Beckett, Painting and the Question of “the human”

This article contextualizes Samuel Beckett’s art criticism within post-war French critical debate about what constitutes “the human.” Beckett announces the question as central to the period. The post-war debate traversed the spheres of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy, and Beckett’s criticism is here brought into contact with that of his contemporaries: Jean-Paul Sartre, Francis Ponge, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Martin Heidegger. Consequently, a more historicized reading of Beckett’s art criticism and of the political stakes of his work comes into focus, especially in regard to“The End,” Eleutheria, and Molloy. This article proposes that Beckett’s art criticism as well as his fiction be understood as part of the history of critical theory.