A Taste for the Negative: Beckett and Nihilism

Since the mid-1950s, when the works of Samuel Beckett began to attract sustained critical attention, commentators have tended either to dismiss his oeuvre as nihilist or to defend it as anti-nihilist. On the one side are figures such as Georg Lukács; on the other some of the most influential philosophers and literary theorists of the post-war era, from Theodor Adorno to Alain Badiou. Taking as my point of departure Nietzsche’s description of nihilism as the ‘uncanniest of all guests’ (unheimlichste aller Gäste), in A Taste for the Negative I call this entire critical tradition into question, arguing that the complex relationship between Beckett’s texts and nihilism will always be missed by those who are simply for or against Beckett.