Beckett and disability biopolitics: The case of cuchulain

Abstract

In his depiction of the hero Cuchulain, Samuel Beckett interrogates how disability and compulsory able-bodiedness are foundational myths for the Irish Free State. Taking the interpolation of disability in biopolitics, this essay examines the normalising impulses in revivalist literature and criticism, exemplified by Lady Gregory, Standish O’Grady, WB Yeats and Daniel Corkery. Against this normalising, nationalising literature, I situate Beckett’s satirical renderings of Cuchulain in “Censorship and the Saorstat” and Murphy, as evidence of a profound discomfort and frustration with the biopolitical mechanisms of governance in the newly-founded Irish State.