Beckett, Contradiction and a Textual Politics of Change

Approaching the political ramifications of ‘contradiction’ as a trope in Beckett’s textual logic, this chapter argues that this narratological device has an important homology with the radical political process of democratic change. An excursus through Mao Ze Dong’s “On Contradiction” and its contemporary re-inauguration in the form of an antinomic logic of the political event in Alain Badiou testifies to this. Considering contradiction as a Maoist tool for radical political change in which the famous Marxist dialectic is subjected to endless antithesis without synthesis, this chapter demonstrates how Beckett’s texts contemplate a politics of change by deploying contradiction as a logical modality of textual operation.