Beckett Beyond the Normal
1st Edition
Published on 18. August 2020
168 pages
978-1-4744-6048-4 (ISBN)
Description
Explores Beckett's artistic vision at the intersection of queer, disability and posthumanist studies
- The first volume to address norms and normalcy as an enduring target of Beckettian skepticism
- Shifts the emphasis from generic talk of 'Other Becketts' to specific accounts of the queer, the disabling, the abnormalising aspects of the mature works
- Absorbs and transcends the philosophy/history binary that has shaped the last twenty years
- Brings Beckett Studies into the twenty-first century as the first intersectional volume to address queerness, disability and biopolitics together
This book examines why Beckett's writing is so queer, so disabled and disabling. Why did Beckett write so often about mental illness, disability, perversion? Why did he take such an interest in 'abnormals' and 'degenerates'? How did he reconceive 'the human' in the wake of Hitler and Stalin? Drawing on Beckett's voluminous archive, as well as his primary texts, the authors use psychoanalysis, queer theory, disability theory and biopolitics to push Beckett studies beyond the normal.
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Sean Kennedy
Beckett Beyond the Normal
Book
10/2020
Edinburgh University Press
€131.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Content
- Intro
- Title page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Introduction - Beckett beyond the Normal
- Chapter 1 Murphy and the Tao of Autism
- Chapter 2 Narrating Disruption: Realist Fiction and The Politics of Form in Watt
- Chapter 3 'no human shape': Unformed Life in The Unnamable
- Chapter 4 Beckett, Evangelicalism and the Biopolitics of Famine
- Chapter 5 'He wants to know if it hurts!': Suffering beyond Redemption in Waiting for Godot
- Chapter 6 'As if the sex matters': Beckett, Barthes and Endgame in Love
- Chapter 7 Beckett's Queer Time of Défaillance: Ritual and Resistance in Happy Days
- Chapter 8 Beckett's Safe Words: Normalising Torture in How It Is
- Bibliography
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
