Element contents
Series: Elements in Beckett Studies
Postcognitivist Beckett
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2020
Summary
The aim of this Element is to offer a reassessment of Beckett's alleged Cartesianism using the theoretical framework of extended cognition – a cluster of present-day philosophical theories that question the mind's brain-bound nature and see cognition primarily as a process of interaction between the human brain and the environment it operates in. The principal argument defended here is that, despite the Cartesian bias introduced by early Beckett scholarship, Beckett's fictional minds are not isolated 'skullscapes'. Instead, they are grounded in interaction with their fictional storyworlds, however impoverished those may have become in the later part of his writing career.
Information
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Series: Elements in Beckett StudiesOnline ISBN: 9781108771108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 04 June 2020
References
Abbott, H. Porter (1996), Beckett Writing Beckett: The Author in the Autograph, Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Abbott, H. Porter(2013), Real Mysteries: Narrative and the Unknowable, Columbus: The Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Admussen, Richard L. (1979), The Samuel Beckett Manuscripts: A Study, Boston: G. K. Hall.Google Scholar
Beckett, Samuel (1964), Play: A Play in One Act, in Play and Two Short Pieces for Radio. London: Faber and Faber, pp. 9–24.Google Scholar
Beckett, Samuel (1965), Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, London: John Calder.Google Scholar
Beckett, Samuel (2009a), Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho, Stirrings Still, ed. Hulle, Dirk Van, London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Beckett, Samuel (2010a), ‘Dante and the Lobster’, in More Pricks Than Kicks, ed. Nelson, Cassandra, London: Faber and Faber, pp. 3–14.Google Scholar
Beckett, Samuel (2010c), Texts for Nothing and Other Shorter Prose, 1950–1967, ed. Nixon, Mark, London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Beloborodova, Olga (2018), The ‘Inward Turn’ of Modernism in Samuel Beckett’s Work: A Postcognitivist Reassessment. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Antwerp.Google Scholar
Bernini, Marco (2014), ‘Gression, Regression and Beyond: A Cognitive Reading of The Unnamable’, Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui, 26, pp. 193–210.Google Scholar
Carruthers, Peter (1996), Language, Thought and Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Andy (1997), Being There. Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Andy and Chalmers, David [1998] (2010), ‘The Extended Mind’, in Menary, Richard (ed.), The Extended Mind, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 27–42.Google Scholar
Cohn, Ruby (1962), Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Cohn, Ruby (1965), ‘Philosophical Fragments in the Works of Samuel Beckett’, in Esslin, Martin (ed.), Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, pp. 169–177.Google Scholar
Cohn, Ruby, Van Duyn, Mona, Thurston, Jarvis, and Hartman, Carl (eds.) (1959), Perspective: A Quarterly of Literature and the Arts, 11:3.Google Scholar
Craig, George Dow Fehsenfeld, Martha, Gunn, Dan, and More Overbeck, Lois (2011), The Letters of Samuel Beckett, vol. II, 1941–1956, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Di Paolo, Ezequiel A., Rohde, Marieke, and De Jaegher, Hanne (2010), ‘Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play’, in Stewart, John, Gapenne, Olivier, and Di Paolo, Ezequiel A. (eds), Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 33–87.Google Scholar
Dow Fehsenfeld, Martha and More Overbeck, Lois (eds) (2009), The Letters of Samuel Beckett, vol. I, 1929–1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Esslin, Martin (ed.) (1965), Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Esslin, Martin (1986), ‘Samuel Beckett and the Art of Radio’, in Gontarski, S. E. (ed.), On Beckett: Essays and Criticism, New York: Grove Press, pp. 360–84.Google Scholar
Feldman, Matthew (2006), Beckett’s Books: A Cultural History of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Interwar’ Notes, New York/London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Feldman, Matthew, and Mamdani, Karim (eds.) (2015), Beckett / Philosophy, Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag.Google Scholar
Fifield, Peter (2015), ‘“Of being – and remaining”: Beckett’s Early Greek Philosophy’, in Feldman, Matthew and Mamdani, Karim (eds.), Beckett / Philosophy, Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, pp. 127–50.Google Scholar
Fletcher, John and Spurling, John (1972), Beckett. A Study of his Plays, London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Gauker, Christopher (1990), ‘How to learn a language like a chimpanzee’, Philosophical Psychology, 3:1, pp. 31–53.Google Scholar
Gontarski, S. E. (1985), The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Texts, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Alice, and Hamilton, Kenneth (1976), ‘The Guffaw of the Abderite: Samuel Beckett’s Use of Democritus’, Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 9:2, pp. 1–13.Google Scholar
Herman, David (2011), ‘Re-minding Modernism’, in Herman, David, (ed.), The Emergence of Mind. Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 243–72.Google Scholar
Hesla, David (1971), The Shape of Chaos: An Interpretation of the Art of Samuel Beckett, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hutto, Daniel D. and Myin, Erik (2013), Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic Minds without Content, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
James, William [1904] (1996), ‘Does “Consciousness” Exist?’, in Taylor, Eugene and Wozniak, Robert (eds.), Pure Experience. The Responses to William James, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, pp. 1–17.Google Scholar
Katz, Daniel (1999), ‘Saying I no more’: Subjectivity and Consciousness in the Prose of Samuel Beckett, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Kenner, Hugh (1961), Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Knowlson, James (1996), Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett, London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Kroll, Jeri (1977), ‘The Surd as Inadmissible Evidence: The Case of Attorney General v. Henry McCabe’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 2, pp. 47–58.Google Scholar
Maude, Ulrika (2009), Beckett, Technology and the Body, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice [1945] (1962), Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mintz, Samuel (1959), ‘Beckett’s Murphy: A Cartesian Novel’, Perspective: A Quarterly of Literature and the Arts, 11:3, pp. 156–65.Google Scholar
Mooney, Michael E. (1982), ‘Presocratic Scepticism: Samuel Beckett’s Murphy Reconsidered’, ELH [English Literary History], 49:1, pp. 214–34.Google Scholar
Moran, Dermot (2006), ‘Beckett and Philosophy’, in Murray, Christopher (ed.), Samuel Beckett: 100 Years: Centenary Essays, Dublin: New Island Publishers, pp. 93–109.Google Scholar
Morot-Sir, Edouard (1976), ‘Samuel Beckett and Cartesian Emblems’, in Morot-Sir, Edouard, Harper, Howard, and McMillan III, Dougald (eds.), Samuel Beckett and the Art of Rhetoric, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Department of Romance Languages, pp. 25–104.Google Scholar
Norman, Donald (1993), Things that Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine, Boston: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, Édouard Magessa, Dirk Van Hulle, and Pim Verhulst, (2017), The Making of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Molloy’, Brussels and London: University Press Antwerp and Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Pilling, John (1999), Beckett’s ‘Dream’ Notebook, Reading: Beckett International Foundation.Google Scholar
Pilling, John (2011), Samuel Beckett’s ‘More Pricks Than Kicks’: In A Strait Of Two Wills, London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Pothast, Ulrich (2008), The Metaphysical Vision: Arthur Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of Art and Life and Samuel Beckett’s Own Way to Make Use of It, New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Pountney, Rosemary (1988), Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956–1976, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.Google Scholar
Rodaway, Paul (1994), Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense, and Place, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rowlands, Mark (2015), ‘Consciousness Unbound’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 22:3–4, pp. 34–51.Google Scholar
Salisbury, Laura (2008), ‘“What Is the Word”: Beckett’s Aphasic Modernism’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 17: 1–2, pp. 78–126.Google Scholar
Scruton, Roger (1983), ‘Beckett and the Cartesian Soul’, in The Aesthetic Understanding: Essays in the Philosophy of Art and Culture, London/New York: Methuen, pp. 222–41.Google Scholar
Shainberg, Lawrence (1987), ‘Exorcising Beckett’, The Paris Review, 29:104, pp. 100–36.Google Scholar
Sheehan, Paul (2017), ‘Scenes of Writing: Beckett and the Technology of Inscription’, Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui, 29:1, pp. 138–49.Google Scholar
Stewart, John (2010), ‘Foundational Issues in Enaction as a Paradigm for Cognitive Science’, in Stewart, John, Gapenne, Olivier, and Di Paolo, Ezequiel A. (eds.), Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1–31.Google Scholar
Tajiri, Yoshiki (2007), Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body, London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Van Hulle, Dirk (2012), ‘The Extended Mind and Multiple Drafts: Beckett’s Models of the Mind and the Postcognitivist Paradigm’, Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui, 24:1, pp. 277–90.Google Scholar
Van Hulle, Dirk (2014a), Modern Manuscripts. The Extended Mind and Creative Undoing from Darwin to Beckett and Beyond, London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Van Hulle, Dirk (2014b), ‘The Obidil and the Man of Glass’, Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui, 26:1, pp. 25–39.Google Scholar
Van Hulle, Dirk (2018), ‘Authors’ Libraries and the Extended Mind: The Case of Joyce’s Books’, in Belluc, Sylvain and Benejam, Valerie (eds.), Cognitive Joyce, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 65–82.Google Scholar
Van Hulle, Dirk, and Nixon, Mark (2013), Samuel Beckett’s Library, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Van Hulle, Dirk, and Verhulst, Pim (2017), The Making of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Malone meurt’/‘Malone Dies’, Brussels and London: University Press Antwerp and Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Van Hulle, Dirk, and Weller, Shane (2014), The Making of Samuel Beckett’s ‘L’Innommable’/‘The Unnamable’, Brussels and London: University Press Antwerp and Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Varela, Francisco J., Thompson, Evan, and Rosch, Eleonor (1991), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Weller, Shane (2018), ‘From Language Revolution to Literature of the Unword: Beckett as Late Modernist’, in Beloborodova, Olga, Van Hulle, Dirk, and Verhulst, Pim (eds.), Beckett and Modernism, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 37–52.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia [1917] (2000), ‘The Mark on the Wall’, in Selected Short Stories, London: Penguin Modern Classics.Google Scholar
Worth, Katherine (1981), ‘Beckett and the Radio Medium’, in Drakakis, John (ed.), British Radio Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 191–217.Google Scholar
Zilliacus, Clas (1976), Beckett and Broadcasting: A Study of the Works of Samuel Beckett for and in Radio and Television, Åbo: Åbo Akademi.Google Scholar
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this element is currently unknown
and may be updated in the future.
- 18
- Cited by