Description
Book SynopsisThis book argues that the abject, decrepit body in Beckett does not signal the impossibility of agency but demands its reconceptualisation. Analysing the representation of the body in relation to the environment in Beckett?s work, the author interrogates the power to do and act. Separating dynamic interaction from willed intention, Amanda Dennis shows how Beckett?s oeuvre refashions subjectivity in dialogue with a disintegrating environment. The book provides a phenomenological reading of Beckett to argue that sensation and embodiment support our interactions with our material world, enabling possibilities for embodied agency in collaboration with our physical and linguistic surroundings.
Trade Review"Attending to the meaning-making potential of the body in space," Amanda Dennis demonstrates the continuing value of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology for an understanding of Beckett's posthuman ecology. Beckett and Embodiment is a timely and important study written with a keen and critical intelligence."" -Professor Jonathan Boulter, Western University
