Gazing still. Beckett's static bodies on stage

This article examines the function of the static body, both with and without speech, in the plays of Samuel Beckett. Zooming in on bodily stasis in Beckett allows us to see how he develops a corporeal discourse of inertness that goes beyond words to establish and formalize what words cannot say. The article probes into the complications of defining life in a static silent body. Gaze and affect work in a politically charged network to create resistant traces of life in inert bodies in Catastrophe and Rough for Theatre II while speech in all its kinetic prowess fails to animate them in Happy Days and Play.