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.