This book examines the role of Samuel Beckett in contemporary philosophical aesthetics
primarily through analysis of both his own essays and the various interpretations that
philosophers (especially Adorno Blanchot Deleuze and Badiou) have given to his works. The
study centres around the fundamental question of the relationship between art and truth where
art as a negative truth comes to its complete exhaustion (as Deleuze terms it) by means of a
series of 'endgames' that progressively involve philosophy writing language and every
individual and minimal form of expression. The major thesis of the book is that at the heart
of Beckett's philosophical project this 'aesthetics of truth' turns out to be nothing other
than the real subject itself within a contradictory and tragic relationship that ties the Self
Voice to the Object Body. Yet a number of questions remain open. 'What' or 'who' lies behind
this process? What is left of the endgame of art and subjectivity? Finally what sustains and
renders possible Beckett's paradoxical axiom of the 'impossibility to express' alongside the
'obligation to express'? By means of a thorough overview of the most recent criticism of
Beckett this book will try to answer these questions.
