Creative Involution: Bergson, Beckett, Deleuze

An original philosophical approach to one of the 20th century’s most important literary figures

Creative Involution: Bergson, Beckett Deleuze focuses on a force, on a philosophical trajectory that not only had a profound impact on critical thought of the 20th and now 21st centuries, but on cosmopolitan, contemporary culture more broadly and on artistic experiment and expression in particular. It explores how the work of Samuel Beckett intersects with such preoccupations of time as a double headed monster, of memory and multiplicity, of being and becoming that continue in an involutionary turn through the work of Gilles Deleuze.

Key Features:

Deploys new critical approaches (e.g., a return to Bergson and Bergsonism)

Addresses underexplored works in the Beckett canon

Presents new critiques of representation and Beckett’s relationship to philosophy

Attentive to critical thinking around affect theory and/in literature.

S. E. Gontarski is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University where he edited the Journal of Beckett Studies from 1992-2008. He currently serves as Co-Editor for the Journal. Among his recent books are: The Beckett Critical Reader: Archives, Theories, and Translations (2012) and The Edinburgh Companion to Samuel Beckett and the Arts (2014), both from Edinburgh University Press, and a second edition of On Beckett: Essays and Criticism from Anthem Press (2012).