Introduction

Abstract

Although Samuel Beckett and Gilles Deleuze shared the same publisher (Jérôme Lindon at Les Éditions de Minuit), they evidently never met each other. Beckett apparently never read Deleuze. But the work of Deleuze and Beckett overlap in surprising ways. Beckett and Deleuze were both influenced by a philosophical tradition, running from Spinoza to Bergson. They both explored the idea of fluid subjectivity, with Beckett creating fragmented and vanishing characters and Deleuze expressing the concept of becoming: becoming-animal, becoming-woman, becoming-imperceptible, and so on. They both expressed resistance to narrative, language, representation, hierarchy, teleology and closure. Likewise, they both distrusted structures of signification and preferred experimentation to clarity of meaning.