The Afterlife of Empire in Beckett’s How It Is

Abstract

Relationships of political domination in Beckett’s Comment c’ est (1961)/How It Is (1964) are typically read through a specific historical moment (the Holocaust, the Algerian War) or literary representation (Dante, Sade). This article reveals spectres in the text from the long history of the colonisation of Ireland to the legacy of Renaissance and Enlightenment humanism; it explores Beckett’s sense of complicity in the Anglo-Irish Ascendency.