Deleuze’s Monstrous Beckett: Movement and Paralysis

This article takes its title from a 1973 letter in which Gilles Deleuze describes “the history of philosophy as a kind of buggery” that involves “getting onto the back of an author, and giving him a child, which would be his and which would at the same time be a monster.” My suggestion is that we keep this in mind when considering Deleuze’s engagement with Beckett, particularly as Deleuze becomes increasingly important in Beckett territory. Deleuze’s readings of Beckett neglect Beckett’s early work—work that demonstrates a parodic engagement with the very idea of Deleuze-esque philosophies of movement and freedom. What Deleuze celebrates as the rhizomatic place where things pick up speed, Beckett describes as “an unsurveyed marsh of sloth.” I return to Beckett’s More Pricks Than Kicks and Dream of Fair to Middling Women to sketch a line between thinking philosophically and the concretion of ideas and method into a philosophy.