cede plusje nefuis pasje
m 'exile (p. 60)

74 [See notes 2 and 3.]

75 Endroit clos. Tout ce qu 'ilfaut savoirpour dire est su (Pourfinir encore et autres '
fOirades, p. 57)[See note 8 on the title of this text].

78 Ce qui frappe d 'abord dans cette penombre est la sensation de jaune qu 'elle
donne pour ne pas dire de soufre a cause des associations (p. 32).

1 46

84 [ . . . ] un quiparle en disant, tout en parlant, Quiparle, 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 unjoti trio, et dire que tout c;a nefait
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 ofL 'etre et
I 'evenement.]

,
,

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 fin (p. 70).
77 [It is far easier to identify 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 further
discussion of the concept of place in light of Badiou's recent theory of appearance.]

,,

86 [ . . ] ilfaut continuer, je ne peux pas continuer, je vais continuer (p. 2 1 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 lafin, sous tous les rapports essentiels [ . ] (pp. 135- 1 36).
.

88 [ . . . ] brillants de clarteformelle et au contenu impenetrable (p. 75).

,
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89 [ . . . ] la signification attribuee a cet ordre d 'incidents par Watt, dans ses relations,
etait tant6t la signification originaleperdue etpuis recouvree, et tant6t une signification
tout autre que la signification originale, et tant6t une signification degagee, dans un
delai plus ou moins long, et avec plus ou moins de mal, de l 'originale absence de
signification (p. 80).

i i ,

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147

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99 [ . . . ] dans Ie cyfindre Ie pe
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90 Quelque chose suit son cours (p. 49).

9 1 Signifier? Nous, signifier? Ah elle est bonne! (p. 49).

aire (p.
ntr
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193)

92 [Badiou fonnulates the distinction between presentation and representation in

L 'etre et [ 'evenement, see especially Meditations 1 , 8 and 9.]

que peut Ie
ce
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tou
sse
pa
de
la
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ten
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science
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it
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qu
e
eU
qu
s,
rp
co
Ie
it
sa
e
qu
ce
t
tou
et
il,
sentiment, si puissant soit(p. 1 59).
.

93 Pendant [ 'inspection soudain un bruit. Faisant sans que celle-fa 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 'evenementpalit. 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 affaiblipar I 'inusuel languide.
Un croulement languide. Deux. Loin de I 'ceil tout a sa torture toujours une lueur
d 'espoir. Par la grace de ces modestes debuts (p. 70).

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).

94 Nous nous refugiions dans l 'arithmetique. Que de calculs mentaux effectues de

concert plies en deux! (p. 38)

104 [Le dur desir de durer is the title ofa collection ofpoetry by Paul Eluard, published
in 1 946.]

95 [ . . . ] de marivaudages, defrayeurs et defarouches attouchements, dont if importe

seulement de retenir ceci, qu 'ils firent entrevoir a Macmann ce que signifiait
l 'expression etre deux (p. 144).

1 06 [See note 50]

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' of the 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): 'After all, you can't play fast and loose withpi. ]

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).

'

97 Sejour ou des corps vont cherchant chacun son depeupleur (p. 7).
98 Vus sous un certain angle ces corps sont de quatre sortes. Premierement ceux qui
circulent sans arret. Deuxiemement ceux qui s 'arretent quelquefois, Troisiemement
ceux qui a moins d 'en etre chasses ne quittentjamais la place qu 'its ont conquise et
chasses se jettent sur la premiere de fibre pour s y immobiliser de nouveau. [ . . ]
Quatriemement ceux qui ne cherchent pas ou non-chercheurs assis pour la plupart
contre Ie mur [ . . . ] (pp. 12-13).

,' :, i
"

148

1 05 Pourpouvoir de temps a autrejouir du ciel if se servait d 'unepetite glace ronde.

L 'ayant voilee de son soujJle 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 (p. 42).

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 a la derive. Elle etait couchee sur les planches dufond, les mains
sous la tete et les yeux fermes. Solei! flamboyant, 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 'etailfaite, En cueillant des groseilles a maquereau, m 'a t
elle repondu. J'ai dit encore que 9a me semblait sans espoir etpas 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 'a fail, mais les yeux comme des

149

--- ----

--

- ----- - ------------

--- - - ---

Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett r-------'-

Alai n Bad i o u On Beckett

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 roseaux et la barque
s 'est coincee. Comme ils sepliaient, 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).

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, Willie, 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 1 1 Viens d 'ecouter ce pauvre petit cretin pour qui je me prenais il y a trente ans,
dijJicile de croire quej 'aiejamais be con a ce point lao 9a au moins c 'estjini, Dieu
merci (p. 27).

1 2 1 Pense, pore! (p. 55)

1 12 Krapp demeure immobile, regardant dans Ie vide devant lui. La bande continue
a se derouler en silence (p. 33).

122 [ . . . J la barbe lesflammes les pleurs les pierres si bleues si calmes helas la tete la
tete la tiile la tete en Normandie malgre Ie tennis les labeurs abandonnes inacheves
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-

1 1 3 cette vie qu 'il aurait eue inventee rememoree un peu de chaque comment savoir
cette chose la-haut il me la donnaitje 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)

58)

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 LAHA UT un temps long la-haut DANS LA dans la L UMIERE un temps lumiere sa vie lahaut dans la lumiere octosyllabe presque a toutprendre un hasard (p. 1 1 3 )
,

1 1 6 Une voix parvient a quelqu 'un dans Ie noir (p. 7).

,,
" j,

'I

est
msense.
'
C
?
s.
temp
e
d
ires
histo
vos
avec
oner
oiss
'emp
123 Vous n 'avezpasjini de m
Quand! Quand! Un jour, c;a ne vous suffit pas, un jour pareil aux autres it est devenu
muet, un jourje suis devenu aveugle, un jour nous deviendrons sourds, un jour nous
sommes nes, un jour nous mourrons, Ie meme jour, Ie meme instant, c;a ne vous suffit
pas? Elles accouchent a cheval sur une tombe, Iejour brille un instant, puis c 'est la

nuit a nouveau (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)

1 1 7 Tu vis Iejour dans la chambre ou vraisemblablement tu fus conc;u (p. 1 5).

125 [ . . . J a nouveau seuls, au milieu des solitudes (p. 1 05).
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 mourantjusqu 'a l 'aube et ne mourait
jamais. Tu es debout Ie dos a la mer. Seul bruit Ie sien. Toujours plusfaible a mesure
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 derniers
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

1 26 H. Elle 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 c;a. Je la pris done dans mes
bras et luijurai queje nepourrais vivre sans elle. Je Iepensais du reste. Oui,j 'en suis
persuade. Elle ne me repoussa pas. / F1. Juges done de mon efJarement 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).

150

151

-------

--

Al a i n Badiou

On Beckett

r---_._------'

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).

Al a i n B a d i o u

On Beckett

1 37 [Molloy was in part translated in collaboration 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 Fournier.]

i',

1 28 Ce n 'estpas tous lesjours qu 'on a besoin de nous. Non pas a vrai dire qu 'on ait
pYlkisement besoin de nous. D 'autresferaient aussi bien I 'affaire, sinon mieux. 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 c;a nous plaise ou non
(p. 1 03).

1 3 8 [It ahnost goes without saying that by inverting the direction of Badiou's operation
our own translation has had to confront 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. Hopefully, the singular distance provided by passing
through Fournier's translation will prove illuminating even when the discussion of
the text is restored to the English language and the principal quotations are from
Beckett's original.]

129 Nous sommes des hommes (p. 1 07).

130 Les yeux uses d 'offenses s 'attardent vils sur tout ce qu 'ils ont si longuement
prie, dans la derniere, la vraie priere enfin, celle qui ne sollicite rien. Et c 'est alors
qu 'un petit air d'exaucement ranime les VIEUX morts et qu 'un murmure nait dans
l 'univers muet, vous reprochant affectueusement de vous etre desespere trop tard(p.
1 72).

1 39 Encore. Dire encore. Soit dit encore. Tant mal que pis encore (p. 7).
1 40 Soit dit plus meche encore (p. 62).

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 auraitfait la victime qu 'on aurait eue puis perdue les
images Ie sac les petites histo ires de la-haut petites scenes un peu de bleu infernaux
homes (p. 1 99) [In Badiou's quotation the sentence reads infernaux hommes, 'men
infernal' - however, it seems that Beckett has here, rather enigmatically, left the English
'homes' in the French text, which Badiou has in turn read as an erratum.]

142 Rien qui prouve que celui d 'unefemme et pourtant d 'unefemme (p. 45).
i

1 3 3 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 (p. 62).
134 [ . . . ] considere comme une sorte d'agglutinant mortel [ . . . ] (p. 148).

:'i,f

136 [Originally published as 'Etre, existence, pensee: prose et concept', inPetit 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.]

152

.
I.

,
I
.

1 3 5 C 'hait seulement en Ie deplac;ant dans cette atmosphere, comment dire, definalite

sans fin, pourquoi pas, quej 'osais considerer Ie travail a executer (p. 1 72).

141 Disparition du vide ne sepeut. Saufdisparition de lapenombre. Alors disparition

de tout (p. 22).

1 43 Ont suinte de la substance molle qui s 'ammolit les mots d'unefemme (p. 45).
144 Desormais unpour I 'agenouille. Comme desormais deuxpour lapaire. Lapaire
comme un seul s 'en allant tant mal que mal. Comme desormais trois pour la tete (p.
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 (p. 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).]

153

Ala i n B a d i o u On Beckett

Al a i n B a d i o u On Beckett

r------

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 estjeune helas etprendre courage. Ou mieuxplus mal dire une nuit veille encore
helas a venir. Un reste de derniere veille a venir. Et prendre courage (pp. 25-26).

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 'a etre degoute pour de bon. Vomir
pour de bon. Partirpour de bon. La au ni I 'un ni I 'autre pour de bon. Une bonnefois
pour toutes pour de bon (p. 8).
1 49 Retour dedire mieuxplus malpluspas concevable. Siplus obscur mains lumineux
alors mieux plus mal plus obscur. Dedit done mieux plus mal plus pas concevable.
Pas mains que moins mieuxplus malpeut etre plus. Mieuxplus mal quai? Le dire? Le
dit? Meme chose. Meme rien. Meme peu s 'en faut rien (p. 49).

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).

150 Pire moindre. Plus pas concevable. Pire a defaut d 'un meilleur moindre. Le
meilleur moindre. Non. Neant Ie meilleur. Le meilleurpire. Non. Pas Ie meilleurpire.
Neant pas Ie meilleur pire. Mains meilleur pire. Non. Le mains. Le mains meilleur
pire. Le moindre jamais 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. 4 1 ).
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 soit 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 'a soit courbe plus
bas. Au plus bas. Tete chapeautee disparue. Longpardessus 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. Mieuxplus mal ainsi. En
attendant pis encore (pp. 26-27).

1 57 Le vide. Comment essayer dire? Comment essayer rater? Nul essai rien de rate.
Dire seulement- (p. 20)

1 5 8 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 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 etjamais 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 etpupille. Blanc obscur. Blanc? Non. Tout
pupille. Trous nair obscur. Beance qui ne vacille. Soient ainsi dUs. Avec les mots qui
empirent. Desormais ainsi. Mieux que rien a ce point ameliores au pire (pp. 34-35).

1 54

1 5 5 Quels motspour quai alors? Comme as presque sonnent encore. Tandis que tant
mal que pis hors de quelque substance moUe de I 'esprit as suintent. Hors c;:a en c;:a
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 finir par
de-proferer Ie moindrissime tout (p. 43).

ii ,

1 5 9 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 lorsquepresque. Aupire lorsquepresque. Moindre alors? Toutes ombres
tout comme disparues. Si donepas tellementplus que c;:a tellement mains alors? Mains
pire alors ? Assez. Peste soil du vide. Inaugmentable imminimisable inempirable
sempiternel presque vide (p. 56). [The US edition has 'then' instead of 'than' in the
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. Saufdisparition de la penombre. Alors disparition de tout (p. 22).
1 6 1 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

155

II

II

Al a i n Ba d i o u

On

Beckett r----

tout. Disparais penombre! Disparais pour de bon. Tout po

ur de bon. Une bonnefois
pour toutes pour de bon (p. 26).
1 62 Tant mal que mal s 'en vont etjamais ne s 'eloignent (p. 1 5).
163 Nul fieu que I 'unique (p. 1 3).
1 64 Main dans la main its vont tant mal que mal d 'un pas egal. Dans les mains fibres
- non. Vides 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 lapaire. 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. Chaquefois tant mal que pis changes
(p. 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 a etre vu. Les yeux ecarquilles. Obscurement vus. Par les
yeux ecarquilles (p. 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. Aforce de long vouloir tout vouloir envole. Long
vouloir en vain. Et voudrait encore. Vaguement voudrait encore. Vaguement 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 of longing'.]

156

A l a i n Ba d i o u

On

Becke tt

1 68 Il 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.
Pourpovoir dire douleur. Nul esprit et douleur? Dire oui pour que les os puissent tant
lui douloir que plus qu 'd se mettre debout. Tant mal que pis se mettre et tenir debout.
Ou mieux plus mal des restes. Dire des restes d 'esprit OU nul auxjins de la douleur.
Douleur des os telle queplus qu 'a se mettre debout. Tant mal que pis s 'y mettre. Tant
mal que pis y tenir. Restes d 'esprit ou nul auxjins de la douleur. Iei des os. D 'autres
exemples au besoin. De douleur. De comment soulagee. De comment variee (pp. 91 0).
1 69 Restes d 'esprit done encore. Assez encore. Tant mal a qui tant mal ou tant mal
quepis assez encore. Pas d'esprit et des mots? Meme de tels mots. Done assez encore.
Juste assezpour se rejouir. Rejouir! Juste assez encore pour se rejouir que seulement
eux. Seulement! (pp. 37-38)

1 70 Hiatuspour lorsque les mots disparus. Lorsqueplus 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 (p. 53).
1 7 1 [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 from 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).]

,
ii
,

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 'envie d'etre neant. Neantjamais ne se peut etre (p. 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 'oupasplus loin. Mieuxplus
malpas plus loin. Plus meche moins. Plus mechepire. Plus meche neant. Plus meche
encore. / Soit dit plus meche encore (p. 62).
1 74 [ . . . ] d I 'altitude peut-etre aussi loin qu 'un endroitfusionne avec au-dela [ . . . ]

157

, ,

A l a i n B a d i o u On

Beckett

A l a i n B a d i o u On
r-----

).
7
7
.
(p
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ug
bo
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on
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fi
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sa
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ai
souvenir. Loint

une constellation [A Throw of the Dice/Un coup de des, in Stephane Mallarme,

Collected Poems, translated and with a commentary by Henry Weinfield (Berkeley:
University of Califomia Press, 1 994), p. 144].
,

ne douceur
'u
d
t
ai
h
il
e
vi
a
m
e
d
s
p
m
te
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d
faU. Mais
'il
u
q
s
p
m
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s
lu
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is
sa
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J
1 85
. 44).
(p
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a
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m
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t
ai
hernelle. Comme si la terre s ' h

175 Rien et pourtant une femme. Vieille et pourtant vieille. Sur genoux invisibles.
Inclinee comme de vieillespierres tombales tendre memoire s 'inclinent. Dans ce vieux
cimetiere. Noms effaces et de quand a quand. Inclinees muettes sur les tombes de nuls
etres (pp. 60-6 1).

ils
e
m
m
co
ns
bo
,
is
ad
ar
p
u
a
re
s doivent et
'il
qu
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d
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.
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et
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p
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1 86 A h mo
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d
m
S
I
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nu
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la
et
e,
d
:
eje deman
qu
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'e
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1 76 [On the unnameable as a concept defining the ethic of truths, see 'La verite:
fon,:age et innomable' in Conditions (pp. 1 96-2 1 2) and Ethics (pp. 80-87). It is worth
noting that lately Badiou has abandoned this doctrine, thinking it too compromised
with a diffuse culpabilisation ofphilosophy, and also much reconfigured his theory of
naming. See his forthcoming interview with Bruno Bosteels and Peter Hallward in
Angelaki, 'Beyond Formalisation' .]

Beckett

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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.]

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1 78 [Originally published as ' Ce qui arrive', 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 trau d 'epingle. Dans I 'obscurissime penombre. A
des vastitudes de distance. Aux limites du vide illimite (p. 62).

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1 80 Du coup Ie nom commun peu commun de craulement. Renforce peu apres sinon
affaibli par I 'inusuel languide. Un croulement languide (p. 70).

1 8 1 [ . . . ] d 'espoir. Par la grace de ces modestes debuts (p. 70).

"I

1 82 Dire ce meilleurpire. Avec des mots qui rMuisent dire Ie moindre meilleurpire.
A defaut du bien pis que pire. L 'imminimisable moindre meilleur pire (p. 41).
1 83 Commepaifois ilspresque sonnentpresque vrai! Comme I 'ineptie leurfait defaut!
Dire la nuit estjeune helas et prendre courage (p. 25).
1 84 Terre del confondus infini sans reliefpetit corps seul debout. Encore un pas un
seul tout seul dans les sables sans prise il lefera. Gris cendre petit corps seul debout
cceur battantface aux lointains. Lumiere refuge blancheur rasefaces sans trace aucun
,

1 58

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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
affirmation xii, xv, xix, xxix, 4 1 , 90,
9 1 , 93, 1 26
All, the 7, 1 0, 1 8, 77, 1 00, 1 0 1 , 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; 4 1 , 42, 44, 46,
66, 67, 7 1 , 73, 75, 76, 77, 1 14,

1 1 5, 1 1 7, En50, En76, En 1 4 5 ,
En 1 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 2 1
Blanchot, M. xi, xii, xiv, 1 1
categories xiii, xiv, xv, xxv, 8, 1 5 , 16,
23, 6 1 , 88, 90, 1 0 1
chance xvi, xxiv, 1 7, 20, 2 1 , 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
cogito xiv-xxxii, 9- 1 5 , 19, 28, 33, 5 1 ,
53, 54, 55, 6 1 , 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, 4 1 ,
77, 96, 97, 98, 1 14, 1 1 5
Dante xiv, 23, 6 1 , 1 23
dark, the xvi, xxxi, 7, 25-29, 3 1 , 32,
35, 47, 5 1 , 63, 65, 70, 7 1 , 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, 6 1 , 62, 66, 67, 74, 75, 77, 98,
1 00, 1 1 7, 1 24, 1 32, 1 3 3
despair 4, 1 5, 38, 76, 1 20, 1 2 1
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,
En 1 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
eternity 6 1 , 66, 67, 77
event passim intro, 5, 1 8, 20, 2 1 , 22,
28, 3 1 , 32, 33, 50, 55-59, 62, 64,
72, 76, 1 08-1 12, 1 14, 1 1 5, 1261 30, 132- 1 35, En50, En 1 70

exhaustion 1 1 , 1 3 , 128
existence xvi, xvii, xxiii, xxv, 4, 5, 8,
9, 20, 26, 38, 40, 4 1 , 47, 50, 54,
60, 64, 68, 70, 76, 77, 85, 89-9 1 ,
1 09, 1 1 1 , 1 12, 1 26, 1 27, 1 32, 1 3 5
existentialism xiv, xxi, 39, 40
failure xvii, 1 0, 1 7, 25, 62, 90-95,
1 14, 1 1 5
figures xv, xvi, xx, xxii, xxiii, xxiv,
xxx, 49, 60, 62-65, 74, 75, 88, 90
finitude xiv, 40
flux 1 , 2, 45, 48, 1 07, 1 32
freedom 1 8, 22, 39, 55, 56, 62, 127
functions xiii, xx, xxi, xxii, 3, 1 9,
3 1 , 32, 44-47, 52, 60, 66, 123,
1 26, 1 3 5
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 2 1 ,
135
Heraclitus 1, 48
hope xii, xv, xvi, xxx, xxxii 2, 1 1 , 2 1 ,
22, 40, 4 1 , 48, 50, 52, 58, 59, 69,
1 30, 1 34
9 1 , 1 14, 1 1 7,
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, 3 1 -34, 45, 47, 50, 54, 65, 66,
1 03
impasse, in Beckett's work xiv, xvi,
xviii, xxiv, xxx, xxxii, 12, 14, 39,
4 1 , 54, 55, 56, 128, 129, 133

162

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incidents 19, 20, 2 1 , 3 1 , 56, 57

infinity xvi, xvii, 1 7, 27, 28, 30, 32,
33, 67, 8 8
jokes xix, 43
journey 6, 7, 26, 3 1 , 40, 45, 76
justice 26, 64
Kafka, F. 16, 39
Kant, I. xviii, xxii, 2, 4 1 , 77
knowledge 6, 1 9, 30, 50, 54, 56, 57,
66, 67, 1 23- 1 26, 1 29, 1 3 1 , 133
Lacan, J. 1 8, 25, 121, 124, 1 32,En29,
En30, En40
language passim intro., 3, 5, 7, 8, 1 8,
2 1 , 22, 34, passim ch.2, 79-8 1 ,
9 1 - 1 00, 1 09, 1 12, 1 14, 1 1 5, 1 1 7,
1 22, 1 2 3 , 1 27, 1 2 9- 1 3 1 , 1 3 6,
En 1 3 7
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,
5 1 , 77, 93, 95, 1 09-1 1 2, 1 25, 1 26,
1 32, 1 33, En5 1 , En 1 73, En 1 76
mathematics xxiii, xxxi, 30, 60
meaning 8, 9, 1 5 , 19, 20, 2 1 , 22, 28,
3 1 , 32, 4 1 , 55, 57-60, 72, 76, 1 20,
1 22, 1 23, 128, 1 30, 1 3 1 , 135
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,
5 8, 61 , 63, 85, 1 0 1 - 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,
3 0, 3 1 , 1 1 5

Ba d i o u On

Beckett

music 4 1 , 1 06, 1 07
naming xxiii, xxxii, 1 1 , 1 3 , 1 8, 2 1 ,
22, 3 1 , 5 1 , 58, 82, 93, 1 07, 1 1 2,
1 1 4, 1 1 5, 1 29, 1 30, 1 3 5, En 1 75
nihilism xii, xxx, 1 5 , 39
non-being 2, 7, 9, 1 0, 48, 5 1
nostalgia 38, 64, 67-7 1 , 73
open, the xxiii, 6, 1 7, 3 0, 3 1 , 49, 5 1 ,
96
optimism 24, 62
oscillation xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xxx, 2,
8, 9, 1 7, 40, 4 1 , 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 0 1 - 1 03,
108, 1 26, 1 3 1 , 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, 2 1 , 22, 23,
passim 45-77, 86, 97, 1 03, 1 091 1 1, 1 1 7, 1 26, 1 34, En36, En76
Plato xxii, xxvii, 4, 23, 47, 88, 1 0 1 ,
123
plays, radio 74
poem xxvi, 4, 16, 1 7, 29, 30, 3 1 , 33,
40, 4 1 , 48, 5 1 , 60, 7 1 , 77, 80, 95,
97, 1 1 1 , 126, 132, En2, En 1 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 2 1 , 1 27, 128
Rimbaud, A. xix, xx, xxi, 37, 91, 1 1 3,
1 26
Sartre, J-P. xiv, xxiv, 38, 39, 1 2 1 , 1 23,

163

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A l a i n Ba d i o u On Beckett

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136
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 3 5 , 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
signification 55, 57, 58, 80, 1 20, 1 25,
130
silence xi, xiii, xvi, xvii, xix, 1 1 - 1 4,
23, 38, 39, 45, 52-55, 69, 75, 9 1 ,
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 0 1 , 1 2 1
subject, the passim intro., 2, 3, 4, 1 01 8, 22-26, 3 1 , 33, 44, 47, 5 1 -55,
59, 60, 64, 65, 68, 9 1 , 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, 123-125,
1 29, 1 30, 1 3 3 - 1 3 5
supplement, ofbeing xxiii, xxiv, xxv,
xxix, 4, 1 6, 1 8 , 1 9, 20, 2 1 , 22,
5 1 , 56, 86, 96, 1 28-1 30, 1 32, 1 3 5
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,

XXVi, XXVll, XXiX, XXXi, XXXll,

xxxiii, 3, 4, 6, 1 2, 1 5, 1 6, 1 8,
1 9, 20, 27, 38, 40, 4 1 , 46, 48, 5257, 59, 66, 75, passim 80-90, 93,
98, 1 0 1 , 1 02,
1 09, 1 1 0, 1 1 51 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, 2 1 , 29, 32,
49, 5 1 , 52, 54-56, 59, 72, 1 26, 128
trajectory 2, 4, 1 6, 1 7, 55, 57, 1 28,
135
truth xi, xx, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxxi,
4, 5, 7, 1 0, 1 6, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28,
33, 5 1 , 59, 60, 67, 77, 96, 1 20,
1 23, 1 24, 1 28, 1 29, 1 32, 1 34, 1 35,
En 1 75
Two, the xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, xxiv,
xxxii, 5, 13, 1 7, 2 1 , 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, 2 1 , 22,
33, 34, 35, 40, 50, 66, 77, passim
ch.3, 1 14- 1 1 6, 1 24, En 1 70
Wittgenstein, L. 9 1 , 93
youth 37-40, 68

1 64