Posthuman Space in Samuel Beckett's Short Prose

Jonathan Boulter is Professor of English at Western University, London, Canada. His previous publications include Posthuman Space in Samuel Beckett’s Short Prose (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), Parables of the Posthuman: Digital Realities, Gaming, and the Player Experience (Wayne State UP, 2015), Melancholy and the Archive: Trauma, History and Memory in the Contemporary Novel (Continuum, 2011), Samuel Beckett: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2008), and Interpreting Narrative in the Novels of Samuel Beckett (University Press of Florida, 2001).

• AcknowledgmentsSeries Editor’s PrefaceAbbreviationsIntroduction: Beckett, Heidegger, the WorldHomelessness: The Expelled, The Calmative, The EndThe Poverty of World: Texts for NothingSpaces of Ruin: All Strange Away, Imagination Dead Imagine, The Lost Ones, Ping, LessnessSpace and Trauma: FizzlesFables of Posthuman Space: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward HoConclusion: ‘neither’ReferencesIndex

Boulter’s compelling book shows that one needs Heidegger and Blanchot as well as Hayles and Haraway to make sense of the textual strategies deployed by Beckett when he creates a spectral subjectivity after the decomposition of the subject. Beckett’s shorter texts, powerfully and systematically read with Blanchot and Heidegger, usher in a post-humanism whose positive yield is a new ecology of space, a space without subjective positioning, a space carved out by relentless fables of destitution, homelessness and powerlessness, just to show what remains after one has lost the world.