In recent criticism, Samuel Beckett's prose has been increasingly described as a labour of refusal - most notably seen by its literal disavowal of consciousness and expression as conventions in the narrative and the novel. Beginning from the premise that Beckett never betrays his belief in ""the impossibility to express"" and that the conventional romantic and metaphysical notions of ""expression"" are resolutely rejected in Beckett's post-war prose, this book argues that the expression of voicelessness in Beckett is not silence. Rather, the negativity and negation so evident in his work are not simply affirmed, but the valourization of emptiness, impotence or the ""no"" can all too easily itself become an affirmation of power.