Literary Silence In Beckett’s Trilogy

Abstract The above comment is from an interview in which Derrida explains why he will not engage with Beckett’s text in a critical way. Of course, this refusal indicates an insight into Beckett’s work that is sharper, perhaps, than that of many lengthy analyses. Derrida’s implied suggestion is that any critical discourse on Beckett would inevitably ‘miss’ the text. Commentaries on the trilogy leave a certain sense of surplus. Left is that which slips away from any philosophical or analytical meta-discourse, that which Derrida calls the ‘signature’: ‘this remainder which remains when the thematics is exhausted’ (Derrida 1992: 61). The indication is that Beckett’s texts resist a critical response—that they are incongruous with critical discourse. This is the fundamental difficulty of any critical reading of the trilogy, namely to develop a critical framework that does not neutralize or ‘dull’ the actual effects of Beckett’s text by naming them.