Saying I No More: Subjectivity and Consciousness in the Prose of Samuel Beckett

In recent criticism, Samuel Beckett’s prose has been increasingly described as a labour of refusal - most notably seen by its literal disavowal of consciousness and expression as conventions in the narrative and the novel. Beginning from the premise that Beckett never betrays his belief in
the impossibility to express
and that the conventional romantic and metaphysical notions of
expression
are resolutely rejected in Beckett’s post-war prose, this book argues that the expression of voicelessness in Beckett is not silence. Rather, the negativity and negation so evident in his work are not simply affirmed, but the valourization of emptiness, impotence or the
no
can all too easily itself become an affirmation of power.