Impotence and Making in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy – Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable – and How It Is

Book excerpt: Impotence and Making in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy is situated at the intersection of the aesthetic, socio-political and theoretical construction of being and not-being; it is about making the self, making others, and making words, set against being unable to make the self, others and words. Concentrating on Samuel Beckett’s prose works, though also focusing on some of his dramatic works, the book aims to problematize the categories of ‘impotence’ and ‘making’ by showing Beckett’s quasi-deconstructive treatment of them as seen through his narrators’ images of being unable to make self, other creatures and words (impotence), along with his narrators’ images of making self, other creatures and words (making). By demonstrating that his narrators, while being impotent, nevertheless gestate and produce new entities from their bodies in the same way as a mother does a child, the book aims to reveal how, for Beckett’s narrators, creativity in its widest sense is envisaged.