The Affects, Cognition, and Politics of Samuel Beckett's Postwar Drama and Fiction

The Affects, Cognition, and Politics of Samuel Becketts Postwar Drama and Fiction: Revolutionary and Evolutionary Paradoxes theorizes the revolutionary and evolutionary import of Becketts works in a global context defined by increasingly ubiquitous and insidious mechanisms of capture, exploitation, and repression, alongside unprecedented demands for high-volume information-processing and connectivity. Part I shows that, in generating consistent flows of solidarity-based angry laughter, Becketts works sabotage coercive couplings of the subject to social machines by translating subordination and repression into processes rather than data of experience. Through an examination of Becketts attack on gender/ class-related normative injunctions, the book shows that Becketts works can generate solidarity and action-oriented affects in readers/ spectators regardless of their training in textual analysis. Part II proposes that Becketts works can weaken the cognitivedominance of constrictive frames in readers/ audiences, so that toxic ideological formations such as the association of safety and comfort with simplicity and sameness are rejected and more complex cognitive operations are welcomed insteada process that bolsters the minds ability to operate at ease with increasingly complex, malleable, extensible, and inclusive frames, as well as with increasing volumes of information.